Overview
- This week a preventive excavation in Senon, northeastern France, revealed three carefully buried ceramic vessels that together hold an estimated total exceeding 40,000 Roman coins.
- Preliminary study dates the coins to about 280–310 AD and identifies portraits of Victorinus, Tetricus I and Tetricus II, which ties the deposit to the late‑3rd to early‑4th century and the Gallic Empire period.
- Field evidence shows the vessels were placed upright in domestic rooms at an accessible depth and that some coins were deposited after burial, leading INRAP to interpret them as a form of household savings rather than an emergency wartime hoard.
- The assemblage was recorded in three dimensions on site and has been transferred to French State authorities; conservators are now cleaning, cataloguing and carrying out detailed numismatic analysis that will take years to complete.
- Because the coins come from a well‑documented residential neighborhood that later suffered large fires and mid‑4th‑century abandonment, researchers say the find can shed new light on local economies, saving practices and daily life in late Roman Gaul.