Spoils of war? An extraordinary Roman hoard from Utrecht

In October 2023, two metal-detectorists began searching a field in the Bunnik region of Utrecht province. On the face of it, their target was not a promising one for Roman-era finds. Although the wider region had been home to a significant military presence as part of the Lower German frontier or limes, the field in question was far removed from any known Roman-era sites. It was distinctly boggy, too, a quality that would have been just as apparent during antiquity, making the field quite unsuitable for ancient settlement or agriculture. Despite these shortcomings, prospecting by the detectorists produced a coin hoard that marks an extraordinary first for not only the Netherlands, but also c