Western European coins’ Byzantine origins

Starting in the 7th century CE, western Europe started making thousands of silver coins, signaling a transformation in the early medieval economy. A new chemical analysis suggests that this boom in coin production may have started with silver from the Byzantine Empire in the eastern Mediterranean ( Antiquity 2024, DOI: 10.15184/aqy.2024.33 ). Jane Kershaw , an archaeologist at the University of Oxford, and collaborators at the University of Cambridge and the Free University of Amsterdam used a technique called portable laser ablation to remove tiny samples of metal from 49 early coins minted in England, France, and the Netherlands in the 7th and 8th centuries. They then analyzed the samples by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry to determine their trace metal content and the ratio of lead isotopes in the metal. The researchers found that coins made after 750 CE were made from silver from a mine in what is