How does a Bronze Age Hittite pay for something when barter isn’t an option? Coinage wasn’t around yet, so he or she couldn’t use the obvious modern means. (Well, now I guess we barely use coinage, but that’s another issue.) I sometimes supply my characters with chunks of silver to pay for an inn or situations like that.
Tracing the Bronze Age Silver Trade
An international group of scientists tracked the geochemical evidence of pre-coinage Bronze Age silver trade. They picked up this trail in the Late Bronze Age, the 13th century BCE. It covered all the north-eastern Mediterranean and stretched as far as the Iberian peninsula. So they documented the beginnings of this method of payment for me in the right era and locations. Then they followed the trail through the Iron Age and into Roman times.
Analysis of Hacksilber
Here is are two excerpts I found interesting:
The team used high-precision isotopic analysis to identify the ore sources of minute lead traces found in silver Hacksilber. Hacksilber is irregularly cut silver bullion including broken pieces of silver ingots and jewellery that served as means of payment in the southern Levant from the beginning of the second millennium until the fourth century BCE. Used in local and international transactions, its value was determined by weighing it on scales against standardized weights. It has been discovered in archaeological excavations in the region usually stored inside ceramic containers and it had to be imported as there was no silver to be mined in the Levant.
Presenting the research at the Goldschmidt geochemistry conference, Dr. Liesel Gentelli said “Even before coinage there was international trade, and Hacksilber was one of the commodities being exchanged for goods”.
The photo at the top shows a hoard of hacksilber (or hacksilver) from the Gotland Museum (not Bronze Age, but a good model). The photo is by W.carter on Wiki.
More Trade and Farther Flung Than We Used to Imagine
A great variety of evidence has shown in the last decade how widespread early trade was. The use of silver, imported from one region and used in many others for pre-coinage trade, is yet another example. It adds to the mounds of evidence showing how intertwined and connected the entire Mediterranean and Near Eastern regions were throughout the Bronze Age. According to this article, the silver trail didn’t stop when the great Bronze Age kingdoms collapsed, but carried on without interruption into the Iron Age. Apparently, the traders didn’t need the big palaces and central powers to do their thing.
There are many further intriguing details in the article itself.
For a post about seals, another tool of early ancient trade.