Bronze Unit Hengistbury Trident

The Durotriges occupied the territory of modern Dorset and parts of Somerset and Wiltshire, and their bronze coinage represents a late, localised response to the near-total collapse of their silver currency — coins that had progressively debased from good silver staters into pieces so degraded they were barely distinguishable from tin. This bronze unit emerged in the final decades before the Claudian invasion of 43 AD, a period when the tribe's political autonomy was shrinking under pressure from the pro-Roman Atrebates to the north.

Hengistbury Head, the probable mint site, had been one of the most significant cross-Channel trading ports in southern Britain a generation earlier, though that traffic had largely dried up by the time these bronzes were struck.