Mind the Gap! Roman Republican coin hoards from Italy and Iberia at the end of the second century BC

For many years I have been both collecting and analysing data on Roman Republican coin hoards. The aim of these analyses has been to identify patterns of coinage found within these hoards, and to understand how these patterns came about. We can, for example, see how the coins in hoards that close immediately after the Battle of Thapsus in 46 BC reflect where Caesar’s troops, and those of the optimates, went to after the battle. During these analyses, I observed an unusual pattern in hoard closing dates for the period 118–97 BC. From 118–113 BC the majority of hoards came from Italy or Sicily, after which there is a tenyear gap in the Italian sequence until about 104 BC. This gap is, in itself, highly unusual in a period of continuous coin manufacture. What makes this gap even more enigmatic is the fact that in the same period there is a peak in hoarding activity in the Iberian Peninsula. This peak in the hoards from Iberia exceeds all other periods during the Republic, even the Civil Wars. At the time my interpretations were tentative, as the analyses were based on Crawford’s dating scheme (see below). In 2007 I returned to this problem and analysed an expanded data set by individual issues. This revealed that the pattern persisted strongly at the level of individual issues and that certain issues appeared to be key points in the sequence, especially, for example, RRC 286/1.