The Hallaton Treasure

Before the coins, there were pigs. Excavators on a hilltop near Hallaton in south-east Leicestershire recovered 6,901 fragments of animal bone, and 97 per cent came from pigs, most of them between seven and twelve months old. On an ordinary Iron Age farm, pig is a minor part of the bones thrown away. Here perhaps three hundred young animals had been killed, and many joints were buried still articulated, as if offered rather than eaten.

The site came to light in November 2000, when a member of the Hallaton Fieldwork Group took a second-hand metal detector to a field where the group had picked up Roman pottery and found coins scattered in the clay. More turned up the next day, along with a silver ear from a helmet. He reported them to the county archaeologist, and University of Leicester Archaeological Services excavated the hill with local volunteers, one of the most important community archaeology projects of its time.

The excavators found a boundary ditch, probably with a palisade, running across the east-facing side of the hilltop, and a likely processional route leading up to it. Most of the coins lay in fourteen separate hoards in the entranceway. With 5,294 coins in all, it is the largest group of Iron Age coins found in Britain, and 4,835 can be assigned to the Corieltavi, the people of the East Midlands. The find increased the number of known Corieltavian coins by about 150 per cent.

Among the coins was a Roman cavalry parade helmet of iron sheathed in silver and touched with gold leaf, the only Roman helmet from Britain with most of its silver-gilt plating still attached. It was found in fragments, many smaller than a fingernail, and spent nine years being reassembled at the British Museum. One cheekpiece shows an emperor on horseback crowned by Victory while his horse tramples a barbarian. Why a Roman helmet ended up at a British shrine is unclear: it could have been a diplomatic gift or war booty, but the view favoured at the British Museum is that it belonged to a Briton who rode with the Roman army.

The coins date the deposits to the AD 40s and perhaps the 50s, the years of the Roman invasion. Analysis of the dies suggests that several rulers in the East Midlands were striking coins at the same time, so the region was probably not one kingdom with a single policy towards Rome. The excavators read the hill as an open-air shrine with no building, a type not recognised in Britain before, where offerings of coin and meat were made while the political world around it was changing.

The treasure was acquired by Leicestershire County Council, which raised about £1 million for the purchase and the helmet's conservation, including a £650,000 Heritage Lottery Fund grant and support from the Art Fund. It is shown at Harborough Museum, about nine miles from the site.