Product Description
In the space of little more than a hundred years, from the Roman conquest of Gaul in the mid first century BC to the defeat of Boudicca in AD61, Britain saw the final and arguably the most impressive phase in the development of Celtic coinage. The coins are not only beautiful and attractive in their own right, but also extraordinarily useful evidence in our attempts to understand Celtic society at this period. This book provides a general introduction to Celtic coinage in Britain. It analyses how and why the coins were made, describing the most significant types and many of the more obscure varieties, and explaining how the coins and the images they carry can reveal information on the political, economic and social life of the Celts. The book is fully illustrated with some of the best examples of Celtic coinage and provides details of museums where coins can be seen, as well as suggestions for more detailed reading.
About the Author
Philip de Jersey was born and brought up in Guernsey, where he spent as much time as possible working on archaeological excavations. He graduated in Geography at Hertford College, Oxford, and remained there to complete his DPhil thesis on the late iron age period in north-west France. Since 1992 he has been employed at the Institute of Archaeology in Oxford to maintain and computerise the Celtic Coin Index, a detailed record of more than thirty thousand British Celtic coins.
