An ancient Celtic religious site that belonged to the Dobunni tribe has been uncovered near Cirencester.
Archaeologists from the Royal Agricultural University (RAU) discovered a hoard of coins, spear heads and miniature shields dating back to the late Iron Age during a recent training excavation.
The site was originally discovered in 2020 by a metal detectorist, who found more than 150 silver and bronze coins and metalwork which were officially classified as Treasure under the Treasure Act, and are now in the care of the Corinium Museum.
The latest works by the RAU's MSc students has revealed both the scale and national significance of the 'votive' site, which was likely a grove of trees used to make religious offerings to Celtic gods.
Professor Mark Horton – pro vice-chancellor for research and director of the university's Cultural Heritage Institute – ran the excavations and said: 'Our archaeologists found that the hoard had been inserted into a sacred precinct marked out by a large area of cobbled pavement. These stones were worn flat by extensive wear which suggests that some form of mass processional activity took place around the central area of the sacred site.
'During our excavations we also discovered multiple spears which had been inserted – often vertically – into the soil to ‘protect’ this central area. Some were iron but others were miniature spears, sometimes less than an inch in length, made of bronze.
'Model swords and scabbards, daggers, and shields, also made of bronze, were found scattered around this central deposit. These would have been used as ritual offerings, known as ‘votives’, and many of these had been deliberately broken into pieces, to signify that they were offerings to the gods and were not to be recovered and reused.
'This is a major find. We know so little about Iron Age or Celtic religion beyond the literary sources, written by the classical authors. Here we have direct archaeological evidence of religious practices at the very end of the Iron Age, on the eve of the Roman invasion.'
Many of the coins found at the site feature a three-tailed horse motif associated with the Dobunni tribe, which lived in Gloucestershire, north Somerset, south Worcestershire and west Oxfordshire, with their capital at Bagendon, close to the dig site.
Coins were most likely to have been distributed by tribal leaders between around 50 BC and 20 AD. One of their leaders, known as Bodvic, issued the largest number of silver coins, some of which were found as part of this latest discovery.
The excavation site has now been refilled and a fundraising campaign, led by the Friends of Corinium Museum, has been launched, aiming to raise £25,000 to conserve the objects and put them on display in the museum sometime in 2027.
