{"id":2554,"date":"2023-11-06T14:33:00","date_gmt":"2023-11-06T14:33:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=2554"},"modified":"2023-11-06T14:33:00","modified_gmt":"2023-11-06T14:33:00","slug":"silver-reveals-luxury-tastes-of-vikings-and-trade-talents-of-ancient-greeks","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/2554\/silver-reveals-luxury-tastes-of-vikings-and-trade-talents-of-ancient-greeks\/","title":{"rendered":"Silver reveals luxury tastes of Vikings and trade talents of ancient Greeks"},"content":{"rendered":"

The precious metal\u2019s role as far back as antiquity offers a window into the rise and fall of past civilisations.<\/p>\n

By\u00a0<\/strong><\/em> Gareth Willmer<\/p>\n

Vikings, traditionally depicted as primitive bearded warriors, had a fondness for some of life\u2019s precious things. In Europe, hundreds of buried hoards of silver testify to its attraction for Vikings when they lived more than 1 000 years ago.<\/p>\n

\u2018Clearly they loved the stuff,\u2019 said Dr Jane Kershaw, an archaeologist at the University of Oxford in the UK. \u2018It\u2019s one of the few tangible things that survives from that age.\u2019<\/p>\n

Rich history<\/strong><\/p>\n

Silver was already regarded as a precious metal by the time the 300-year-long Viking era began in Scandinavia in about 750 AD.\u00a0It was prized above gold in ancient Egypt as far back as the 4th<\/sup> millennium BC and used in coins by Lydians, inhabitants of western Asia Minor, in the 6th<\/sup> century BC.<\/p>\n

Looking at silver\u2019s past through the ages offers insights into the movements and evolution of ancient civilisations, as well as into the origins of money. It\u2019s even beginning to transform some long-held views about past peoples.<\/p>\n

As head of a research project that received EU funding to assess the role of silver in the lives of Vikings, Kershaw is questioning the traditional portrayal of them simply as fearsome invaders in western Europe.<\/p>\n

She said the Vikings were strongly influenced by the Golden Age of Islam, which also began in the 8th<\/sup> century AD.<\/p>\n

\u2018We have found little evidence for Vikings acquiring loot through violent raids in the West,\u2019 Kershaw said. \u2018Instead, the quest for Islamic silver was the huge driver of the Viking Age.\u2019<\/p>\n

Her research project, called\u00a0SILVER<\/a>, got underway in March 2019 and is due to run into 2024. It also involves Dr Stephen Merkel, an earth-sciences expert at the Free University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands and a coin specialist named Jani Oravisj\u04d3rvi at the University of Oulu in Finland.<\/p>\n

\u2018Cultural chameleons\u2019<\/strong><\/p>\n

The three researchers have analysed trace metals, including lead found in silver coins gathered from museums, using lasers for micro-sampling.<\/p>\n

Examining different variants \u2013 or isotopes \u2013 of lead helped to shed light on the source ores and, with it, to provide new information on the origins of the Viking Age.<\/p>\n

The conventional wisdom has been that the era of the Vikings began with an attack in 793 AD against the island of Lindisfarne off the northeastern coast of England and that they developed trading links with the Islamic caliphates only in the 10th<\/sup> century.<\/p>\n

But a large proportion of\u00a0Islamic silver<\/a> found in the treasure hoards covered by Kershaw\u2019s investigations suggests the Vikings may have headed eastwards much earlier \u2013 from around 750 AD. They then formed extensive global trade routes eastwards and southwards while expanding in western Europe.<\/p>\n

\u2018These trade networks run from North Africa to Baghdad, across the Caspian Sea, up through Ukraine and Russia, to the Baltic Sea and Scandinavia,\u2019 said Kershaw. \u2018That\u2019s a vast arc of silver flowing one way and goods and people flowing in the other direction already in the 9th<\/sup> century.\u2019<\/p>\n

She said this information also reveals the Vikings to have been \u2018cultural chameleons\u2019.<\/p>\n

Apart from putting a fresh focus on the Vikings\u2019 eastern expansion, Kershaw wants her team\u2019s studies to inform other research into the history of civilisations.<\/p>\n

\u2018I hope it will make people reassess the early stages of Viking raiding in Europe,\u2019 she said. \u2018I also hope people will take the methods and apply them to their own area of research.\u2019<\/p>\n

Money matters<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s just what another EU-funded project is doing.<\/p>\n

Also called\u00a0SILVER<\/a>, it has been looking further back to ancient empires in the Mediterranean region, including Greece, Persia and Rome, to shed light on the history of money and trade.<\/p>\n

The project, which is scheduled to wrap up in March 2024 after six and a half years, is led by Professor Francis Albar\u00e8de, a geochemist at the \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure in Lyon, France.<\/p>\n

After analysing lead and silver isotopes, Albar\u00e8de argues that the minting of silver into coins in the Mediterranean area paved the way for the formation of democracies in the 5th<\/sup> century BC.<\/p>\n

\u2018I believe silver was crucial in the invention of democracy because it helped people to be heard and understood,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Mercenary voices<\/strong><\/p>\n

Evidence suggests the Achaemenid Empire in Persia used silver coins to hire large armies of Greek infantrymen as mercenaries, according to Albar\u00e8de.<\/p>\n

He said that, after these \u201choplites\u201d returned home with plenty of money, they formed an ambitious middle class that aided the spread of democracy.<\/p>\n

The mercenaries also redistributed silver around the Mediterranean. That\u2019s the only way to explain excesses of the metal in non-silver-producing states around the Aegean Sea and coastal areas of southern Italy colonised by ancient Greeks, according to Albar\u00e8de.<\/p>\n

\u2018You see that silver is lubricating long-distance exchange,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

His team also found that\u00a0silver-mining areas<\/a> in ancient times were more widespread than previously thought. Meanwhile, by 480 BC, the Lavrion silver mines near Athens established the modern-day capital as Greece\u2019s leading power, contributing to its role as an eastern Mediterranean monetary hub.<\/p>\n

Past-to-present lessons<\/strong><\/p>\n

The researchers found a way to trace the metal\u2019s origins using silver isotopes in addition to lead ones.<\/p>\n

This endeavour was previously tricky because silver-isotope ratios in coins differed too little to distinguish the source mines.<\/p>\n

But when Albar\u00e8de\u2019s team instead examined ores before conversion into coins, it found much bigger differences. This enabled the researchers to rule out particular mines as origins of bulk silver.<\/p>\n

\u2018Lead isotopes tell you the potential sources of silver and silver isotopes where it cannot come from,\u2019 said Albar\u00e8de. \u2018Putting the two together, you get a better idea of which sources are possibilities.\u2019<\/p>\n

Besides Lavrion, the possible sources include the Halikidi region of northern Greece and the islands of Thassos, Sifnos and Evia.<\/p>\n

His team is also gaining insights into the reasons that people first minted coins. Its view is that, thanks to being resistant to decay, relatively light and less valuable than gold, silver coins were crucial in accelerating transactions.<\/p>\n

\u2018Minting coins improves what people call the velocity of money and frees you from the tyranny of weight,\u2019 Albar\u00e8de said. \u2018During crises like war, that\u2019s critical.\u2019<\/p>\n

He believes the past can offer lessons for contemporary societies, citing intrinsic links between monetary and trading systems. For example, the Greeks turned to Egypt for wheat in exchange for silver when their soils became degraded.<\/p>\n

Albar\u00e8de sees another connection between the past and present: the persistence of societal inequalities and their destabilising effects.<\/p>\n

\u2018We should look to the disasters of ancient societies and their social conclusions for lessons,\u2019 he said.<\/p>\n

Research in this article was funded by the EU via the European Research Council (ERC). The views of the interviewees don\u2019t necessarily reflect those of the European Commission.<\/em><\/p>\n

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