How did common people in Bronze Age Europe pay before coinage caught on? Apparently with standardized fragments of bronze objects such as swords, axes or jewelry, according to a study. The researchers were able to show that the masses of such “scrap pieces” from various European hoards corresponded to the weight units common at the time. They conclude that the metal fragments served the Europeans of the late Bronze Age as everyday cash.
Round metal objects with official embossing: From the middle of the first millennium BC BC coins advanced to the currency of the early classical civilizations in western Eurasia. They should simplify and standardize the economic system. You’d think that before it was just based on a rather simple exchange of goods or services. But it is assumed that even before the era of coins, standardized exchange objects were common in the economic systems of the Bronze Age.
Special finds in sight
In a recently published study, researchers came to the conclusion that so-called copper bars, which were discovered in various locations in Central Europe, could have served as a standardized means of payment. So-called hack silver is also considered a form of premature money. These fragments of the precious metal were used as a form of money in the Middle East during the Bronze Age, according to an earlier study. As Nicola Ialongo from the University of Göttingen and Giancarlo Lago from the University of Sapienza in Rome now report, bronze pieces could have played a comparable role in Europe.
These are objects from the late Bronze Age (1350 to 800 BC) that were discovered in numerous excavations in Europe and often formed a hoard made up of several units. A striking example is an approximately 3300 year old complex find from the Tollense River in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania: the collection of many bronze fragments suggested that they once lay together in a bag. Was that a wallet? Ialongo and Lago have now systematically pursued the assumption that such pieces served as a means of payment in the late Bronze Age. Analysis data from around 2500 metal objects and fragments from many hoard finds flowed into their study. For the evaluations, the scientists used a statistical method that can reveal underlying similarities in property data.
The small change of the Bronze Age
So it finally became apparent that the weights of the objects analyzed corresponded to fractions or multiples of certain units: They were based on weights for weighing, which in this era had become common in Europe as units of measurement for recording goods, the researchers were able to clarify. As they explain, it is becoming apparent that the pieces examined were deliberately crushed in order to produce defined units in connection with these standard weights. The researchers conclude that the pieces were used as cash and that the crushing of bronze objects was aimed at obtaining something like loose change for everyday use. This practice was accompanied by a boom in economic development in western Eurasia in the late Bronze Age, the researchers point out.
“Paying with metal pieces wasn’t primitive because this type of money – before coins were invented – served exactly the same functions as modern money today,” says Ialongo. “The real turning point in the development was probably the weighing of weights, which developed around 3000 BC in the Middle East. For the first time in human history, an objective means was available to quantify the economic value of things and services, in other words to assign a price to them, ”says the scientist.
Source: University of Göttingen, specialist article: Journal of Archaeological Science, doi: 10.1016 / j.jas.2021.105379