So far we have seen how our dynasts identified themselves with the Principate, using the visual language of the Augustan revolution in much the same way as other members of the Roman elite. We have also seen evidence for their contacts with other friendly kings, most notably Juba II and Ptolemy of Mauretania. Much of the visual language which they used probably left a large proportion of the British audience completely mystified. However, not all the imagery was impenetrable, and much of the coinage of the later dynasts was more ‘open’, communicating clearer messages to the populace about how they wished to be perceived. This chapter is concerned with the additional strategies developed by our dynasts to set themselves apart from their peers and to establish their authority. The evidence to be discussed is fairly broad and spans themes including ‘self-image’, burial, sacrifice and the foundation of oppida. In each case the imagery from their dynastic coinage will be linked to a variety of other forms of archaeological evidence. However, to start off the chapter we must again return to Rome to understand a little bit more of what Tincomarus or Tasciovanus may have witnessed there as children, had they been there – which I guess they had.

Experience in Rome

Living in the city would have been a feast for the senses.

From the mid-second century BC, coin became a familiar sight amongst the British elite and possibly a broader audience as well. People got used to how it looked and what it felt like. Whilst we can only guess at what they knew, they probably understood what the images stood for and what they symbolised. They understood the social function and role which coinage was meant to fulfil. The serial tradition meant that whilst the image might vary slightly from issue to issue, one knew roughly what to expect. Even the shift in the imagery beginning with British Q and L maintained the Apollo/Horse image. When inscriptions appeared on coins for the first time, they were slotted in around the serial images (Commius, Phase 6). However, when his ‘son’ arrived in Phase 7, all that changed.

Tincomarus' first issues were almost identical to those of Commius, and continued the serial imagery. But the images on his subsequent coinage marked a radical shift in the entire aesthetic and language of coin. For the first time we get clear, unambiguous classical imagery on coin (Stage 3: Fig. 2.3). This was no subtle alteration of coin types; the advent of these new motifs marked an abrupt alteration from the continuity of serial tradition which had hitherto existed. The effect was as radical as if one of the Enigma Variations had ventured into the realms of atonality, or Columbo had put on an Armani suit.

Each new image demanded attention.

In the Middle Iron Age (c. 300–100 BC), many areas of central-southern Britain were dominated by hillforts. This was a pattern which had characterised the landscape for hundreds of years. But around the late second century or early first century, something happened. Many of these sites went out of occupation. The gates of Danebury, Britain's best studied hillfort, were put to the torch, and occupation at the site was scaled down. At around the same time selected sites on the south coast began to receive imports from Gaul and the Mediterranean. Another new arrival was the appearance of gold, absent here since its last appearance in the Late Bronze Age. It came first in the form of imported coin, then as locally manufactured derivatives. Finally new forms of settlements emerged, which we have taken to collectively calling oppida, though as we shall see in this book the nature of many of them was very diverse. These are the main changes which along with developments in burial rites have been taken to characterise the transition from the Middle to the Late Iron Age.

The story I wish to tell is of the changes which took place in Britain from the re-establishment of visible links with the continent in the late second century until the annexation of the south-east of Britain by the Roman Emperor Claudius in AD 43. The story is one of the rise to power of a series of dynasties in south-east Britain.

The most influential numismatist, whose work still dominates the field, was Derek Allen. Even a couple of decades after his death in 1975, the projects he initiated and contributed to were still being published (e.g. Hobbs 1996). His classic paper ‘The origins of coinage in Britain: a reappraisal’ (Allen 1960) put forward a simple and clear framework for describing and classifying the earliest gold coins in Britain. Within it he established a terminology which has stuck ever since. The six principal series of coins which he thought were imported into Britain from Gaul he termed Gallo-Belgic A–F. These he followed by a range of issues minted in Britain, which he termed British A–R. From these a series of regional coin series developed, which Allen gradually followed up and described in subsequent articles (e.g. Icenian coinage: Allen 1970). The names which Allen gave to the early gold coinage were simple and clear, even though subsequent work has suggested that some of the Gallo-Belgic issues were actually manufactured in Britain, and some of the British coin manufactured in Gaul.

Whilst Allen set up the interpretative framework, the principal catalogue which everyone used to identify coins was Mack (1953), which had replaced a set of old engravings in Evans (1864 and 1890). Mack was revised on a number of occasions; however, with the advent of metal detecting the discovery of new types of British coin increased enormously in the 1970s and 1980s.

If the relatively unranked Middle Iron Age gave way to individuals asserting dominance through the use of groups of loyal horsemen, then these new individuals would need to develop ways of validating and legitimising their new power and authority. Often this involves delving back into an imagined past: the Augustan revolution was legitimated as being a restoration of the Republic, though of course it was no such thing. This chapter investigates the ritual basis of authority, and introduces the discussion of the imagery on coin – one of the new media used to articulate authority.

The horse and the ritual basis of authority

Power and authority are rarely simply based upon might or the distribution of prestige goods. Frequently they are dressed up in ritualistic practices which help to validate authority. As Octavian took over the Roman state, he was very careful to use ritual and religion to consolidate his regime, even to the extent of taking on a new name, ‘Augustus’, with its religious overtones. We saw with the Sotiates of Aquitania that members of a comitatus could be bound by a sacred oath to their master. Rule and ritual are intertwined, but can we reconstruct any of it in MIA/LIA Britain? In order to investigate the ritual basis of kingship we will start with some analogies, separated in time and space from Britain.

Conclusion

In the past many of the narratives of this period have attempted to reconstruct history in terms of the rise and fall of individual kingdoms. Kent was seen as a territory, independent at first under Dubnovellaunos, then taken over by the rulers north of the Thames. In the years after Tasciovanus' death (Van Arsdell's ‘Interregnum’), the Southern dynasty wrestled control of Kent under Eppillus, only to be ejected again by Cunobelin and his son Amminus. Soon other territories of the Southern dynasty fell as Cunobelin's brother Epaticcus and son Caratacus moved into Berkshire and northern Hampshire. Details vary, but these are all written with a rhetoric of conquest, expansion and defeat. As Rankin (1996:215) represented it: ‘Pre-Claudian Britain is a landscape of dynastic strife and constant warfare.’

I reject this way of attempting to reconstruct this period. Warfare may indeed have been prevalent in the later second and early first centuries BC, as equestrian groups appeared in the archaeological record and disrupted the MIA way of life (chapters 1 and 2). However after 54 BC I believe that changed. South-east Britain had been conquered by Caesar. It was up to Caesar and the senate to decide what to do next, whether to turn the territory into a province or whether to establish it as one or more friendly kingdoms. After this date we saw that all the pre-existing gold coinage in the region was recalled and re-issued in new series bearing a new family of imagery.

Introduction

The previous chapter demonstrated that there is a strong congruence between the political imagery of the Augustan revolution and the imagery on British coin. It corroborates the idea that the sons of British kings may have been brought up in Rome, as were other obsides recorded in the Roman annals. This chapter seeks to explore the impact this experience could have had on the impressionable mind of a child. Before their departure to the big city, they would have learnt something of how their peers viewed the world around them. Stories and repeated practices would have taught them something of Iron Age British cosmology. Yet on their arrival in Rome, whilst some of these beliefs could possibly have been accommodated, many others would appear totally alien in a classical context. I want to explore this inevitable conflict between cosmologies that would have raged in the minds of these children, taken away from their circular hearth and home, and transported to the rectilinear world of Rome. They would have had to assimilate and cope with the conflicts between belief systems as British and classical cosmologies collided.

The evidence for a clash of cultures in the minds of people who died two thousand years ago is of course going to be tenuous, but two areas can be explored. First, certain aspects of Graeco-Roman myth appear on British coin which were outside the repertoire of Augustan imagery, and this can be understood in terms of a particular British reading of classical myth.

The first person to use text on coins in Britain was Commius (VA350 and 352:S6). These two coins followed the traditional serial design of an abstracted Apollo's head on one side and a horse on the other. However around the horse were placed the letters spelling out his name. The first gold issues of his successor, Tincomarus, were virtually identical (BM756:S7), but the subsequent issues marked a radical departure. As well as using classical imagery, they broadened the range of words used from a simple name to a claim of filial descent. In addition, the abbreviation of his name, TINCO, was now no longer subservient to an archaic image; instead, it was given pride of place within a tablet using carefully inscribed serifed letters (VA375:S7). Whilst inscriptions had begun simply enough with Commius' name, now legends rapidly grew in complexity.

Two features are immediately of note. First, written language on coin arrived in Britain fully developed. In certain parts of Gaul pseudo-legends had appeared on coins, as people imitated issues from the classical world. Eventually the phonetic value of various alphabets was learnt, until genuine legends came into existence. However in Britain that never happened. Commius brought with him fully developed literacy, and this was by and large in Latin. Second, we must then wonder how many people in Britain were able to read these inscriptions where proclamations of ancestry and titulature were made.

In this chapter a number of areas will be discussed.

Many years ago I saw a production of Shakespeare's play Cymbeline set in Britain shortly before Britain was invaded by the Claudian Legions. The British court was filled with Roman officials, British princes travelled to and from Rome, and even the British soothsayer at the end had a vision of the Roman god Jupiter in his sleep instead of an ethereal Celtic deity. All of this jarred with the image of Late Iron Age Britain I had grown up with, where Caesar's conquest of 55/54 BC was but a sham. The Britons might have been beaten, but unlike the Gauls they soon stopped paying their tribute to Rome and a further century had to pass until the Emperor Claudius invaded and Britain finally fell under Roman dominion. Now I am not so sure. I think Shakespeare was right, I think the British court was probably riddled with Romans and I think Cunobelin probably did worship Roman gods. In this book I set out to explain why.

I began to write this book with a number of clear aims and values. First, I wanted to write a positive work of synthesis, not something which simply attacked and deconstructed the work of previous generations. Second, I believed that in this period where prehistory met history, the work had to be thoroughly interdisciplinary, combining the best of archaeological, historical and numismatic research.

The first century BC was a time of great upheaval in the Roman world; individuals freed themselves from the bonds of the Republic and fought openly for power. Marius, Sulla, Pompey, Caesar: all in their own way had the blood of the Republic on their hands. Finally, after generations of sporadic civil war, a new consensus began to emerge among the poor and the senatorial class alike; a consensus which could support the rule of one individual, so long as the pill was not made too hard to swallow. Thus Caesar's heir rose to become Augustus, the first Roman emperor, and the Principate began. Oligarchy gave way to autocracy.

At the same time a transformation was taking place in Britain. Over the first century BC and the early first century AD individuals rose to prominence here, too. Certain groups buried their dead using new rituals which left lasting monuments to their memory; some were interred with an opulence hitherto unseen in Britain. Meanwhile the living adopted new architectural values, giving up traditional circular norms and residing in rectangular structures instead. Alongside this, new political centres emerged, generally referred to as oppida. Finally, the anonymity of prehistory gave way to the arrival of the individual, made present not only by cremated bones in the ground, but also by names on coins and references in the annals of Rome. History begins.