ZME Science has an interesting piece about the discovery of three large jugs containing roman coins. The jug was found during an archaeological dig in the town of Senon in northeastern France. There were more than 25,000 bronze and copper coins dating to the 3rd-century CE in the jugs.

The dig, led by France’s National Institute for Preventive Archaeological Research (INRAP), spans 1,500 square meters. It has peeled back the layers of Senon’s past, revealing how the settlement evolved from a Gallic village into a thriving Roman town—and how, eventually, it vanished in fire.

At the lowest layers of the site, archaeologists uncovered traces of old buildings, such as pits, ditches, and postholes that once supported wooden walls and clay structures. According to INRAP, the tightly packed structures—sometimes more than one structure per square meter—show that Senon was already a densely built settlement before the Roman conquest.

These traces date to between the mid–2nd century BCE, when the region belonged to the Mediomatrici, a Celtic people whose capital was at Divodurum Mediomatricorum, modern-day Metz, France.