Celtic coins were produced across much of western and central Europe, from the end of the fourth century BC until the late first century BC on the continent, and between the late second century BC and the mid first century AD in Britain. The map below shows how different areas of the Celtic world made use of different Greek and Roman prototypes for their coinages.

The main concern of these pages is with British Celtic coinage, which represented a final artistic and technical flourish in the 350 year development of coinage in Celtic Europe. Britain fell within the region most strongly influenced by the gold stater of Philip II of Macedon, which weighed between 8.5 and 8.6g and was struck in gold of about 95% purity. This coin was issued by Philip between 359 and 336 BC and by his successors - Alexander the Great, Philip III and Cassander - down to 294 BC. All of these leaders employed huge numbers of Celtic mercenaries, and it seems that it was through their service in Mediterranean armies that the Celts were first exposed to significant quantities of coinage. They took these coins back to their homelands, and perhaps in some cases also encountered them during trade with the Mediterranean world. In some areas they began to produce their own versions of the stater, and so began more than three centuries of coin production in Celtic Europe.

The stater of Philip II of Macedon.

The first significant developments in British Celtic coinage were directly related to continental types: a series of gold imports from Belgica, themselves inspired ultimately by Philip II's stater, and a complex bronze series, ultimately to be traced back to the Greek colony of Massalia (Marseilles) on the Mediterranean coast. A range of British imitations of these coins were produced in many different areas of the south and east of the country: the use of coinage in Britain was restricted almost entirely to the southeast of a line from the Severn to the Humber, in the regions occupied by the tribes shown below.

The territory occupied by these tribes can be conveniently divided into two zones, a core and a periphery. The core comprised the most powerful late Iron Age kingdoms, to the north and south of the Thames, plus Kent, which for most of the period was controlled by one or other of these kingdoms. From about the end of the first century BC, these kingdoms produced increasingly Romanized coinage, indicating not only their proximity to Gaul, but also the enthusiasm with which their rulers engaged in trade with the continent.

To the west and north of the core were the peripheral tribes, who were separated from direct access to the continent by the core, and who were generally more resistant to the processes of Romanization. They mostly retained the characteristically Celtic design of their coinage throughout the last years of their independence.

It is traditional to view most of the Celtic coinages in Britain as tribal productions, but this is not always appropriate. There are no boundaries shown on the map above for a good reason: the boundaries we can reconstruct were not set down until the Roman period, and the earlier the coinage, the more problems there are in reconciling its distribution with the known boundaries. It is mostly preferable to use a geographical or neutral terminology, for example "south Thames" rather than Atrebates and Regni.

There are also some problems with the concept of tribal production. There are many types of British Celtic coin which have very localized distributions, or which were produced in particularly limited quantities, perhaps subject to need, or to the availability of bullion and of suitably skilled metalworkers. These were almost certainly not tribal issues, but the products of smaller areas - perhaps subdivisions of the tribal unit - or of minor and relatively transitory authorities. Coinage in this society provided an ideal means by which nobles or kings could make gifts and payments to their followers, and thus enhance their prestige: a process which was absolutely essential to the success of the ruler in question and to the maintenance of the wider social hierarchy. The gold and silver coins of this period were not used in run-of-the-mill, everyday exchange, or even in regular trade with the outside world, but primarily in this traditional function of gift exchange. The status of the bronze coinages is harder to ascertain, but they were probably intended mostly for subsistence or as payments for service; it may be argued that some of the commonest bronze coins of the last years of British Celtic independence functioned rather more like our coinage today.

The development of British Celtic coinage is covered in more detail here. To see what else is on the Celtic Coin Index site, go back to the main contents page.