FRANCE – Archaeologists in northeastern France have uncovered an ancient neighborhood beneath the town of Senon, where they found three ceramic jars filled with Roman coins. The hoard is huge, numbering at least 25,000 bronze and copper coins from the 3rd-century CE. The discovery, made during a routine excavation, offers new insight into how people in the late Roman Empire stored and managed their money.
The dig, led by France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), spans 1,500 square meters. It has peeled back the layers of Senon’s past, revealing how the settlement evolved from a Gallic village into a thriving Roman town—and how, eventually, it vanished in fire.
A City From Before Rome
At the lowest layers of the site, archaeologists uncovered traces of old buildings, such as pits, ditches, and postholes that once supported wooden walls and clay structures. According to INRAP, the tightly packed structures—sometimes more than one structure per square meter—show that Senon was already a densely built settlement before the Roman conquest. These traces date to between the mid–2nd century BCE, when the region belonged to the Mediomatrici, a Celtic people whose capital was at Divodurum Mediomatricorum, modern-day Metz, France.
After the Romans under Julius Caesar conquered the Gauls, everything changed and Senon entered a new phase of expansion. Archaeologists identified more than a dozen small limestone quarries, some nearly three meters deep, carved behind houses and later repurposed for storage or domestic use. These extraction pits fueled a construction boom that lasted centuries.
By the late first century CE, Senon’s recently excavated neighborhood took on its enduring shape. Two paved streets bordered rows of stone houses with lime floors, hypocaust heating, ovens, and cellars. Courtyards spread out behind them, sometimes used for workshops. The well-built houses and everyday objects found on the site suggest that Senon’s residents at the site were relatively well-off, likely artisans or merchants.
But the good times didn’t last long. Layers of ash tell of fires that swept through the district. One blaze around the early 4th century marks a turning point. It was during this turbulent time—perhaps between 280 and 310 CE—that someone buried three large amphorae of coins beneath their floorboards.
The Mystery of the Hidden Coins
Each vessel lay sunk into the ground, their necks level with the floor. Inside were tens of thousands of bronze and copper coins bearing the faces of emperors like Victorinus, Tetricus I, and Tetricus II, the rulers of the short-lived Gallic Empire that broke away from Rome in the 3rd century. “The first hoard held an estimated 83 pounds (38 kilograms) of coins, which corresponds to approximately 23,000 to 24,000 coins,” Vincent Geneviève, an INRAP numismatist, told Live Science. Another amphora may have contained up to 19,000 more.
Altogether, the hoards could exceed 40,000 coins, enough to pay dozens of soldiers for months. But archaeologists caution against seeing them as emergency stashes. “Contrary to what one might think at first look, it is not certain that these are ‘treasures’ that were hidden during a period of insecurity,” according to the translated INRAP statement. Instead, the vessels may have functioned as household banks—places where money was stored, withdrawn, and redeposited over time.
The evidence supports this view. In two cases, archaeologists found coins stuck to the outside of the jars, indicating someone added them after burying the vessels but before sealing the pits. The openings of the jars remained accessible from the floor above.
Nearby stood a Roman fortification dating from the same period, just 150 meters away. Soldiers or local administrators may have helped manage the deposits.
The blaze that consumed Senon’s homes at the start of the 4th century spared no one. Yet residents rebuilt. Old cellars were reused, broken columns and temple stones repurposed into new walls. The reused materials suggest that residents had already abandoned the city’s major public buildings. For another half-century, life flickered on in this patchwork town.
Then, sometime around the middle of the 4th century, flames returned. This time, the inhabitants did not come back. The houses collapsed, their courtyards filled with rubble. The coin hoards—once easily reachable—were buried deeper and forgotten. Over the centuries, orchards grew above them. By the 18th century, the site was farmland. Only today, as modern construction expands, has the ancient neighborhood emerged again.
