Unique ID: 104
British Ad1 Tarring staters are stylistically derived from the British Aa1 Westerham staters (see 96), but they actually follow on from the Insular Cf1 staters (see 102). Despite being stylistically very different from each other, Insular Cf1 and British Ad1 are linked by an obverse die shared between Insular Cf2 (see 29) and British Ad2 Geometric (see 49, 105, 106, and 108) quarters. The Insular Cf coins were probably minted by Belgic settlers in Britain, but it is not known whether the design switched to a Westerham style because they came under the control of a British tribe, or because they needed their coins to be accepted by a British tribe. The Westerham style was used accross the south of Britain and north of the Thames.
The Tarring stater is associated with the British Ad2 Geometric (see 49, 105, 106, and 108) and British Ad2 Nipple (see 11) quarter staters.
This coin is from obverse die 3 and reverse die 5. Obverse 3 has “spiky thorns” in the obverse, and Chris Rudd named this the Westerham South “Spiky Type” in list 123 (May 2012). “Divided Kingdoms” only lists two other coins from this die pair (the one in the British Museum can be seen here). It is interesting that all three coins from these dies are cracked.
The second obverse die for the British Ad2 Geometric quarter fetures this “spiky thorn” motif as well (this coin for example), suggesting that the end of the Geometric quarters was around obverse number three (of six) of the staters.
