I always wonder about the story behind these hidden stashes.
Maybe it was stolen or maybe there was an attack and the person or persons hid the stash expecting to return later. Only they never returned which means that they were likely killed.
Or maybe they forgot where they buried it — “did I bury it near that tree or that tree? Darn!”
It’s poignant to think about this; about ten years ago there was a real avalanche of late Roman and early Byzantine coin finds from Romania, Bulgaria, etc, made possible by metal detectors entering those markets. A lot of those “clean them yourself” concretions of purportedly ancient coins available back then on eBay and whatnot were generally believed to be from that area. It made sense, because when the alarm was sounded that the barbarians had crossed the Danube (or whatever), the householders would, one imagines, dug a hole, stashed the household wealth, buried it, and then run for it. If they didn’t quite make it, no one would have known that it was there.