Cunetio

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Cunetio was a small Roman city in Britain . It was near the present-day English town of Mildenhall .

Almost nothing is known about the history of Cunetio , which was founded around the middle of the 1st century AD. The place was apparently a military post at first; he was on an important traffic route and experienced in the 2nd / 3rd. Century a heyday. It is mentioned in the Itinerarium Antonini and had an almost right-angled road network, which speaks for a planned layout. The village was probably a local trading center and played a role in tax collection. In 1978 a very large treasure from the later 3rd century , consisting of around 55,000 Roman coins, was found in Cunetio . This treasure by Cunetio , which mostly consists of coins of very little value, is now in the British Museum .

In late antiquity , Cunetio was surrounded by a mighty city wall that only partially encompassed the same area as the city of the 2nd / 3rd centuries. Century. The last coins found in Cunetio date from the early 5th century ; It is still unclear whether the place was abandoned or destroyed at that time. If the main function of the place in late Roman times was that of an administrative center, this could explain why the place was abandoned after the end of Western Roman rule. Since most of Cunetio was not built over in the Middle Ages and modern times, the small settlement represents a not unimportant archaeological site.

literature

  • Edward Besly; Roger Bland: The Cunetio Treasure: Roman Coinage of the Third Century AD. London 1983.
  • Barry Burnham; John Wacher: The Small Towns of Roman Britain . Berkeley 1990.
  • Richard Hobbs: The Secret History of the Mildenhall Treasure. In: Antiquaries Journal 88 (2008), pp. 376-420.

Coordinates: 51 ° 25 ′ 24.1 ″  N , 1 ° 41 ′ 24.1 ″  W.