Unique ID: 101
The Yarmouth stater is described by John Sills in “Divided Kingdoms” (p178) as “one of the most enigmatic British stater types”. The iconography is bizarre. Apollo’s face is replaced by a three pronged “nose”, and the cloak by three claws. On the reverse, the over articulated horse has a three clawed tail and Whirling Blades of Death™ for forelegs. One of the legs ends with three claws. This coin lends weight to the theory that some Celtic coin designs were derived from trance imagery.
It’s not entirely clear who minted this coin. Sills draws parallels to the British Ad2 Geometric quarter staters (see 49, 105, 106, and 108) and to the Gb-Ce staters which are tentatively assigned to the Catuslougi. There is no known associated quarter stater, although the Horse Geometric quarter stater (see 75) is the most likely candidate. This also has similarities to the British Ad series, both with the staters (see 104) and Geometric quarters (see 49, 105, 106, and 108). It’s probable that it was minted by a small group of refugees who came to Britain during the Gallic Wars, which might explain the small numbers found and the extremely low gold content.
The style of the horse and the similarities to the Gb-Ce staters suggest an early mint date, but the gold content is very low (an average of only 28.88%) putting them on par with British G which are dated to 57 BC to 55 BC. This date is used here for the Yarmouth staters, but the wider range of 80BC to 50 BC is possibly safer. The gold content is so low that they were almost certainly minted towards the end of this period.
At the time of writing (2020) there are only fifteen Class 1 coins (the Right Type) recorded. Nine of them were found in the Yarmouth Hoard and are in the British Musem (8) and the Ashmolean Museum (1). One of the remaining six coins is plated.
