Currency Bar Billet

Iron currency bars of this type — often called "sword-currency" in older literature — circulated across pre-Roman Britain and into Gaul, with Julius Caesar himself noting in the Gallic Wars that the Britons used iron as a medium of exchange by weight. Whether these bars functioned primarily as currency, as pre-formed smithing stock, or as both simultaneously remains unresolved. Attribution to a specific tribe is rarely possible without secure hoard provenance.