Details

LOT 0334

Viking Age or Earlier Hacked Gold Trade Ingot

CIRCA 10TH CENTURY A.D. OR EARLIER

2 in. (14.43 grams, 51 mm).

A slightly bent irregular bar of hacked gold with rectangular cross-section, showing evidence of compression and fracture to each end, some subtle transverse lines on both of the main surfaces.

Provenance

Found whilst searching with a metal detector on 1st May 2022 on a Romano-British site in Cambridgeshire, UK, by Trevor Singleton.

Accompanied by a handwritten letter from the finder.
Accompanied by a copy of the British Museum's Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS) report no.CAM-D819F0 and workflow review page where it states: 'There is evidence that the bar fragment has been cut from both ends, suggesting Early Medieval (Viking Period) parallels.'

Literature

See Hårdh, B., Silver in the Viking Age. A Regional-Economic Study, Acta Archaeologica Lundensia no.25, Stockholm, 1996;
West, S. A., Corpus of Anglo-Saxon Finds From Suffolk, East Anglian Archaeology 84, Ipswich, 1998; Blackburn, M., Viking Coinage and Currency in the British Isles, London, 2011; Fern, C. Dickinson, T. & Webster, L., The Staffordshire Hoard: an Anglo-Saxon Treasure, London, 2019, items 657, 672, 673.

Footnotes

This ingot was declared under the Treasure Act and subsequently determined by the British Museum to be of 'undiagnostic' date and therefore returned to the finder. Trevor Singleton maintains that it was recovered from a known Romano-British site, while in neighbouring fields Early Medieval (Late Saxon & Viking) items have been recovered and logged with the Portable Antiquities Scheme.
Ingots of gold and silver were regularly produced in the Early Medieval period when trade took place between monetised economies (Anglo-Saxon England, Francia, Frisia) and their non-monetised neighbours in southern Scandinavia (West, 1998; Blackburn, 2011). Ingots were a convenient means of storing wealth which could be converted into display items (weapon fittings, clothing fasteners, tableware) or used to gild silver and bronze items (Hårdh, 1996).