Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-2brh9 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T23:57:55.260Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Purpose of the Sutton Hoo Coins

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Philip Grierson
Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Core share and HTML view are not available for this content. However, as you have access to this content, a full PDF is available via the ‘Save PDF’ action button.

The purse found at Sutton Hoo contained forty-two gold objects. Thirty-seven of them were Merovingian coins of the last decades of the 6th and the first half of the 7th century, three were unstruck circular blanks, and two were small rectangular ingots (Bruce-Mitford, 1968, 47-51; Lafaurie, 1968, 258-60, correcting Marseilles to Arles as the mint of no. 3). The coins weigh from 1.221 grams to 1.388 grams—Bruce-Mitford's text by a slip reads grains—and average 1.27 g. (= 19.6 grains), the theoretical weight of the Merovingian gold coin at this period being 1.3 grams, i.e. 20 grains. They are generally termed tremisses or trientes, this being the name of the third of the Roman solidus from which they were derived, but they were in fact somewhat lighter—1.3 g. as against 1-5 g.—and no longer represented the Roman tremissis of eight carats but the Germanic shilling of twenty grains (Grierson, 1961, 351-2). The three blanks, which are about the same diameter as the coins, are of much the same weight (1.09 g., 1.38 g., and 1.46 g.: average, 1.31 g.). The ingots are heavier, weighing respectively 5.21 g. and 4.97 g., i.e. 80 grains and 76-7 grains, and are also of slightly inferior gold. It is probable that they were each intended to represent four shillings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Antiquity , Volume 44 , Issue 173 , March 1970 , pp. 14 - 18
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd 1970

References

Akerman, J. Y. 1844. Description of some Merovingian, and other gold coins, discovered in the parish of Crondall, in Hampshire, in 1828, Numismatic Chronicle, VI, 171–82.Google Scholar
Akerlund, H. 1963. Nydamskappen (Göteborg).Google Scholar
Bruce-Mitford, H. L. S. 1968. The Sutton Hoo ship burial: a handbook (The British Museum).Google Scholar
Davidson, H. R. Ellis. 1964. Gods and myths of northern Europe (Harmondsworth).Google Scholar
Ebert, M. 1919–20. Die Bootfahrt ins Jenseits, Praehistorische Zeitschrift, XI-XII, 179–96.Google Scholar
Ellis (Davidson), H. R. 1943. The road to Hel: a study of the conception of the dead in Old Norse literature (Cambridge).Google Scholar
Green, C. 1963. Sutton Hoo: the excavation of a royal ship burial (1963).Google Scholar
Grierson, P. 1953. A stray from the Crondall hoard, Numismatic Chronicle 6 , XIII, 148–9.Google Scholar
Grierson, P. 1961. La fonction sociale de la monnaie en Angleterre aux VII-VIIIe siècles, Moneta e scambi néll’alto medioevo (= Settimane di studi del Centro italiano di studi sull’alto medioevo, VIII, Spoleto), 341–62.Google Scholar
Grinsell, L. V. 1957. The ferryman and his fee: a study in ethnology, archaeology and tradition, Folk-Lore, LXVIII, 357–69.Google Scholar
Keyser, R. and Munch, P. A. 1846. Norges Gamle Love indtil 1387, I (Christiania).Google Scholar
Lafaurie, J. 1968. Numismatique romaine et médiévale, Annuaire de I’École Pratique des Hautes Études, 1967/1968: IVe section, sciences historiques et philologiqites (Paris), 255–63.Google Scholar
Lefroy, J. H. 1870. Further notice of gold coins discovered in 1828 by C. E. Lefroy, Numismatic Chronicle 2 , X, 164–76.Google Scholar
Phillips, C. W. 1940. The excavation of the Sutton Hoo ship-burial, Antiquaries Journal, XX, 149–202.Google Scholar
Siebs, T. 1930–1. Geld, in Handwörterbuch des deutschen Aberglaubens, Berlin-Leipzig, III, 590–625.Google Scholar
Stjerna, K. 1912. Essays on questions connected with the Old English poem of Beowulf (Viking Club, Extra Series, No. III. Coventry).Google Scholar
Sutherland, C. H. V. 1948. Anglo-Saxon gold coinage in the light of the Crondall hoard (London).Google Scholar
Wilcke, G. 1925. Charonspfennig, in Max Ebert, Reallexikon der Vorgeschichte, II (Berlin), 302–3.Google Scholar