Several decades after the Sutton Hoo funeralbeginning in about AD660, there was a sudden increase in the number of silver coins in circulation in England, for reasons that have long puzzled archaeologists and historians.
The new rush of silver coins stimulated trade and helped fuel the development of the new towns that arose at the time – but where did it come from? Did the Anglo-Saxon kings recycle old Roman scrap metal? Or have they found profitable sources of mines in Europe?
Metallurgical analysis of early medieval coinage revealed the answer: the power brokers of the time were melting down their stocks of Byzantine silver hoards, in a type of early medieval quantitative easing that had fueled the economy of England and established a monetary system that would last for a millennium.
Chemical analysis of coins from the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge revealed two distinct phases of the silver rush. For almost a century from the 660s, coins were minted from silver gold that originated in the Byzantine Empire on the eastern Mediterranean. Then, after the supply of those treasures dried up in about 750, silver from a mine in western France dominated all of Europe, during the reign of Charlemagne.
“It was such an exciting discovery,” said Rory Naismith, a professor of early medieval English history at the University of Cambridge, one of the academics behind the study. “Now we have the first archaeometric confirmation that Byzantine silver was the dominant source behind the great seventh-century boom in coinage and trade around the North Sea.”
The coins minted were silver pennies – each perhaps equivalent to £20-£30 today – which formed “the bedrock of the English economy” until at least the 16th century, Naismith said.
Interestingly, the isotopic signature of the Byzantine silver showed that it was already decades or more old – most likely it was prized as a way to display its owner’s power and wealth. The ruler honors at Sutton Hoobelieved to be Raedwald of East Anglia, was buried with a collection of Byzantine silver bowls and other items that, if melted down, could have made 10,000 pence, the authors say.
“It’s fair to say we were surprised by this result,” said Dr Jane Kershaw, an associate professor at Oxford University’s school of archeology and the study’s lead author. “We know of some surviving Byzantine silver from Anglo-Saxon England, notably from Sutton Hoo, but much larger quantities of Byzantine silver must originally have been held in Anglo-Saxon stores.”
She added: “It was quantitative easing – elites liquidated silver stored in valuable objects and used that silver to make coins that then circulated widely. It would have had a huge impact on people’s lives. Many more people than before would have used coins and thought in terms of monetary values.”
Not only rulers, but also powerful monasteries minted their own coins, Naismith said. “There was no Bank of England at this stage – if you want coins, you make coins. You just have to be someone who has the wealth to do it.”
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By the middle of the eighth century, however, the silver pennies had become lighter and made with less silver, as supplies of the Byzantine precious metal dwindled. Around this time, the researchers found, it was increasingly replaced with silver from a mine at Melle, in western France.
Naismith said the new research “shows how connections both near and far are really important to the economy [of this period]. It shows that if people in England wanted a complex economy with currency, they couldn’t just rely on the resources at home – they had to deal with people in the Mediterranean, in France, all sorts of other places.
“It shows interdependence, and how connections and networks have been fundamental to economic success for hundreds and hundreds of years.”
The research is published in Antiquity.
