Coins and Hats

...and how they go together

Iron Age Coins and Bronze Age Hats are like chocolate and peanut butter...

In 2017 I saw Brogan of Tuathe de Bhriain making reproductions of Iron Age Celtic coins, at Clan Preachain's Early Period A&S day during Pennsic. His were better than any coins I had seen in the reenactment world before then. I told him his coins looked great and he should publish his methods.

Here I am (left front) talking with Brogan (in the back center) and Cynred (front center) at that fateful Early Period A&S day. Cynred had just made a birch bark hat, which I am holding in my lap in this picture. I was smitten with this hat; it was the first birch bark hat I had ever seen in person.

I had just that spring started reading about Bronze Age birch bark hats, because a dissertation about them by Cara Melissa Reeves, written in English, had just been published in 2015. I knew that some of the hats were stamped with designs, and I thought a stamp, like one of Brogan's coin dies, could be used to make designs on a birch bark hat.

Right then and there, we confirmed that the coin dyes would, in fact, work to imprint birch bark -- Cynred had some scraps of bark, Brogan had the coin dies, and they both humored me when I asked if we could put the two together. It works better when you steam the bark first, but even dry it worked pretty well.

Brogan wearing a birch bark hat I made for him

That proof-of-concept was enough to convince Brogan to make me a stamp that worked like a coin die, but that bore the correct designs to match a hat from Mardie, France. I sent him pictures of the designs and he made me the stamps (sizing, carving, and sandcasting to order, a HUGE favor) ...for free. And then he asked me to help him write an article about his coin minting.

So I did. I did not know anything about coins but I had published academic papers before. He wasn't confident writing, but he knew how to make coins.

We published the article together in EXARC magazine, a peer-reviewed experimental archaeology journal, HERE.

All of this led, for me, to an abiding interest in coins and in the Gallo-Belgic leader Commius, who was the first Iron Age Briton (or among the first) to inscribe a coin with his own name. It also allowed me to create some fun hats. So even though the coins and the hats are separated prehistorically by centuries, in the trajectory of my world they absolutely go together.

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