Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland from the 4th to the 6th Century

Simon Esmonde Cleary

A survey of the uses of silver in Britain and Ireland in various forms from the end of the fourth to the end of the sixth century CE. Principal areas and periods are: (i) the major horizon of the deposition of hoards of intact Roman silver (coins, plate, objects) in the late fourth and fifth centuries within the borders of the late Roman Diocese of the Britains; (ii) Hoards of 'Hacksilber', fragmented Roman silver plate and other objects along with coins, particularly in modern Scotland, also Roman Britain, occasionally Ireland; (iii) the relation of the 'Hacksilber' hoards to hoards of so-called 'Pictish' silver in Scotland; (iv) the lack of silver in areas such as Anglo-Saxon England is also noted. Reasons for the patterns of the hoarding and uses of silver in this period are considered, including, raiding, diplomatic intervention, mercenary payment, slave trading along with comments on the circumstances of deposition.

Römisch-Germanisches Zentralmuseum Leibniz-Forschungsinstitut für Archäologie und Centre Michel de Boüard CRAHAM (UMR 6273) Université de Caen Normandie SONDERDRUCK / TIRÉ À PART RGZM – TAGUNGEN Band 41 Jérémie Chameroy · Pierre-Marie Guihard (dir.) ARGENTUM ROMANORUM SIVE BARBARORUM TRADITION UND ENTWICKLUNG IM GEBRAUCH DES SILBERGELDES IM RÖMISCHEN WESTEN (4.-6. JH.) PERMANENCES ET ÉVOLUTION DES USAGES MONÉTAIRES DE L’ARGENT DU IVE AU VIE SIÈCLE DANS L’OCCIDENT ROMAIN 2. Internationales Numismatikertreffen / 2èmes Rencontres internationales de numismatique (12-13 octobre 2017, Caen) Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz 2020 Die Tagung wurde gefördert von Redaktion: Claudia Nickel, Marie Reiter (RGZM) Satz: Michael Braun (RGZM) Umschlaggestaltung: Claudia Nickel (RGZM) Comité de lecture: Pierre Bauduin, Marc Bompaire, Luc Bourgeois, Michel Dhénin, Suzanne Frey-Kupper, Martin Guggisberg, Antony Hostein, Peter Prohászka Englischsprachige Korrekturen: Clive Bridger, Xanten Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Nationalbibliothek Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie: Detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.d-nb.de abrufbar. ISBN 978-3-88467-333-1 ISSN 1862-4812 © 2020 Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums Das Werk ist urheberrechtlich geschützt. Die dadurch begründeten Rechte, insbesondere die der Übersetzung, des Nachdrucks, der Entnahme von Abbildungen, der Funk- und Fernsehsendung, der Wiedergabe auf fotomechanischem (Fotokopie, Microkopie) oder ähnlichem Wege und der Speicherung in Datenverarbeitungsanlagen, Ton- und Bildträgern bleiben, auch bei nur auszugsweiser Verwertung, vorbehalten. Die Vergütungsansprüche des §54, Abs.2, UrhG. werden durch die Verwertungsgesellschaft Wort wahrgenommen. Druck: Memminger MedienCentrum Druckerei und Verlags-AG Printed in Germany. INHALT / CONTENTS / TABLE DES MATIÈRES Jérémie Chameroy · Pierre-Marie Guihard Les usages monétaires de l’argent du IVe au VIe siècle dans l’Occident romain : une autre Antiquité ? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . VII Filippo Carlà-Uhink Three Metals, but no Trimetallism. The Status of Silver Coinage in Late Antiquity and its Designations . . . 1 Gilles Bransbourg L’étalon-or et la place de la monnaie d’argent durant l’Empire tardif . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Pierre-Marie Guihard L’argent monnayé dans les provinces nord-occidentales au IVe siècle. Circulation et usage . . . . . . . . . . . 51 Jean-Patrick Duchemin Usage des monnaies d’argent en contextes funéraires en Gaule du Nord (IVe-VIe siècles) : entre évolution de l’économie et choix culturels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89 David Wigg-Wolf Constantine III and the Rhine Frontier – New Numismatic Evidence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 Jean-Marc Doyen Le monnayage d’argent de Majorien en Gaule (457-461) : typologie et aspects quantitatifs . . . . . . . . . 117 Richard Abdy The Phenomenon of Coin Clipping in Sub-Roman Britain . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135 Simon Esmonde Cleary Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland from the 4th to the 6th Century . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151 Holger Komnick Zu völkerwanderungszeitlichen Silbermünzimitationen und barbarisierten Denaren im Gebiet der Provinzen Belgica I, Germania I und II sowie aus dem östlich angrenzenden Raum . . . . . 177 Fran Stroobants The Finds of 5th-Century Silver Coins in the West. Reflections on a New Corpus of the Belgian Finds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191 Jérémie Chameroy Les numéraires d’argent des Ve-VIe siècles découverts en Gaule : nouvelles considérations sur les ateliers et les pouvoirs émetteurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 209 III Guillaume Blanchet ∙ Guillaume Sarah ∙ Jérémie Chameroy La composition chimique des monnaies d’argent des Ve-VIe siècles. L’exemple de découvertes de Normandie et de la vallée du Rhin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231 Michele Asolati Tra Ostrogoti e Longobardi: la monetazione argentea dei Gepidi . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249 Cécile Morrisson Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271 Autorinnen und Autoren / authors / auteurs . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 275 IV SIMON ESMONDE CLEARY FORMS AND FUNCTIONS OF SILVER IN BRITAIN AND IRELAND FROM THE 4TH TO THE 6TH CENTURY The use of silver 1 in the British and Irish Isles in this period is one, which both diverges significantly from practice on the Continent and exhibits marked regional and chronological variations. Through the period under consideration here the use of silver in Britain and Ireland had developed its own trajectories and in some regions (though not all) it had become more important than gold. In brief, the supply of silver coin to the Roman diocese ceased at the start of the 5th century, succeeded by an exceptional horizon of deposition of hoards of coin and / or silver plate and other objects in the first half of the 5th century. Similar material, though in the form of Hacksilber, was deposited outside the Roman territories in Scotland and Ireland. After the cessation of Roman coin supply, silver coin was not struck again in England until the late-7th century with very few silver coins imported from the Continent in the later 5th and 6th centuries. In general, silver was little used in England at this period. In contrast, silver was much used for prestige jewellery in Scotland from the later 5th through the 6th century and later. This brief résumé therefore demonstrates distinctively insular characteristics and traditions that differ from those more usual when looking at silver on the other side of the Channel and of the North Sea. This is not to say that the phenomenon should be treated in a solely insular manner; comparisons and contrasts with the traditions that are visible both in the regions of the former Roman Empire and in Scandinavia give a wider context for the British and Irish Isles, though for reasons of space these can only be alluded to here rather than considered in depth. In this paper, the main evidence will be laid out in the first four sections before they are analysed and discussed in more detail in the discussion section. SILVER AT THE END OF THE ROMAN PERIOD IN BRITAIN Since the Claudian invasion of 43 AD Britain had been integrated into the coin supply mechanisms of the Roman Empire 2. In addition, precious metals, gold and silver, had been available in the form of jewellery or plate 3. This held good through the 4th century, but from the opening years of the 5th century the situation changed markedly. On the one hand, the imperial supply of coin to the diocese effectively ceased in the first decade of the 5th century. On the other hand, the opening decades of that century saw a major peak in the deposition of silver either as plate or as coin. In addition, silver coin was increasingly subjected to the phenomenon of clipping, in order to maintain a pool of silver. So just as the supply of silver to Britain in the form of coin dwindled to nothing, there is evidence that silver as a metal continued to be valued and curated in use before in certain regions it was deposited in the ground. Recent work and publication on the silver coinage has refined our understanding of the chronology of the end of official coin-supply and of the geographical incidence of the deposition of this coinage. This has been based on the study of hoards of silver, consisting either only of coins or else those associated with plate and other material, and increasingly the patterns revealed by casual finds reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) 4. It is now clear that the latest issues of silver coins to be supplied to Britain were those of Arcadius and Honorius and the usurper Constantine III (406-411) proclaimed in Britain 5. The last major Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 151 episode of supply was of siliquae (see the paper by F. Carlà-Uhink in this volume for this term) struck for the brother emperors at Milan between 397 and 402. These are common in all the major British silver hoards of the period, notably the 15,234 silver coins from the Hoxne (Suffolk / UK) treasure 6. Thereafter, the supply of silver coin to Britain became much more restricted. In part this can be attributed to the downturn in production at the mint of Milan from 402, so Britain was sharing in the relative penury of later silver coinage of the House of Theodosius over most of the western empire. This shortage was only very marginally alleviated by the issues struck for Constantine III in 407-408 with the reverse legend VICTORIA AVGGGG (thus including Arcadius, ob. 408). Only two examples of Constantine III’s later (408-411) VICTORIA AVGGG issue have to date been found in Britain, one in the much later Patching hoard (see below) 7. This pattern for the silver accords with those for gold and bronze 8. For gold, the issues from the Italian mints between c. 402 and c. 408 were supplied to Britain in quantity and there are also rare issues of Constantine III of 407-408. The issues succeeding these were not supplied to Britain. For bronze, relatively little entered Britain after the cessation of striking of the major VICTORIA AVGGG issue in 395. Some of the Rome SALVS REIPVBLICAE issue up to 402 was supplied to Britain; later issues up to 411 are present only in tiny numbers, with only five post-411 coins known from the island. The Roman state supplied coin to Britain in decreasing quantities from the later 4th century and what little supply there was had effectively ceased by 411. The geographical distribution of these latest silver coin hoards (and coins hoarded with plate etc.) is far from uniform across the Roman areas of the island of Britain. Their distribution is largely confined to the southeastern half of the island in an area stretching from Yorkshire and County Durham south and west to the Bristol Channel, with a concentration in East Anglia and another in the South-West south of the Thames and east of the Bristol Channel. This retraction of silver coin into the South and East of Britain was part of a longer-term trend through the second half of the 4th century 9. It is, moreover, visible not just in the distribution of hoards but also of single finds of silver coins reported to the PAS, which evince exactly the same geographical pattern 10. The reasons for this are as yet poorly understood, but would seem to suggest a growing disregard by the Roman state for the North and West of the diocese in preference for the South and East, where Theodosian issues remained widespread 11. Whilst the date of minting and the incidence of deposition can be established with some accuracy, the date / s of deposition of the silver coin hoards remain / s far more problematic. It is clear that there was a major horizon of the deposition of silver coin and plate that included the large-scale 395-402 Milan silver issues, giving an initial terminus post quem. However, the relative rarity of the post-402 silver issues in Britain means that they tend to be found only in the largest hoards, such as Hoxne 12. Therefore, the coins in the generality of hoards closing with the 395-402 issues could have remained in circulation for some time after 402 before being thesaurised and deposited without having acquired any post-402 issues. This is supported by the evidence of clipping, a practice which involved the removal of thin slivers of metal from the edges of the coins, at first with relatively little metal being removed, but it seems that coins might be clipped repeatedly leading to some coins being heavily clipped leaving only the imperial bust on the obverse undamaged 13. The phenomenon is discussed in more detail elsewhere in this volume by Richard Abdy, who suggests that the stimulus for this practice becoming widespread was Constantine III’s need to find silver for his accession donative in 406, though there may have been some episodes of clipping before that. It is important to note that this is essentially a British practice; clipped silver coins found on the Continent are rare and can often be associated with troop movements under Constantine III, for instance in the Pyrenees (see R. Abdy in this volume). A proportion of the silver thus recovered (though far from all) was the raw material for copies of the late silver coinage. Both the clipping and the copies suggest that the silver coinage continued to circulate and remain in demand some way into the first half of the 5th century, for use either as coinage or as a source of silver, or a wealth store, or a mixture of these 14. When the majority of these coin 152 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland and coin / plate hoards were deposited cannot at present be pinned down accurately, but the fact that the few silver coins of the mid and later 5th century known from Britain do not figure in the major hoards of this type, even amongst the large coin component of Hoxne, probably suggests that this hoarding horizon was complete before the middle of the 5th century. In addition to coin hoards, Britain contains more hoards of silver plate probably deposited at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries than the rest of the Roman empire put together 15. The term »plate« strictly refers to items for the service of food or drink; but has a more general use to denominate hoards which either contain no coin or where the coin is associated with other silverware. In order to establish what classes of silver object are comprised in these hoards and the other materials, above all gold, with which they may be combined some well-known hoards will be considered. The classic plate hoard from Britain, and the most famous, is that from Mildenhall (Suffolk / UK) discovered in 1942 16, comprising 13 pieces of silverware associated with the formal presentation of food, along with a bowl for washing, five ladles / deep-bowled spoons and eight other spoons, some inscribed. In its composition it clearly sits alongside hoards from elsewhere in the empire, particularly that from Kaiseraugst (Ct. Argovie / CH) and the »Seuso« treasure, both of which comprise vessels for the service of food and / or drink. It is possible that the hoard from Corbridge (Northumberland / UK) discovered in the 18th century and of which only the celebrated, rectangular lanx survives may have been of the same type. There is also the decorated, apparently Christian, rectangular lanx from Risley Park (Derbyshire / UK), in pieces when found 17. A somewhat different grouping of materials is exhibited by the Hoxne hoard discovered in 1992 18, consisting of twelve silver vessels (or parts thereof) relating to the service of food, principally five plain vessels and four silver-gilt piperatoria, 20 ladles / deepbowled spoons, four strainer-spoons, four strainers and one strainer-funnel. As well as these there were 98 silver spoons, some partially gilded. These were in addition to the 569 gold coins and the 15,234 silver coins mentioned above, along with 29 items of gold jewellery. Another well-known late Roman hoard from East Anglia, that from Thetford (Norfolk / UK) discovered in 1979 19, comprised 38 items of gold jewellery (some extremely similar to that from Hoxne) along with 33 silver spoons and three silver strainers. So even the three major, well-known hoards from East Anglia exhibit considerable divergence in their composition. Another object-type that was a frequent component of late silver hoards from Britain and Ireland was the ingot, as for instance in the small hoard of coins, spoons, ingots with some other objects from Canterbury (Kent / UK) discovered in 1962 20. Three ingots from the Canterbury hoard were of the »oxhide« or »double axe« form, weighed one Roman pound and bore stamps. The shape and the practice of stamping relate them to comparable ingots on the Continent, though the instances from Britain along with Ireland are far more numerous than on the Continent 21. One ingot was a simple »bar« ingot without stamps. These instances show that it is impossible to draw any hard-and-fast line between coin and plate hoards, since coins were a frequent feature of plate hoards. Nevertheless, silver plate and jewellery along with ingots add a range of object types to these deposits. The distribution of these hoards is, as noted, restricted within Roman Britain; it is also exceptional within the Roman Empire as a whole at this period (see below). ROMAN SILVER AT THE END OF THE ROMAN PERIOD AND AFTER OUTSIDE THE ROMAN DIOCESE The plate hoards discussed above in fact formed part of a wider phenomenon in Britain and Ireland, one which has conventionally been divided by whether the hoard was deposited within or outside the assumed boundaries of the Roman Diocese of the Britains; hoards from Scotland or Ireland were different because Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 153 Fig. 1 The Traprain Treasure. – (© National Museums of Scotland). they were deposited in barbarico. Moreover, these hoards differed from the great majority of silver deposited within late Roman Britain because they consisted not of entire objects but instead the silver plate, jewellery and ingots had been cut into pieces and often folded or crushed: the so-called Hacksilber hoards (to use the German term). The largest and best-studied hoard of this type is that from Traprain Law (East Lothian / UK), discovered in 1919, published soon after and currently the focus of a project of re-study and re-analysis (fig. 1) 22. Traprain Law is a large isolated hill east of modern Edinburgh, fortified in the late Bronze Age and the pre-Roman Iron Age. In the late Roman period, the fortifications were renewed and the hoard was discovered during excavations in the western part of the plateau 23. Weighing some 22 kg the hoard comprised 145 silver objects, of which 93 were parts of dishes, jugs and other tableware, along with nine spoons 24. Amongst the other objects were four silver coins, all clipped, suggesting a date for assemblage (and probably deposition) of the hoard in the first half of the 5th century 25. When A. O. Curle excavated the Traprain Law hoard he did have a comparable find with which to compare it, the Coleraine (or Ballinrees) (Co. Londonderry / UK) hoard from the north coast of Ireland (fig. 2) 26. Discovered in 1854 it was recovered and reported piecemeal. The British Museum now holds 15 pieces of Hacksilber, three silver belt-fittings, two spoons, nine ingots (parts of three »double-axe« ingots; two large, flat ingots; three bar ingots) with 89 coins along with the silver bowl which presumably contained them all. The Ulster Museum holds 30 coins and part of an ingot. The original total of coins was reportedly 1701, of which the great majority have not survived. The surviving coins close with 407-408 issues of Constantine III and the majority have been clipped, so the minting date again affords only a terminus post quem with the 154 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland Fig. 2 The Coleraine Treasure. – (© Trustees of the British Museum). date of burial probably somewhat later. Scientific analysis of a range of the objects by X-ray fluorescence (XRF) 27 showed that the tableware fragments had silver contents between 93.8 and 97.5 % whereas the belt-fittings had a lower silver content of c. 90 %. The »double-axe« ingots and the two large, flat ingots had silver contents ranging from 91.4 to 94.7 %, so the presumed »official« stamped »double-axe« ingots were not noticeably finer than the flat ingots. These five were, though, finer than the bar ingots which ranged from 88.7 to 91.6 % silver. There is one other Hacksilber hoard from Ireland, the Balline (Co. Limerick / IRL) hoard found in 1940 28, consisting of two stamped »double-axe« ingots, parts of two others and three pieces of cut-up silver plate. The presence of silver in these Irish hoards is of interest since silver was not a metal used for prestige metalwork in late prehistoric Ireland 29, so their presence is a testimony to Ireland’s involvement with the Roman world and perhaps because of this a change in perception of the metal by the Irish peoples, to which we shall return below. There has long been an implicit distinction between hoards of complete objects within the boundaries of the Diocese of the Britains as opposed to the Hacksilber that characterises finds from outside the diocese: whether silver was being deposited in imperio or in barbarico determined the nature of that silver and its political and social contexts. More recently, it has become clear that this is an over-simplification, that there are objects that can be classified as Hacksilber from within the territory of late Roman Britain 30. The great majority of these are relatively small objects such as parts of spoons of brooches, drop-handles and decorative escutcheons, some of the finds associated with silver coins. Many of the objects were found singly and reported to the PAS; groups of objects that might be characterised as a »hoard« are rare. These finds therefore stand in contrast to hoards such as Traprain Law and Coleraine for their lack of relatively large pieces of silverware, ingots or packets of silver. It could be argued that these are items that have been cut up for use either as small pieces of silver bullion or for melting down and recasting either into coin or into other objects. This argument gains some credence from the study of the West Bagborough (Somerset / UK) hoard, consisting of 681 silver coins, closing with 364-367 issues of Valentinian I and Valens and including both regular issues and imitations. As well as the coins there were also (possibly packaged separately) 73 items Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 155 of what is termed here Hacksilber 31. The latter consists of silver that had been melted, poured onto a flat surface and subsequently cut up into 64 surviving pieces (none of the pieces joined). The other nine pieces of silver were cut from larger objects. Analysis of 20 imitation coins and ten pieces of Hacksilber by XRF (surfaces only) showed that the melted and cut-up pieces were of a higher fineness that those derived from the larger objects. They were also finer than the figures obtained elsewhere by analyses of regular silver coins. Further analysis by inductively coupled plasma atomic emission spectrometry (ICP-AES) from five imitation and five regular coins confirmed that the former had a higher fineness (95.7 % as opposed to 94.2 %). These counterfeit pieces were, on the other hand, some 0.5 g lighter than their official prototypes, which is presumably where the counterfeiters gained their profit. The fineness of the imitation coins and the Hacksilber accorded closely. It could therefore be argued that the hoard was related to the production of imitation silver coins and that the use of the term Hacksilber, for all that the poured silver had been »hacked«, is somewhat misleading in the context of the more generally accepted significance of the term. The hoard from Blunsdon Ridge (Wiltshire / UK) though consisting largely of drop handles also contained a fluted bowl that had been folded and crushed 32. A hoard which more closely corresponded to the generally-accepted meaning of Hacksilber is that from Whorlton (North Yorkshire / UK) discovered in 1810 and now almost entirely lost. Out of some 7000 coins 38 survive (most of them clipped), along with some fragmentary silver objects and part of an ingot 33. This range of objects corresponds more closely to Hacksilber hoards of the Traprain Law and Coleraine type, so if it were such a hoard then the impression that such hoards occur only outside the Roman diocese breaks down. There is also the Risley Park lanx mentioned above, apparently in prices when found, so possibly an instance of Hacksilber. Another way in which the formal boundaries of the diocese seem not to have constrained the use of silver is object-types that occur in Britain, Ireland and Scotland. The influence of silver from Roman Britain on peoples in Scotland and Ireland can increasingly clearly be seen in the presence in all three areas of silver dressornaments enhanced with red enamel, principally pins, of later-4th and 5th-century date that may well have had their origins within Roman Britain. The objects in question are pins of the type called hand-pins (because of their supposed resemblance to the palm of a hand topped with down-curved fingers) and related Irish material of the »Insular Military« style. The hand-pin tradition seems to have originated in 4th-century Britain with the silver pins from Oldcroft (Gloucestershire / UK) 34 and Welton-le-Wold (Lincolnshire / UK) 35 with decorated and enamelled heads of the type ancestral to the hand-pin and consequently known as the proto-hand-pin. The Oldcroft example was found with a hoard of bronze nummi closing with issues of 354-359 36. Three silver proto-hand-pins are known from Ireland and one hand-pin proper 37. A type that is related to the hand-pins by being of silver with red enamel decoration is the disc-headed pin, long silver pins with a disc terminal set at right-angles to the pin, a type which seems to be exclusive to Ireland. The best-known of these pins, the so-called Londesborough pin in the British Museum is 32.8 cm long. None of the pins was recovered under archaeological conditions, but the proto-hand-pin and the hand-pin from Castletown Kilpatrick (Co. Meath / IRL) formed part of a hoard. Hand-pins are also known from Scotland, such as the example from the hoard from Norrie’s Law (Fife / UK). Because of the lack of good context for most of these objects dating is difficult and imprecise; the example from Norrie’s Law may have been deposited around the turn of the 5th and 6th centuries (see below) and the relative chronology of the typological development of the pins would suggest a 5th-century date for the disc-headed pins and the hand-pins also. This tradition of silver dress-ornament clearly unites Britain, Ireland and Scotland, and it should be noted that there are other object-types of this late to post-Roman date, which exhibit a similar pan-insular distribution 38. This section has taken us far from where it started with the great hoard of late Roman plate and other material from Traprain Law. Nevertheless, what it has shown is that the abundant use of silver in the late Roman 156 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland world, perhaps especially in late Roman Britain, impacted upon the neighbouring peoples north of Hadrian’s Wall and west of the Irish Sea. It makes it clear that they were drawn into the orbit of the late Roman Empire and that their value systems were affected by imperial tastes and values. They had developed a liking for silver and procured it from the empire. In this they can be compared with peoples in northern Europe who also made use of and deposited Hacksilber derived from Roman sources 39. SILVER IN SOUTHERN BRITAIN IN THE 5TH AND 6TH CENTURIES The discussion of the insular episodes of the use of silver has, so far as the phenomena can be dated, led us into the mid to later 5th century. It is now time to return to the area of what had been the Diocese of the Britains to pursue the thread of silver use from about the middle of the 5th century down through the 6th century. The first thing to be said is that there is no evidence for the minting of silver coins in Britain by the Anglo-Saxons in the 5th and 6th centuries. Gold was struck from the mid-6th century but by the 670s had been so adulterated with silver as to become effectively a silver coin. The first silver denomination, now often referred to as the sceat, was struck from about 680. Therefore, silver coins did not form part of a monetised economy in Britain from the mid-5th to the later 7th century and any silver coins struck between those dates found in Britain must by definition be imports from the Continent within the context of a nonmonetised economy. It was argued above that though the phenomenon of clipping argues for continued circulation of Roman silver coins, at least as units of precious metal, in the first half of the 5th century and thus that the coin and plate hoards of which they form all or part were not buried until some time after 400. But the absence, even in major hoards such as Hoxne, of the coins of the mid to later 5th century that do get into Britain may suggest that these hoards had been deposited before such coins became available. But the extreme scarcity of these later coins means that this is by no means a conclusive argument. The discovery in 1997 of the hoard from Patching (West Sussex / UK) in the extreme south of Britain allows further consideration of the use of silver and coins in the second half of the 5th century 40. The hoard (considered also in the paper by R. Abdy in this volume) consisted of 23 imperial or pseudo-imperial solidi, 27 silver coins, two gold rings and fragments of silver. The gold coins range back to Gratian, but exceptionally for Britain contain issues from Theodosius II onwards, with the latest coin in the hoard being a solidus of Libius Severus (461465), a type remaining in production to the early 470s, and probably struck by the Visigoths. As none of the issues of the 470s are present in the hoard, it was therefore probably deposited around 470 or a little later 41. Other later-5th-century gold coins are known from Britain, usually converted into jewellery 42, so in this respect Patching has comparanda. More unusual is the presence and nature of the 19 silver coins. A Republican denarius found along with the hoard could be part of the collection. Two coins of Constantius II and Constans minted at Siscia are respectively rare and a new type. A coin of Constantine III is one of only two of the post-408 VICTORIA AVGGG issues recorded from Britain. The issue of Theodosius II struck at Trier in 425 is unique in Britain. Of the remaining silver coins four had been clipped but the others had not. Again, mid- to late-5th-century silver coins from Britain are extremely scarce. That silver coins of types struck at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries and frequently found in the major 5th-century hoard horizon in Britain were still available into the 460s or 470s is highly significant. Alongside the coins were the two simple gold rings and a quantity of scrap silver 43. Some of this was cut from objects such as plate or spoons, including a scabbard-chape of probable late-5th-century date; some was pieces of thick sheets or bars cut off by chisel. Overall, the hoard with its mixture of precious metals and of coins and fragments of silver can be classed as a bullion hoard, the coins being present for their precious-metal content rather than their monetary value. Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 157 The combination of imported gold coins of the 5th century with »fossilised« silver coins of types imported to Britain in the first part of the 5th century raises questions about what types of coins were (still) available in later-5th-century Britain. The Patching coins and scrap silver show that silver was still wanted in southern Britain in the later 5th century. It should be remembered that as yet we do not know the destination of the silver clipped from the coinage from the late-4th century into the early-5th century, in aggregate probably a significant quantity (for Hoxne it was estimated the clipping would have yielded 7 kg of silver, only a fraction of which was accounted for by the imitation coins in the hoard 44). But overall, silver objects of insular manufacture and datable to the 5th century remain very rare. One group that may be of relevance here is the handful of silver objects in the so-called Quoit brooch style 45, the most famous of these being the elaborate annular brooch from Sarre (Kent / UK). The distinguishing feature of this metalwork is that the animal and other ornamentation was clearly derived from prototypes in late Roman metalwork. This sets it apart from objects in »Anglo-Saxon« decorative idioms such as Salin’s Styles 1 and 2. It has therefore been argued that though »Quoit brooch« objects, which largely come from burials, may sometimes have been associated with »Anglo-Saxon« objects they in fact represent a different metalwork tradition. In Britain, objects of this type are concentrated in the South-East, south of the Thames, and it also occurs in northern Gaul from Picardy to Brittany. It could be proposed that the source of the silver for the few precious-metal objects could have been late Roman silver (objects, coins, clippings); a project on »Quoit brooch« material, including metallurgical analyses, currently being conducted by Dr. Ellen Swift (University of Kent) may help resolve this question. Silver objects are not commonly found on sites, above all burials and cemeteries, of types ascribed to the incoming Anglo-Saxons of the 5th and 6th centuries. A recent comprehensive review of the evidence from the south-east of Britain in the context of the wider North Sea world has shown that the use of silver in this area in the 5th and 6th centuries was very limited, geographically and chronologically 46. Geographically, the deposition of silver in graves was overwhelmingly concentrated in eastern Kent, east of the river Medway, with a few outliers in Hampshire and elsewhere. Chronologically, though deposition started in the late5th century the main concentration lay in the 6th century. The objects concerned were mainly associated with high-status female burials and include brooches (square-headed and disc brooches), skimmers / strainers, the mounts for rock-crystal spheres. In the case of the disc brooches, a distinctively Kentish development, the silver was often gilt and decorated with garnets and other settings. The silver skimmers / strainers are of interest since they were originally an import from Francia but subsequently were cast locally from melted-down silver. The source of the silver for these objects is presumed to be Francia, though this awaits confirmation by metallurgical analysis. The Kent objects are overwhelmingly from female graves, nevertheless, there are a few ornaments in the metal from male graves, particularly silver rings on sword-pommels. So rather than reflecting a gendered use of the metal this more probably reflects the differences in the equipment buried with the two sexes. Outside Kent, silver is rarely found from Anglo-Saxon burials or settlements. A number of silver »wrist-clasps« (dress fittings) are known from eastern England, but this would have consumed little raw material. This may indicate that none of the hoards of late Roman silver from East Anglia was rediscovered and recycled at this period. Of course, the most famous funerary deposit of silver in an Anglo-Saxon burial comes from East Anglia, the late Roman / Byzantine silver vessels from the Sutton Hoo Mound 1 ship-burial (Suffolk / UK) 47. The 16 pieces consisted of a set of ten shallow bowls, a large dish with incised decoration and control-stamps of Anastasius (491-518), a fluted bowl with a female head in the base, a small bowl, a ladle and two spoons. Clearly, the pieces were deposited as part of the range of rich and exotic items that announced the high importance of the person being buried. But one might also wonder whether the fact that they were buried intact testifies to the lack of any local tradition of prestige silver items into which they could have been recycled. 158 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland Overall, therefore, silver was little used in what is now England during the 5th and 6th centuries, except in east Kent in the later 5th and 6th centuries. Why this was is now difficult to determine. Part of the reason may have been a shortage of available silver, but the same could be said of gold, yet this was used extensively so if a material was sought after it could be obtained. This would in turn suggest that silver had no particularly important place in the repertoire of prestige materials since no great effort was made to obtain it. Gold was the preferred material for the Anglo-Saxons, or failing that copper-alloy gilded. SILVER IN SCOTLAND IN THE 5TH AND 6TH CENTURIES If the 5th and 6th centuries saw little interest in silver in what is now England, absolutely the converse was true for what is now Scotland. The early mediaeval period in Scotland has since the 19th century been renowned for a number of massive silver chains, the so-called Pictish neck chains. Recent and current research projects have been re-evaluating the chains and their wider context, so it is now possible to locate this remarkable group of objects within the framework of the use of silver in Britain through this period. It is perhaps easiest to start with the chains and with the traditional interpretation of them, then see how the more recent work is fundamentally modifying our appreciation of them, their context and the sources and uses of silver in 5th- and 6th-century Scotland 48. The »Pictish neck chains«, or as it is suggested they now be called »massive silver chains« (fig. 3), were discovered from the 18th through to the 20th centuries, all of them by chance so nothing is known of their context of deposition. Nine now survive (none totally intact) and two more have been lost since discovery. They consist of a chain of pairs of links, with larger links at each end, double at one end, single at the other. A penannular clasp held the three terminal rings to fasten the chain. Though all the surviving examples display overall similarity in material and form, there are differences such as the size and thus the number of the links, which varies considerably. The weights and lengths of the chains also varies, affected of course by the degree of survival. The heaviest, that from Whitecleugh (Lanarkshire / UK), weighs in its surviving state 2.88 kg. The diameters of the most complete chains when fastened would seem to fit round the neck of a child, adolescent or female more easily than that of an adult male. The appellation »Pictish« comes from the decoration incised on three of the penannular clasps that on the Whitecleugh example filled with red enamel. The decoration on this particular example recalls some of the symbols on »Pictish« symbol-stones, such as the »Z-rod«. The Picts were one of the longest-lasting of the peoples of ancient and early mediaeval Scotland, first mentioned by Roman authors in the late-3rd century and persisting until the disappearance of the kingdom in the 10th century, with the floruit of the kingdom situated in the 7th and 8th centuries 49. The most famous physical remains of the kingdom are the symbolstones, distributed across much of eastern Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, bearing a variety of human and animal carvings and a range of symbols whose meanings remain undecipherable 50. On the basis of similarities to motifs in Christian manuscripts and because some of the stones bear Christian symbols, the more elaborate monuments are generally dated to the 8th and 9th centuries. Simpler stones with only symbols and no Christian content are dated to the 7th and 8th centuries. The geographical incidence of the symbol-stones and the dating fit well with the floruit of the Pictish kingdom, hence the attribution of the stones to the Picts. Thus for essentially art-historical reasons chains have been ascribed to a Pictish milieu, with the consequent implications for their dating. There are increasing problems with the association of the massive silver chains with the Picts and thus with the conventional dating. One problem is the distribution of the chains 51. The Pictish kingdom’s heartlands lay in eastern Scotland north of the Firth of Forth, with a northern area of the kingdom along the coast Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 159 Fig. 3 Scottish »massive silver chains«. – (© National Museums of Scotland). north of the Highlands. Four of the chains come from the latter area but none at all from the heartlands region. The other seven chains all come from south of the Forth in the eastern and central parts of the Lowlands north of Hadrian’s Wall (including one from the eastern part of the Traprain Law hillfort), areas thought never to have been under Pictish suzerainty. It has also been noted that the symbols on the clasps, on which the art-historical dating of the chains depends, do not match particularly well with those from the symbol-stones. Recent, preliminary metallurgical analysis of the Hoardweel (Berwickshire / UK) chain has shown it to be of a silver alloy very similar to Roman Hacksilber 52, a fineness similar also to that yielded by XRF analysis of the partial chain from Nigg Bay (Aberdeenshire / UK) 53. Whilst corresponding closely to late Roman / Byzantine levels of fineness it diverges sharply from that of the 8th-century »Pictish« treasure of St Ninian’s Isle which was closer to 50 % 54. The situation is currently being revolutionised by a project (sponsored by Glenmorangie, the whisky distillers) re-examining the »Pictish« silver hoards from Norrie’s Law (Fife / UK) and Gaulcross (Aberdeenshire / UK). The Norrie’s Law hoard (fig. 4) was discovered in 1819 but the find did not come to public attention for another 20 years and today only 170 fragments survive, weighing some 750 g of an estimated original 12.5 kg 55. It is essentially a hoard of Hacksilber, though there is a small number of complete objects including a handpin and a tear-shaped plaque with Z-rod »Pictish« decoration, which latter led to the hoard being seen as »Pictish«, and thus dated to the 7th century. Two other objects with »Pictish« decoration have recently been shown to be modern copies 56. The majority of the silver objects and fragmentary pieces are of early mediaeval types, including penannular brooches and other prestige items, but there is part of a Roman spoon and Roman coins were reported to have formed part of the hoard, though these have not survived. Research on the hoard is continuing, but the presence of late Roman material has led to the suggestion that the hoard dates closer to 500 than to 600. The Gaulcross hoard (fig. 5) was also a 19th-century find, made in 1838 following the dynamiting of some prehistoric standing stones. Until recently, all that had come down to us was three silver objects, a spiral finger-ring, a piece of intricate chain and a hand-pin 57. In 2013 survey and excavation at the site of the discovery located a further 90 pieces of the hoard 58. These show that the hoard was also one of Hacksilber with only a few complete objects. Some of the objects were of late Roman provenance, including military accoutrements along with hacked tableware, both before known only 160 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland Fig. 4 The Norrie’s Law hoard. – (© National Museums of Scotland). in Scotland from Traprain Law. In addition, there were folded parcels of silver, some of them clasping late Roman silver coins (some of which had been clipped). Other objects were of early mediaeval types, particularly fragments of brooches. There were also bar ingots. The hoard with its mixture of late Roman and early mediaeval objects has been dubbed a »missing link« 59, in that it links through from the world of the purely Roman contents of the Traprain hoard to the early mediaeval world. Currently the suggested dating for the hoard is the 5th century, probably the latter part of the century. There are features in common between the Gaulcross and Norrie’s Law hoards, such as the presence of late Roman objects and (probably) late Roman coins, the hand-pins and other early mediaeval objects and bangles. There are also differences, with some object-types only found in one or other of the hoards. Nevertheless, there are no other hoards from Scotland, which compare in composition or date with these two. The presence of late Roman material, which though hacked up had not been melted down suggests that the hoards belong to the immediately post-Roman period, the 5th or earlier 6th centuries. Given that the preliminary analyses of the silver from the massive silver chains show them also to be of a high degree of fineness then there is an argument that they too need to be uncoupled from their 7th- or 8th-century »Pictish« dating and moved back to the later 5th or earlier 6th century. This would also have the result of distancing them from the more heavily alloyed silver shown for the later date bracket. As yet this is a question of possibilities or probabilities, but if confirmed then it would show that eastern Scotland had a very particular phase when silver was of huge importance in social display fuelled by the use of recycled late Roman silver and its transformation into items of prestige metalwork or its immobilisation through hoarding. The questions of the antecedents, comparanda and purpose / s of the massive silver chains remain debatable. There are chains of copper-alloy with the same double-ring construction but of much lesser diameter from Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 161 Fig. 5 The Gaulcross hoard. – (© National Museums of Scotland). Scottish Iron Age contexts, as well as one from within Roman Britain at Caerleon (Newport / UK); moreover, the double-link construction was used in a silver necklace from the Hadrian’s Wall fort of Great Chesters (Northumberland / UK), but again much smaller in diameter than the later massive chains 60. So there are antecedents in terms of the double-link construction, but the precise form and especially the huge expansion in size of the links of the massive silver chains set the latter apart. There are truly missing links in this story. Though there are no parallels from the British Isles or from western Europe for the massive silver chains, it has been pointed out that the tradition of neck-rings or torcs as symbols of prestige, often in precious metals, was one of long standing, from the later Bronze Age through the Iron Age and Roman periods on down into post-Roman Europe 61. It would seem on present evidence that the massive silver chains of early mediaeval eastern Scotland were a regional version of this tradition, albeit of a very particular form. The preference for silver in post-Roman or early mediaeval Scotland is thus very clear. Though discussion here has been limited to the material dating to the period considered in this volume, the preference had been established earlier than this and date continued long after (see below). From the end of the 6th century the preferred item for display became the penannular brooch, culminating at the end of the 7th century in the large and elaborate Hunterston brooch, richly ornamented in gold and precious stones on its face, but all this overlaid onto a silver frame 62. Thereafter, silver remained much in use, for instance as mentioned earlier for the 8th-century St Ninian’s Isle hoard. 162 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland DISCUSSION: BRITAIN AND IRELAND AND THE INSULAR TRADITIONS OF THE USE OF SILVER FROM THE 4TH TO THE 6TH CENTURIES The preceding sections have made clear that in the island of Britain, and to a lesser extent Ireland, silver held a privileged place as a prestige metal at certain times and in certain regions from the later Roman period through into the early mediaeval period. In this respect, the islands differed markedly from the other areas that had formed the western parts of the Roman empire where gold was always dominant and with relatively little use of silver after the beginning of the 5th century. Moreover, for much of this period in Britain and Ireland silver was used not in the form of coin, as so often on the Continent, but in other forms such as plate and jewellery. The reasons for the various episodes of silver use now need to be analysed in more detail. Silver at the end of the Roman period in Britain The close of the 4th and the opening decades of the 5th century saw the deposition into hoards of large numbers of silver coins in Britain, in a manner exceptional in the Roman empire at the time. This raises the question of whether these coins still functioned as a circulating currency available for use for fiscal and / or economic purposes, as through the 4th century, or whether the changing circumstances of these decades and the end of Roman military and political control of the diocese led to a change in the function / s of the coin? The fact that the gold and the copper-alloy coinages ceased to be supplied at much the same time as the silver suggests that the end of the supply of silver coin was part of a wider phenomenon and that the Roman state was no longer concerned to supply coin. In this case, the fiscal cycle had probably broken down, removing one of the important uses of coin within the late Roman monetary system. Whether coins continued to circulate as a means of commercial exchange is harder to discern. One clue may be that through much of the 4th century when there was a shortage of state supply of copper-alloy coinage, there had been major episodes of counterfeiting (e. g. Gloria Exercitus, Fel Temp Reparatio falling horseman), suggesting that low-value bronze was desired as a medium of exchange. But the period of low supply of copper-alloy coins from 378-388 and the cessation of supply at the start of the 5th century did not apparently provoke such an outbreak of counterfeiting. This would suggest that the copper-alloy coinage was no longer as much used for exchange and was passing out of use from the later 4th century. Silver, as we have seen, was the subject of counterfeiting in the earlier 5th century, probably using the clippings from official issues. This suggests that silver coins had continuing use / s as coin. Bolstering the evidence for the continuing demand for and use of silver was of course the practice of clipping itself, essentially relating only to the silver coinage: gold coin was subject to hardly any clipping and was not counterfeited. Clearly, on the one hand silver was desired as a metal, and on the other hand the curation of the busts on the obverse of clipped coins suggests that the imperial image remained potent. Given that the phenomenon of clipping seems to have lasted for a matter of decades it may be wise not to seek for a single explanation of what a coin signified through this period nor for a single explanation for clipping. It is a widespread view that as time (and clipping) went on these small silver discs with the emperor’s bust became instead pieces of silver bullion, with the bust acting as a guarantee of origin and purity alongside any remaining reverence for the imperial image. This would accord with the presence in some hoards of ingots, »double-axe« or simple bars, and of the presence of Hacksilber in some hoards from within the diocese. If this is correct, then the silver coinage ceased at some time in Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 163 the early-5th century to have fiscal or monetary purposes and became instead a medium for the storage, display and transfer of wealth. In this perspective, the Patching hoard could be seen as a continuation, perhaps the tail end, of this practice. The reasons for the deposition of the silver hoards dating to the end of the 4th or the early part of the 5th centuries, be they of coin or plate, have been discussed on several occasions 63. Overall, the distribution has been observed to be overwhelmingly in the south and east of the island, with East Anglia especially favoured for the deposition of plate and jewellery. Moreover, the dating evidence suggested that the majority of these hoards were deposited at the end of the 4th or the beginning of the 5th century, based on the coin dating discussed above. There was therefore an assumption that this hoarding »horizon« represented a single phenomenon unified in time and space. Discussion of the plate hoards in particular focused on their location in East Anglia, stated to be the region of Britain most at risk from Anglo-Saxon raiding from across the North Sea. This group of hoards was therefore seen as a classic instance of »emergency« or »threat« hoards, buried in the face of external menace but never recovered. The »emergency« hoard has fallen out of fashion as an explanatory mechanism for the deposition of valuables. More recently, the realm of »ritual« deposition has been evoked in connection with the East Anglian hoards, though without explaining what the ritual was or why it was restricted to this geographical area and chronological period. It should be noted, though, that East Anglia saw the deposition of numbers of hoards of plate made of pewter (a lead / tin alloy) in the 4th-5th centuries, particularly in the »wet places« of the Fen Edge, the context also for the Mildenhall silver plate hoard 64. A recent review of this horizon of deposition argued that one must beware of assimilating all silver hoards of this date into a single phenomenon 65. It is noted that whereas the East Anglia hoards were predominantly of plate and other valuables, in the South-West of England hoards were predominantly of coin on its own. It is therefore necessary to disaggregate this hoarding »horizon« and to examine its constituent elements separately. At the individual level, the deposition of a particular hoard would be the result of individual circumstances. At a wider level, there may have been a (sub-)regional preference for hoarding particular types of object (coin, plate, ingots, jewellery), but these may have varied from area to area. The apparent chronological grouping of these hoards may well be an artefact of the problems of dating; we in fact are dealing with a terminus post quem of the first decade of the 5th century. But the evidence of clipping suggests that the hoards may have been deposited over a longer period of time starting in the closing decades of the 4th century and extending well into the first half of the 5th century; or to put it another way, two generations or more. At all levels, that of the individual hoard, of the regional traditions within Britain, of Britain in the Roman world, of the chronology of deposition there remains much to do; but it is increasingly unlikely that a single, over-arching explanation (»emergency«, »ritual«) will any longer prove convincing (see below). Nevertheless, on the imperial and wider north-European context the scale of deposition of hoards over this half-century or more within Britain was exceptional 66. It has been estimated that for this period Britain contains of the order of a quarter of the gold and silver deposited and surviving in the entire Roman world 67. The distribution map for this period shows Britain as highly atypical. The first half of the 5th century did see episodes of precious-metal deposition and hoarding just across the North Sea in the lower Rhine area 68. In the main this deposition was in the form of gold coins, but some treasures such as Echt and Großbodungen 69 also contained Hacksilber very similar to that from Traprain Law or Coleraine, but of course not entire pieces as was normal within Britain. Hacksilber had already appeared in the Rhineland in the Neupotz hoard as early as the 3rd century 70 and is also known further east of the Rhine in the 5th century, along with locally-made pieces probably reusing Roman silver 71. Hacksilber both in the form of pieces of cut plate or vessels and as silver »packages« is also known from Denmark, particularly sites such as Gudme 72, which has also yielded gold and silver Roman coins as well as the quantities of silver coins 164 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland and other objects present in north-European Barbaricum 73. So though the quantities of silver deposited within early-5th-century Britain are considerable, the phenomenon of the deposition of silver fits into a wider European context, especially perhaps outside the imperial borders (though this latter was largely of Hacksilber rather than complete items, see the next section). This may help explain an apparent paradox: within Britain large quantities of material of Roman manufacture were being deposited in the later 4th and earlier 5th centuries, but in ways which diverged markedly from practice elsewhere in the Roman world. From a »Roman« perspective this is hard to account for. But if we move to a more »Germanic« perspective, then Britain would seem to be moving into that world, in this respect at least. It was also moving into the north-western European and Scandinavian world from the start of the 5th century through the adventus Saxonum. Roman silver at the end of the Roman period and after outside the Roman diocese The presence of Roman silver in Scotland and Ireland beyond the supposed frontiers of the late Roman Diocese of the Britains raises different questions of interpretation due to their locations and the fragmented nature of the silver the deposits contained. In the original publication of the Traprain Law hoard in 1923 this treatment of the Roman objects was suggested to show that the hoard was assembled by people interested only in its bullion value rather than in its use as tableware or in its artistic merits. The interpretation was that the material in the hoard was the result of piratical descents on the rich, settled villa landscapes of southern Britain and northern Gaul, »[…] the veritable wealth of a robber band […] gathered together either in series of raids or in a single raid […]« 74. More recently attention has been paid to some of the »unconsidered trifles« largely passed over by A. O. Curle, particularly the eight packets of folded silver. Similar packets from the Water Newton 1 (Cambridgeshire / UK) hoard of 1974 75, had shown that they were related to late Roman weight standards. It had also become clear that in many cases the ingots known from late Roman hoards and other deposits either stated their weight in Roman pounds or could be shown to correspond to Roman weights 76. In combination with textual references, including legal provisions, which emphasised the importance of weight of precious metal in the fiscal cycle, this opened another avenue of examination and understanding of Hacksilber hoards such as Traprain Law. Unfortunately, it has proved very difficult to reconstruct the Traprain material in this way as immediately after the discovery of the hoard it was confided to the Edinburgh jewellers Brook and Sons for restoration. Neither A. O. Curle at the time of excavation nor Brook and Sons recorded the precise associations of the objects, for instance in possible »parcels« of several items together. Moreover, Brook and Sons re-joined fragments from the same vessel, giving such items a »false« weight. Nonetheless, it must be acknowledged that it is largely thanks to the efforts of Brook and Sons that the Traprain hoard has survived in its present excellent condition. A plot of the weights of the Traprain Law fragments that are unlikely to have been affected by post-recovery factors shows some »steps« corresponding to Roman weights, but in between these »steps« there is a more-or-less smooth curve. This suggests either that the fragments were originally aggregated as »parcels«, subsequently disaggregated, or that there had been a second phase of fragmentation which took no account of Roman weight standards 77. Despite these problems in understanding the original composition of this particular hoard it had become clear that weight was a very significant criterion for the treatment of silver in the late Roman period. This meant that the hacked, folded and crushed forms of the items needed no longer be seen as the result of the predations of pirates from beyond the empire but rather the actions of authorities within the empire in assembling given weights of silver bullion. This in turn has given rise to a new explanatory model for the Traprain Law hoard, that it represents payment / s or subvention / s from within the Roman Empire to a peo- Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 165 ple on its margins as part of Roman diplomatic management of externae gentes 78. In this case, the people concerned were probably the Votadini mentioned by various Classical authors, whose principal stronghold Traprain Law could well have been 79. This can be placed within the evidence for long-term manipulation by the Roman authorities of the peoples in what is now Scotland in order to try to ensure pro-Roman rulers and behaviour beyond Hadrian’s Wall 80. The recent discovery of a hoard of Hacksilber probably of late-3rdcentury date from Dairise (Fife / UK) pushes the use of this material back by a century or more 81. Similar scenarios have been proposed for the Irish hoards of Coleraine and Balline. The »piracy« explanation seemed to gain weight from other evidence for raids from on the coasts of late Roman Britain, as we shall see, though equally the »diplomacy« interpretation would make sense in such a context. Two other possible reasons should be considered along with »piracy« or »diplomacy«. One is that the silver represents payments to men from these areas who had served in the Roman army, been paid in bullion, and had returned to their homelands with their silver 82. Or else they may represent Roman payments to tribesmen recruited as mercenaries to fight for Rome 83. Payment in bullion, especially weight of silver, was a regular feature of how Roman soldiers of the 4th century were paid. That men from beyond the imperial frontiers fought in the Roman army and returned home at the end of their service is well attested both in texts and in archaeology, making this an entirely plausible mechanism for the transmission of such silver out of the empire. Another possibility that has been less explored is that some of this bullion and coins relates to the slave trade. Slavery was very much a living institution under the late Roman Empire 84. Because of the shortage of evidence, it has traditionally proved very difficult to estimate the extent or incidence of slavery in Roman Britain, but right at the end of the period there is an indigenous source which illuminates both the existence of slaving and the role in it of peoples in Ireland and Scotland: the writings of the Romano-Briton Patricius, better known as Saint Patrick. Right at the start of his Confessio he recounts his capture at the age of 16 by Irish raiders 85. Concentration on what this meant for Patrick (and ultimately for Ireland) has overshadowed what follows in the text: »[…] in captiuitate adductus sum cum tot miliis hominum […]«, »[…] I was led into captivity with so many thousands of men […]«. This passage clearly states that large numbers of Romano-Britons were being captured and taken across the sea to Ireland somewhere in, probably, the first half of the 5th century. Given that there is no reason to dismiss this as untrue or necessarily hyperbolic, then there must have been a substantial and consistent outflow of slaves from Britain to Ireland in the dying decades of the Roman island and after. Later in the Confessio Patrick states in relation to his dealings with rulers in Ireland: »[…] censeo enim non minimum quam pretium quindecim hominum distribui […]« 86, »[…] for I reckon that I have distributed to them not less than the price of fifteen men […]«. This suggests that trade in slaves was sufficiently regular and institutionalised that there was a »going rate« for the purchase / sale of a slave. In Patrick’s other major text, the Epistola ad milites Corotici, »The epistle to the soldiers of Coroticus«, there are two passages of relevance here. In Ch. 14 he recounts that it is »Consuetudo Romanorum Gallorum Christianorum, mittunt viros sanctos idoneos ad Francos et ceteras gentes cum tot milia solidorum ad redimendos captivos baptizatos; tu toties interficis et vendis illos genti exterae ignoranti Deum. Quasi in lupanar tradis membra Christi.« 87 »This is the custom of the Christian Roman Gauls, they send suitable holy men to the Franks and to other such peoples with so many thousands of solidi in order to redeem baptized captives; you however kill them and sell them to foreign people who have no knowledge of God. As if in a brothel you hand over the members of Christ.« The following chapter focuses even more on the derelictions of the supposedly Christian Coroticus and his soldiers: »Ibi venundati ingenui homines Christiani in servitutem redacti sunt, praesertim indignissimorum, pessimorum apostatarumque Pictorum.« 88 »There free Christian people were sold and reduced into slavery, especially of those the unworthiest, worst and apostate Picts.« It should be noted that whereas the Confessio relates to Ireland, the Epistola is directed against a ruler and his followers in Scotland, quite possibly at Dumbarton on the Clyde estuary 89. So should some at least of the late Roman silver found in Scotland and Ireland be viewed 166 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland in this light? Quite possibly. It would be foolish to argue that one explanation fits all instances of Hacksilber in these countries, with an increasing range of possibilities to be taken into account. As noted at the end of the preceding section, though the volume of Hacksilber and related material deposited in the British and Irish Isles in the first half of the 5th century was exceptional, the phenomenon of the access to, the recycling of and the deposition of Roman silver plate and coin was part of a wider northEuropean context outside the limites, one into which the British and Irish material fits well. Silver in southern Britain in the 5th and 6th centuries The horizon of the accumulation and deposition of silver coin, plate, ingots and other objects within the territories of the (former) Diocese of the Britains seems to date to the first half of the 5th century and thus to mark the end of the period when silver was an important social or economic commodity. Over the next century and a half or more silver played a very minor part in the range of prestige metal and the objects made from it. The very small number of silver coins entering what is now England in the course of the second half of the 5th century shows that there was no longer a monetised economy in which such coins would play a part. The Patching hoard discussed above shows that silver coins of types supplied to Britain at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries, and earlier, were still available but their association with scrap silver as well as gold coins and rings suggests that they represented bullion rather than cash, quite possibly for recycling. The only other silver coins of the second half of the 5th century from England, those from Chatham Lines (Kent / UK) 90 and Oxborough (Norfolk / UK), and in both cases the coins had been re-set as jewellery. Apart from coins, the only silver objects that may date to the second half of the 5th century are the annular brooches and a few other objects in the »Quoit brooch« style, showing that silver could still on occasion be used for prestige objects. The possible sources of the silver for these objects and their wides significance will be the subject of the publication of the current project by Ellen Swift. As discussed above, silver was rarely used for objects of the types that are found in 5th- and 6th-century Anglo-Saxon burials, or indeed in other contexts. Their main use was in objects deposited in burials in eastern Kent, largely in the 6th century. Both the types of object for which silver was used, and indeed the silver itself, are currently thought to have originated in Francia, so to an extent what we are seeing here is a tradition exogenous to England, even if there was reworking of silver once in Kent. Other regions of AngloSaxon England accorded silver little regard; gold was far and away the dominant prestige metal. Perhaps the important conclusion to draw from this general disregard for silver in 5th- and 6th-century England is that not all regions of the island of Britain shared an interest in silver. We must not allow the importance of silver at certain times and in certain regions to create a false assumption that there was a single pan-insular tradition, which always accorded silver primacy as the prestige metal. Silver in Scotland in the 5th and 6th centuries The Roman period had seen a gradual increase in importance of silver in a region which previously had not used it as a prestige material, with the Romans apparently targeting silver as part of their diplomatic manipulation of the indigenous polities 91. The final phase and expression of this was the transfer northwards of quantities of silver (but not gold) bullion in the form of Hacksilber as attested from the later 3rd century at Dairsie, from the earlier 5th century at Traprain Law. That Traprain was probably not the only consignment of Roman silver to reach Scotland is attested by the late Roman objects in the Norrie’s Law and Gaulcross Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 167 hoards. Various mechanisms for the movement of the silver have been invoked, such as: piracy; slavetrading; payment to soldiers or mercenaries; diplomatic subvention; the last of these being currently most favoured. It is abundantly clear that by the 5th century the peoples of eastern Scotland had a pronounced taste for silver. Traprain Law, Norrie’s Law and Gaulcross suggest that silver bullion in the form of Hacksilber may have been of value in itself, a means for the accumulation, storage and transfer of wealth. But it is equally clear that such silver was also being transformed through melting down and recasting into prestige items, possibly including the »massive silver chains« whose silver fineness is so close to that of late Roman silver. Clearly the material in these hoards had complex »object biographies«, now only partly discernible. An important difference after the early-5th century was that there were no new supplies of silver coming into Scotland, courtesy of the Roman authorities, though if we follow St Patrick it is possible that silver still arrived for ransom through the channel of the Church or otherwise. This interruption or severe diminution in supply presumably increased the desirability and value of the silver already circulating. This may account for the greater degree of fragmentation of the material in the Norrie’s Law and Gaulcross hoards compared with that at Traprain Law; it had passed through several phases of division and presumably through several transactions. This silver therefore had clear importance in the sphere of social relations and networks as a means of negotiating and establishing and reinforcing relationships. The command of resources embodied in the »massive silver chains« and their evident prestige semiotics shows that silver was also an important element in political structures. This being so, it raises important questions about why significant quantities of this desirable material were taken out of circulation and deposited as hoards. Was it linked to the political fortunes of individuals or groups? Was it to maintain the value of what remained in circulation through diminishing the availability of silver? Was it for religious reasons as offerings to the deities or in the case of the other possible reasons by being placed under the tutelage of the deities? It is frustrating that we know so little of the circumstances of deposition, though the proximity of the Gaulcross hoard to a then-extant prehistoric monument and a possible »wet place« may give a landscape context, if not an underlying reason, for hoard deposition at that spot 92. It is also clear that unlike other regions of Britain and Ireland the preference for silver in Scotland endured or a long time, down into the 9th century, a testimony to the precedent established half a millennium and more earlier. CONCLUSION: EVALUATING THE INSULAR TRADITION OF SILVER USE FROM THE 4TH TO THE 6TH CENTURY Given the importance of silver at certain times and certain places in Britain and Ireland from the late Roman period down into the Early Middle Ages, are there any general conclusions that can be drawn from this and are there reasons that can be posited to explain these episodes of the preference for silver? Clearly, such a discussion will have to engage with the particular circumstances of regional and chronological variations, but first there are two general points which should be made which affect all of the specific instances. These are the sources of the silver and the circumstances of deposition of the silver. There were native sources of silver in Roman Britain and in Scotland, generally of argentiferous lead that could be cupelled to separate the silver. There is abundant evidence for the exploitation of the sources within the Roman territory from soon after the Roman conquest. The bulk of the evidence for the working of the silver deposits in the Mendips, the Peak District and possibly elsewhere dates to the earlier part of 168 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland the Roman period. There is thus some doubt as to the extent (if any) of the working of these deposits in the later Roman period. There is then a gap in the evidence through the early mediaeval period until later Saxon documentary evidence for the exploitation of the lead sources, perhaps for the recovery of silver. Whether these ores were exploited in the immediately post-Roman period cannot currently be told, but at present, there is no good evidence that they were. Combined with the uncertainties for the later Roman period it may be that silver gained from within Roman Britain was absent or scarce as a component of the circulating silver of the period. There is no evidence for the Roman-period exploitation of native silver sources north of Hadrian’s Wall, though there is some evidence of lead pollution from bogs in south-western Scotland in the 5th-7th centuries, perhaps indicating lead extraction and refining 93, though probably not on a large scale. Otherwise the analytical evidence referred to above strongly suggests that the source of the silver throughout Britain and Ireland in the 4th-6th centuries was late Roman coins, plate, ingots and other objects which were either deposited intact or were curated for recycling into new prestige objects. Without the considerable supply to and use of silver in later Roman Britain the various regional developments outlined above could never have taken place. A feature that unites almost all the regional traditions of the use of silver in late Roman and early postRoman Britain and Ireland is that we know about them through hoard evidence. The only real exception to this is south-eastern England in the later 5th and 6th centuries where the material comes overwhelmingly from burials. Silver is hardly ever recovered from settlements in England, rarely in Scotland. These biases in deposition necessarily introduce biases in our understanding of how to read back from deposition to the use of silver pre-deposition and of the choice / s involved in selecting it for deposition. Moreover, deposition in different regions and at different periods may well have been for different reasons, so again the temptation to homogenise them needs to be resisted. One approach to investigating the selection of material for deposition can be taken with the late Roman plate hoards of south-eastern Britain. In the case of assemblages such as Hoxne and Mildenhall their contents can be looked at against the full spectrum of known types of late Roman plate and presences and absences noted and considered 94. The Mildenhall hoard, for instance, is composed predominantly of vessels for the serving and consumption of foodstuffs with little in the way of vessels for the service and consumption of liquids. In this, it compares with the Kaiseraugst assemblage and possibly the lost Trier hoard. On the other hand, the »Seuso« hoard contains several vessels such as ewers concerned with the service and consumption of liquids, as well as several large platters in which it compares with Kaiseraugst. Mildenhall, on the other hand, has few large platters and more smaller pieces. Hoxne differs yet again in its emphasis on spoons and strainers (but no ewers or drinking vessels). Clearly each of these represents a different selection of material to withdraw from what must have been a wider spectrum of circulating plate, so it may be possible to hazard reasons for the choices (and absences), but this still does not explain the reasons for or circumstances of deposition. In considering the reasons for the phase of hoard-deposition in southern and eastern Roman Britain at the turn of the 4th and 5th centuries it was noted that historically an explanation in terms of »emergency« hoards had been preferred but had more recently been challenged by interpretations favouring »ritual« deposition. Currently there is less support for a single, over-arching interpretation, given the variability in the composition of the hoards and the possibility that they were deposited over an extended period (up to two generations?) rather than the previously assumed single »horizon«. Likewise, the Hacksilber hoards and the »massive silver chains« of eastern Scotland also seem to have been deposited over a considerable time (a century or more?) and to have consisted of different assemblages of material in different areas. Because of the lack of archaeological context for the majority of hoards of these types recovered from Britain and Ireland it is impossible to say much ether about the individual contexts of deposition or whether any recurring patterns can be discerned. It was noted above that there is some evidence that the Mildenhall plate Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 169 hoard may have had a context in the deposition of metalwork and plate, in particular pewter plate, around the Fen Edge in the later Roman period. Given that the Fen Edge was a classic »wet place« landscape this could strengthen the arguments for a »ritual« component to the deposition of the hoard. But the same does not hold good for the other major hoards from East Anglia, or the coin hoards more characteristic of areas further south-west, so it is impossible to generalise just from Mildenhall. Likewise, the Gaulcross hoard in Scotland may be associated with a potential »wet place«, more certainly with a prehistoric monument, but again these are not firm foundations for a generalising model. Even if it is not yet possible to explain the episodes of hoard-deposition within Britain and Ireland in this period, we may still seek to address another question, one which may be put briefly as »why silver«? It has been stated at various points in this paper that Britain from the 4th to the 6th centuries evinced a preference at certain times and places for silver, a preference which equals or surpasses that for gold. There were two main episodes, each of which may give some insight into this insular preference, the early-5th-century phase in the south and east of Britain and the 5th- to 6th-century phase in eastern Scotland. The former of these shows the hoarding of gold as well as silver, but there are features which suggest that silver was in some ways preferred. The first of these is simply the huge disparity in the amounts of the two metals being deposited. In terms of coin, the number of silver coins being deposited in this period far outstrips the number of gold coins. This is, of course, a coarse measure since it takes no account of the relative face value of the two metals; the gold solidus was worth of the order of 15 of the silver coins often referred by modern workers as siliquae, and thus presumably 7.5 of the heavier miliarenses, though the approximate nature of these figures should be borne in mind 95. Nevertheless, only three hoards of late solidi (Eye, Suffolk / UK; Hoxne; St Albans, Herts / UK) number in three figures, most hoards of this date number under 20 coins, to which must be added the gold jewellery from Hoxne and Thetford along with some other pieces 96. By contrast with silver there are no items of gold plate in these late hoards. In addition to the question of relative quantities of the two metals (which could be quantified more precisely) there is the evidence of clipping which overwhelmingly affected the silver coinage; hardly any gold pieces showing signs of clipping (see R. Abdy in this volume). This shows that it was additional silver that was desired, perhaps in part for striking imitation issues (some of which themselves ended up clipped). What else this silver was needed for we do not know; presumably it was melted down and recast either as ingots or into prestige items of jewellery which sadly have not survived, unless the »Quoit brooch« pieces in silver are shown to be derived from Roman silver. On the other hand, Hacksilber of the type recovered from Scotland and Ireland is largely absent from within Roman Britain (Whorlton probably apart, possibly Risley Park), suggesting that whatever the need for silver it did not provoke that form of recovery and reuse as bullion. Another way of looking at this episode is by comparing it with the quantities of silver coins and plate hoarded in Britain through the Roman period. An elegant survey of the hoarding of denarii in Britain from the Roman conquest down to the early-3rd century 97 showed that there were 287 hoards with more than five denarii yielding 43,301 denarii covering a period of some two centuries. Again allowance needs to be made for any difference in face value between denarii and late siliquae. Nevertheless, the late-4th-/ early-5th-century episode of silver coin hoarding was clearly larger in overall numbers and much shorter in duration. Under the early empire plate hoards were also much rarer in Britain. So also were silver coin and plate hoards of the first half of the 5th century elsewhere in the empire 98, though of course this is a reflection of deposition practices, not necessarily of the circulation and availability of silver elsewhere in the empire. Nevertheless, the point remains that Britain at the end of the Roman period did contain large quantities of silver, silver which was preferentially deposited in hoards by comparison with gold. The other major episode of silver curation, recycling and reuse was that in Scotland during the 5th and 6th centuries. Here the picture is much clearer-cut. Silver effectively had a monopoly in the circulation and 170 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland (re)use of precious metal: gold was nowhere. But this episode formed part of a longer-term preference for silver in what is now Scotland. In the Iron Age, the prestige metal had been gold, for instance for items of personal adornment such as torcs. But with the arrival of the Roman army from the late-1st century silver was introduced to Scotland in quantity 99. The Roman army in northern Britain operated mainly with silver coins as can be seen not only from site finds and hoards but also from the monetary references in the Vindolanda tablets, all expressed in denarii 100. Through the 2nd century Roman silver coins became more and more familiar in the eastern parts of Scotland, most probably as part of Roman diplomatic manipulation of the peoples of eastern Scotland 101. Not recycled into indigenous prestige items but curated as coins, presumably as displays of wealth and prestige 102. So in this case there must have been significant reworking of the value systems and expressions of the indigenous peoples. With the progressive debasement of the Roman coinage through the 3rd century coins seem to have become less acceptable north of Hadrian’s Wall, and in due course attention shifted to silver in the form of bullion with the earliest instance of a Hacksilber hoard at Dairsie in the later 3rd century. So by the time of the deposition of the Traprain Law somewhere in the early to mid-5th century, Roman silver was a well-established preference in Scotland, one which we have seen perpetuated through the 5th and into the 6th century with the clear evidence for the curation and recycling or Roman silver in the Gaulcross and Norrie’s Law hoards and quite possibly the massive silver chains. Thus for Scotland the origins of and reasons for the preferential use of silver can be traced with some confidence. This does not, of course, mean that there may not have been other, more intangible reasons for the preference for silver, such as ideological or religious connotations, such as the colour and qualities of silver (the moon?) rather than gold (the sun?). On the other hand, though some silver of Roman origin is present in Ireland both as Hacksilber and reworked into new objects, Ireland seems never to have invested in silver as a prestige metal to the extent that Scotland did. In the wider perspective of the geographical scope of this project, Britain clearly exhibits differences from the Continent and distinct insular practice / s where silver is concerned. The emphasis at the end of the Roman period on silver rather than gold in south-eastern Roman Britain but also Scotland and to an extent Ireland can be seen to be exceptional in relation to the rest of the Roman empire. In Scotland, the taste for silver established during the Roman period continued into the 5th and 6th centuries, with Roman-derived Hacksilber curated, recirculated and recycled. In this, there was some resemblance to practices in southern Scandinavia, but equally significant differences. It is therefore necessary to assess these insular traditions in their own terms rather than as manifestations of trends on the other side of the Channel. It was only with the adoption of a silver coinage in England in the late-7th century that England started to reintegrate with practices on the Continent. Scotland was later in adopting silver coinage, but both countries, and Ireland, were also to be influenced by Viking-period attitudes to silver, including once again the deposition of major Hacksilber hoards 103. Notes 1) I would like to thank the organisers of the conference for the opportunity to participate and to assemble this paper. My thanks go also to the referees for their perceptive and helpful comments. Appropriately perhaps, this paper contains a quantity of recycled material, even if debased and turned into different forms. For this, I would like to thank Fraser Hunter and his colleagues in the »Scotland’s Early Silver« project for the invitations to participate in the colloquia in Edinburgh and Schleswig in 2017. My debt to their publications will be apparent from the footnotes to this paper. The 2017 exhibition at the National Museums Scotland was memorable, above all for the visual impact of the actual objects. 2) Reece 2002. 3) Johns 1996. 4) Bland / Moorhead / Walton 2013. 5) Moorhead / Walton 2014. 6) Guest 2005. 7) Moorhead / Walton 2014, 101-102. 8) Moorhead / Walton 2014, 101-103. 9) Walton 2012, Ch. 8. Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 171 10) Moorhead / Walton 2014, 104. 112 fig. 3. 56) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 85-86. 11) Esmonde Cleary 2017. 57) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 77. 12) Guest 2005. 58) Noble et al. 2016. 13) Guest 2005, Ch. 7 fig. 7. 59) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 80. 14) Guest 2005; 2013. 60) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 102. 15) Hobbs 2006, fig. 14. 61) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 103-104. 16) Hobbs 2016. 62) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 116-122. 17) Johns 1981. 63) Guest 2014, 118. 18) Guest 2005. – Johns 2010. 64) Hobbs 2016, 291. 19) Johns / Potter 1983. 65) Guest 2014. 20) Johns / Potter 1985. 66) Hobbs 2006, fig. 14. 21) Wiegels 2003, Ch. 1, 74-91, Verbreitungskarte. 67) Hobbs 2006, 92-93. 22) Curle 1923. – Hunter / Painter 2013. 68) Roymans 2017. 23) Hunter 2013. 69) Cf. Roymans 2017, fig. 7. 24) Curle 1923. – Kaufmann-Heinimann 2013. – Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, Ch. 5. 70) Künzl 2008. 25) Guest 2013. 72) Dyhrfjeld-Johnsen 2013. 26) Mattingly / Pearce 1937. – Marzinzik 2013. 73) Rau 2013. 27) Hook / Callewaert 2013, 184-185. 74) Curle 1923, 108. 28) Bateson 1973. 75) Painter 2013, 220-221. 29) Gavin 2013, 431. 76) Wiegels 2003, 56-60. 30) Hobbs 2013. 77) Hunter / Painter 2017, 87-88. 31) Minnitt / Ponting 2013. 78) Hunter / Painter 2017. 32) Hobbs 2013, 302-303. 79) Breeze 2013. 33) Painter 2013, 321. 80) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017. 71) Voß 2013. 34) Johns 1974. 81) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 36-40. 35) Youngs 2005. 82) Guggisberg 2013. – Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 54-55. 36) Rhodes 1974. 83) Roymans 2017. 37) Gavin 2013, 427-428. 84) Harper 2011. 38) Hunter 2014. 85) Patrick Confessio 1. 39) Voß 2013. – Dyhrfield-Johnsen 2013. – Rau 2013. 86) Patrick Confessio 53. 40) White et al. 1999. – Abdy 2013. 87) Patrick Epistola 14. 41) Abdy 2013, 113. 88) Patrick Epistola 15. 42) White et al. 1999, 309. 89) Fraser 2013. 43) White et al. 1999, 312. 90) Blackburn 1988. 44) Guest 2013, 98. 91) Hunter 2007a; 2010. 45) Evison 1965. – Suzuki 2000. 92) Noble et al. 2016. 46) Nicolay 2014, 244-250 Ch. 7. 93) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 5. 47) Bruce-Mitford / Youngs 1983. 94) Martin 2013. 48) Youngs 2013. – Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, Ch. 8. 95) Hobbs 2006, 17-20. 49) Fraser 2009. 96) Cf. Bland / Loriot 2010, Ch. 8. 50) Henderson / Henderson 2011. 97) Creighton 2014, esp. Appendix 1. 51) Youngs 2013, illustration 26.1. – Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 97. 98) Hobbs 2006, fig. 14. 99) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, Ch. 2. 52) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 102. 105 n. 10. 100) Bowman 1994, Ch. 6. 53) Hughes / Hall 1979. 101) Hunter 2007b. 54) McKerrell 1973, 174-175. 102) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, Ch. 3. 55) Blackwell / Goldberg / Hunter 2017, 84-88. 103) Williams 2013. 172 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland References Abdy 2013: R. Abdy, The Patching Hoard. In: Hunter / Painter 2013, 107-115. Bateson 1973: J. Bateson, Roman material from Ireland: a reconsideration. Proceedings of the Royal Irish Academy 73, 1973, 21-97. Blackburn 1988: M. Blackburn, Three silver coins in the names of Valentinian III (425-55) and Anthemius (467-72) from Chatham Lines, Kent. Numismatic Chronicle 1988, 169-174. 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Antiquity 90, 2016, 726-741. Walton 2012: P. Walton, Rethinking Roman Britain: Coinage and Archaeology. Collection Moneta 137 (Wetteren 2012). White et al. 1999: S. White / J. Manley / R. Jones / J. Orna-Ornstein / C. Johns / L. Webster, A Mid-Fifth Century Hoard of Roman and Pseudo-Roman Material from Patching, West Sussex. Britannia 30, 1999, 301-315. Wiegels 2003: R. Wiegels, Silberbarren der römischen Kaiserzeit. Katalog und Versuch einer Deutung. Freiburger Beiträge zur Archäologie und Geschichte des ersten Jahrtausends 7 (Rahden / Westf. 2003). Williams 2013: G. Williams, Hack-silver and precious-metal economies: a view from the Viking age. In: Hunter / Painter 2013, 381394. Painter 2013: K. Painter, Hacksilber: a means of exchange? In: Hunter / Painter 2013, 215-242. Youngs 2005: S. Youngs, After Oldcroft: a British silver pin from Welton le Wold, Lincolnshire. In: N. Crummy (ed.), Image, Craft and the Classical World: Essays in honour of Donald Bailey and Catherine Johns. Monographies Instrumentum 29 (Montagnac 2005) 249-254. Rau 2013: A. Rau, Where did the late empire end? Hacksilber and coins in continental and northern Barbaricum. In: Hunter / Painter 2013, 339-357. 2013: S. Youngs, From chains to brooches: the uses and hoarding of silver in north Britain in the Early Historic period. In: Hunter / Painter 2013, 403-425. Zusammenfassung / Summary / Résumé Formen und Funktionen des Silbers in Britannien und Irland vom 4. bis zum 6. Jahrhundert In Britannien sind unterschiedliche Muster im Gebrauch von Silber zwischen 400 und 600 zu beobachten. Die Versorgung mit Silbermünzen wird im frühen 5. Jahrhundert eingestellt, obgleich das Feilen von Silbermünzen zeigt, dass sie nach wie vor in Umlauf (vielleicht als Metallbarren) bleiben. In der ersten Hälfte des 5. Jahrhunderts ist ein Silberschatzfundhorizont zu verzeichnen, bestehend weitgehend aus Münzen und Geschirr im römischen Britannien bzw. aus Hacksilberhorten außerhalb der römischen Diözese, vor allem in Schottland. Eine neue Untersuchung zeigt, dass es im nachrömischen Schottland römisches Silber gab, das recycelt wurde, insbesondere in massiven »piktischen« Halsketten. In Irland wurde viel weniger recycelt. Im nachrömischen Britannien war spätrömisches Silber bis ins späte 5. Jahrhundert verfügbar. Für die Angelsachsen war Silber kein bedeutendes Metall, außer im östlichen Kent des 6. Jahrhunderts. Leider wissen wir sehr wenig über die Kontexte und Ursachen für die Deponierung dieser Objekte Übersetzung: J. Chameroy bzw. Horte, oder aus welchem Grund Silber statt Gold bevorzugt wurde. 174 S. Esmonde Cleary · Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland from the 4th to the 6th Century Britain exhibits distinctive patterns in silver use between 400 and 600. The supply of silver coins ceased early in the 5th century, though the »clipping« of silver coins shows they continued to circulate, perhaps as bullion. The first half of the 5th century saw a horizon of deposition of silver, largely as coins and plate within Roman Britain and hoards of hacksilver were deposited outside the Roman diocese, notably in Scotland. Recent research indicates that in postRoman Scotland it was Roman silver that was recycled, especially into the massive »Pictish« neck-chains. In Ireland there was much less recycling. Within post-Roman Britain, Late Roman silver was available into the late 5th century. For the Anglo-Saxons silver was not a significant metal, save in 6th-century eastern Kent. Unfortunately, we know very little about the contexts of and reason for the deposition of these objects and hoards, or why it was silver that was preferred over gold. Formes et fonctions de l’argent en Bretagne et en Irlande du IVe au VIe siècle En Bretagne, différents schémas de l’usage de l’argent peuvent être observés entre 400 et 600. L’approvisionnement en monnaies d’argent se tarit au début du Ve siècle, même si le rognage de monnaies d’argent montre qu’elles continuaient à circuler, peut-être sous forme de lingot. Dans la première moitié du Ve siècle, on note un horizon de dépôts d’argent, consistant avant tout en monnaies et vaisselle en Bretagne romaine et en trésors de Hacksilber enfouis au-delà du diocèse romain, particulièrement en Écosse. Une recherche récente montre qu’en Écosse post-romaine, c’est l’argent romain qui était recyclé, plus spécialement sous forme de massifs colliers « pictes ». En Irlande, il y eut beaucoup moins de recyclage. En Bretagne post-romaine, l’argent tardo-romain était disponible jusque dans le Ve siècle tardif. Pour les Anglo-Saxons, l’argent n’était pas un métal important, sauf dans l’est du Kent au VIe siècle. Malheureusement, nous ne savons à peu près rien sur les contextes et la cause du dépôt de ces objets et trésors, ni Traduction: J. Chameroy pour quelle raison l’argent était préféré à l’or. Argentum Romanorum sive Barbarorum 175 ZU DIESEM THEMA Jérémie Chameroy · Pierre-Marie Guihard (Hrsg. / dir.) Produktion und Recyceln von Münzen in der Spätantike Produire et recycler la monnaie au Bas-Empire Viele Studien haben bisher die offizielle bzw. inoffizielle Münzproduktion spezifisch und getrennt behandelt. Die in diesem Band gesammelten Beiträge hingegen untersuchen die gegenseitigen Auswirkungen von Staat und Privaten in der Münzproduktion sowie die Anpassungsfähigkeit des römischen Münzsystems an Krisensituationen. Numismatiker, Historiker und Archäologen behandeln hier die Münze im Hinblick auf drei Themen: Münzreformen und usus publicus, Münzgebrauch und lange Umlaufzeit der offiziellen bzw. inoffiziellen Münzsorten, Münzstätten und Offizinen im städtischen bzw. ländlichen Kontext. RGZM – Tagungen, Band 29 304 S., 104 meist farbige Abb. Mainz 2016 ISBN 978-3-88467-270-9 € 48,– [D] Si beaucoup d’études ont privilégié jusqu’ici une approche spécifique et séparée de la production monétaire officielle et non officielle, les communications rassemblées dans cet ouvrage s’intéressent à l’interaction de l’Etat et des particuliers au sein de la production monétaire ainsi qu’au degré d’adaptation du système monétaire romain face aux situations de crise. Numismates, historiens et archéologues abordent ici la monnaie à travers trois thèmes: les réformes monétaires et l’usus publicus, l’usage et de la longue circulation des espèces officielles et non officielles, les ateliers et officines en milieux urbain et rural. Verlag des Römisch-Germanischen Zentralmuseums, Mainz Ernst-Ludwig-Platz 2 · 55116 Mainz · Tel. 0 61 31 / 91 24-0 · Fax 0 61 31 / 91 24-199 E-Mail: verlag@rgzm.de · Internet: www.rgzm.de

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Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland from the 4th to the 6th Century

Forms and Functions of Silver in Britain and Ireland from the 4th to the 6th Century

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