Currency created by humans such as coins and paper money have definitely changed over time. Small pieces of valuable metals or paper without metal backing have become digital currencies that are not visible and are stored on servers. For many years, people who study currency–or currency experts–have been curious about where the silver inside some coins found in England came from. The coins were made between 660 and 750 CE, when the Anglo-Saxon world started to use silver coins for trade in a big way. This shift moved away from relying on gold, and archaeologists have found about 7,000 of these silver pieces.
Now, a new non-intrusive way of looking into the past may have shown where the silver used in the coins came from. It provides clues about how changes in politics and the rule of Charlemagne–the Holy Roman Emperor and King of the Franks–affected currency changes in early medieval Europe. The findings are explained in a new research paper published on April 8 in the journal Antiquity and could enhance our modern understanding of the continent’s economic and political development at that time.
Benjamin Franklin used science to safeguard his money from counterfeiters.]
“There has been talk that the silver might have come from Melle in France, or from an unknown mine, or that it might have been made from church silver,” Rory Naismith, a historian of early medieval English from the University of Cambridge and one of the study's authors, stated in a release. “But there was no solid evidence to confirm any of these ideas, so we tried to find it.”
A bit of assistance from lasers
In previous studies, other coins from a silver mine at Melle were examined, but this observed less-studied Fitzwilliam’s coins. These 49 pieces of silver were produced in England, the Netherlands, Belgium, and northern France and go back to the period between 660 and 820 CE. They are kept by new study The Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge. Jason Day from the Department of Earth Sciences at Cambridge analyzed what elements were present in the coins in a lab. Day then used a
method called portable laser ablation . During this process, tiny samples were gathered onto Teflon filters to analyze the lead isotopes. This new technique, developed by the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, combines aslightly intrusive sampling with a laser and the highly precise results from the more traditional methods that take samples of metals. Although the coins were mainly made of silver, the levels of gold, another
substance called bismuth , and other elements helped the researchers discover the previously unknown origins of the silver. The different ratios of lead isotopes in the silver coins also gave additional clues as to where the metals came from.Byzantine silver for everyone
Twenty-nine of the coins in the study were made between 660 and 750 CE. They were produced in today's England, France, and a cross-border cultural area in Northwestern Europe called
However, the lasers showed very distinct chemical and isotopic features that matched 3rd to early Frisia. 7th century silver coming from the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean. This Byzantine silver was uniform across the coins. No known European ore matches the elemental and isotopic characteristics of this early silver according to the team. Also, there is no significant overlap with late
Ancient Roman silver coins from the western part of the empire or other items made from this metal, indicating that it was not just reused late Roman silver. “These coins are some of the first signs of a recovery in the northern European economy after the fall of the Roman Empire,” said Jane Kershaw, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford and co-author of the study.
stated in a press release . “They demonstrate extensive international trade connections between what we now know as France, the Netherlands, and England.”The research suggests that the Byzantine silver must have entered Western Europe before being melted down, as the late 7th century is considered part of the Dark Ages, or more accurately termed
Migration Period . This was a low point in trade and diplomatic relations as the Roman Empire came to an end.A team of divers discovered a hoard o