Having now reached coin 600, there are a couple of trends to note thus far, but generally speaking things are continuing as they have been previously and no real data is bending the aforementioned trends. The first of the two points is that the Longrock-Marazion area of Mount's Bay, where St. Michael's Mount is situated, has a comparitively large, for Cornwall, amount of coins recorded from the area. Whilst this will be fully looked into once I start researching and writing my report and a full picture will really only be available once Devon is complete as well, it does seem as though the area had significant economic activity, even if it is not the location of Port 'Ictis'. I have mentioned this in both my prior blog posts so will delve a little bit more into what this data could mean, though of course I have not delved deep into the data and any relevent research around it as of yet, these are just my musings on the trends I'm seeing, for now.
There is a healthy amount of coins originating from all four centuries of Roman rule. The sheer number of these coins and the centuries represented implies that either Cornwall was not recieving many new coins at all and was having to reuse older coins, which doesn't necessarily make sense given it's status as a tin and copper export hub, or that economic activity occurred right from the onset of Roman rule which itself implies either the Roman's set up the area as an economic hub or, perhaps more likely given Rome's lack of interference with Cornwall, it was a pre-existing hub that had been prospering from exporting its metals before Roman conquest and continued to do so once it was incorporated into the Empire. This certainly needs more looking into and such will be done in the creation of my report, but certainly this region is one of the key areas of interest to me as a result of compiling and mapping this data.
The second of my points is an entirely new finding for me and one that this post's title refers to; a possible Roman (or perhaps more likely a Roman influenced) Villa Rustica, or Country Estate. This is because one of the Cornish hotspots for coin finds appeared in the recording of the last 200 coins and occurs in the Parish of Maker-with-Rame. Given the sudden increase of coins appearing in the area, I briefly looked into the area's history and discovered that in 1962 Dr. W. G. Hoskins writes that the site was, in his opinion, likely a Roman Villa, given that there was mention in 1066 of a stone house in the area, given that Maker is a varient of Magor, Cornish for ruin or old walls, and the name is first recorded in 705 CE and given that the only place a Roman (influenced) Villa has been found in Cornwall thus far is at Magor in West-Cornwall. Therefore these coins may provide evidence to support his theory. However it must be noted that they could be unrelated, especially given Dr. Hoskins believed the Villa to lie in the opposite side of the small parish's peninsula to where the coins are largely located, though of course the villa could have had large agricultural estates extending towards the area these coins are being found. So, when this is being fully investigated in my writeup, my aims will specifically be to ascertain whether or not this data supports or is even related to a potential Roman Villa in the area (and it must be reaffirmed that this villa does not definitely exist). If so, why are the coins not nearer Hoskins proposed site for the villa and, if not, why might these coins occur in this area in such numbers.
That's all to add that I've noticed thus far (without yet combing through the data) that I haven't already mentioned in prior blogs. The next blog post for Cornwall will occur at coin 800 only if I notice a significant trend that I have not already mentioned. Otherwise I will skip that post and will make Cornwall's next post once I've finished recording all of the coins.
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