April 15, 2024

Silver Coins in a Permeable Medieval Europe

A new discovery by historians show how far things could travel (and how normal it was for them to travel), even during the European Middle Ages

Modern Medieval

by David M. Perry and Matthew Gabriele

In the late 7th and early 8th centuries, English elites decided to start making lots and lots of silver coins, a surge in minting that marked a significant change in the North Sea economy. A new study out in the journal Antiquity shows, fairly conclusively, that these early medieval minters didn't mine the silver they used, but rather drew on "a massive, but finite, reserve of bullion that had been imported and accumulated" from the Byzantine Empire.

It's a case study that supports our broader argument that at all times, medieval Europe, even early medieval Europe, even early medieval England (the darkest of the dark ages according to some), was connected to a much broader world.

But it's also a story that shows we can talk about decline, about change, about crisis, in ways that are real, measurable, instead of vague vibes-based chatter about the fall of Rome. And it's a study that has caught the attention of media outlets, and we need to talk about why that is too.

1) The Study

The science involves using laser beams to "ablates microscopic samples of material," then comparing their chemical composition to other known sources of silver from the time.

Basically, Byzantine silver came with a lot of gold, as do the cheap English coins from about 660-750. After 750, surviving coins have an ever-increasing lower quantity of gold which matches the composition of the silver mine at Melle in what became the Carolingian Empire. The authors conjecture that over time northwestern Europeans gradually shifted production from stamping out coins from melted Byzantine plate to the use of silver from Melle.

A key quote:

No known European ore source matches the elemental and isotopic characteristics of these early silver coins. This includes ore from Britain: lead ores mined in Britain give a low silver yield making it unlikely that they were targeted for silver production, but our data indicate that the sampled coins were also not refined (cupelled) using British, or indeed north-west European, lead (compare Rohl 1996 and reference data, see OSM4 section A). Nor is there any meaningful overlap with late Western Roman silver coins and objects (Figure 4B). This finding makes it unlikely that late Roman metal was recycled to produce the earliest coinages...

There is a strong correlation in isotopic and chemical features with available data relating to Eastern Roman/Byzantine silver of the third to early seventh centuries AD from the eastern Mediterranean...The similarity with these Eastern Roman/ Byzantine objects is sufficiently close to suggest that Byzantine silver was the dominant source of the silver powering the great seventh-century surge of minting around the North Sea. This has previously been suggested (Naismith 2012a: 159–60), but the results presented here offer the first physical confirmation of the use of Byzantine silver.

So the silver being used in these English coins is specifically Byzantine silver, brought west by any number of means and in any number of forms. The Sutton Hoo early 7th century burial contains several objects made with this same Byzantine silver, and "had it been melted down, the Sutton Hoo silverware would have produced some 10,000 early pennies."

This is a sign of a connected world. In The Bright Ages we wrote:

Early medieval Britain was built by its connections to elsewhere. The seventh-century Wilton Cross, a golden pendant inlaid with garnets and intended to be worn around the neck, contains a Byzantine gold coin at its center, and likely dates to not long before Theodore and Hadrian arrived. But it’s no outlier, simply one of the most brilliant of a multitude of both luxury and everyday objects with origins thousands of miles from where they ended up. Sixth-and seventh-century coins and gems have regularly been found in contemporary graves across Britain, originating in either Byzantium or even the Sassanian Empire in Persia. Shoulder clasps found in the famous Sutton Hoo ship burial in Suffolk, England contained garnets from, most likely, India or Sri Lanka. And people moved with these goods. Scientists can measure the oxygen isotopes in dental enamel to determine where in the world long-dead people were born. From the Bronze Age through to the medieval period, we’re finding people buried in British graves who were born in Asia and Africa. That number peaked, unsurprisingly, during the Roman period, but never falls to zero throughout the Middle Ages.

We’re in a moment in which scholars are radically reimagining early medieval Britain, one less in thrall to nationalistic myths and ultimately more honest to the past itself. Marshaling rigorous research across the arts, humanities, and sciences, these scholars have now peeled back the stories of early medieval Britain, and found that the island has never truly been an island. In the early Middle Ages, it was filled with people from at least three continents.

This excellent study is yet another piece of evidence, and a fascinating one. In part because it also lets us talk about....

2) Decline

Connection between regions is never linear, simple, continuous. When we've argued against the simplistic term "the fall of Rome," it's because we'd rather talk about changes we can really measure, rather than vibes. Changes like (From the Antiquity study):

A key question is whether Byzantine silver was newly arrived in northern Europe or drawn from existing stockpiles. It is firmly established that Byzantine silver coin and plate production collapsed in the mid- to late seventh century: the system of state-controlled stamping of plate (a marker of silver quality) ended in AD 661, while the minting of silver hexagram coins all but ceased by 685 (Hendy 1985: 495; Mango 1993: 215). Stores of ecclesiastical plate had largely been consumed by this time (Mango 1993). Given the corresponding decline in the movement of goods from east to west in the Mediterranean (McCormick 2001: esp. 565–9), we consider it most likely that the Byzantine silver fuelling the earliest northern European medieval coins was already available in a massive, but finite, reserve of bullion that had been imported and accumulated, probably during the sixth and early seventh centuries.

It's true that Byzantine silver coin and plate production collapsed in this period. There's also a decline in movement of goods from east to west. In this economic environment, long-distance trade is harder, but local elites had a reserve of silver they could melt and mint.

As decades went on, they continued to want to participate in regional trade that had become so prosperous (and perhaps triggered the initial boom in minting in the 7th century). Meanwhile, the Carolingians were solidifying their grasp over Aquitaine in the southwest, including that aforementioned silver mine in Melle, and so European silver takes over as the source for mints. Here's a story of a shift out of the Roman imperial orbit, but in the 7th century, not the 5th.

3) Why this article?

David first ran across this study from The Guardian, but it's also been covered in many other outlets, small and large. Morgan Fairchild tweeted about it. There are a few reasons why this story made news, when so many findings about the medieval past do not.

First, it's a discovery that can be presented as "Archaeologists Solve Mystery," or even better, that SCIENCE solves the mystery. The authors, it should be noted, write, "This has previously been suggested (Naismith 2012a: 159–60), but the results presented here offer the first physical confirmation of the use of Byzantine silver." The academics understand themselves as part of an ongoing conversation, but the media likes discoveries and likes science.

Science can, though, add genuinely new knowledge to the world. The ability to test medieval coins using LASERS, without damaging them, is amazing. But it only has meaning because it's placed in ongoing scholarship across disciplines and across the regions - without the Byzantinists, without the historians of early medieval England, without the centuries' long discipline of numismatics, without all the people working on the times and places and things touched by this story, even frickin' laser beams don't reveal very much.

But second: Studies like this plug into existing media infrastructure through press releases aimed at science and archaeology reporting. Other disciplines need to tap into or create their own infrastructure if we want to participate in the big public discourses, which we very much need to do.

The other option is to just give your favorite medievalists some laser beams.

What's the worst that could happen?

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