Early Metal Working

The blacksmith or metalworker in the Middle Ages was a highly respected craftsman. The results of the blacksmith's skill were so important to society that many pantheons had a god of blacksmithing, or at least a legendary figure, such as Hephaestus among the Greeks, Goibhniu in the Tuatha Dé Danaan cycle, or Govannon in the Welsh Mabinogion. The Anglo-Saxons had the legendary Wayland Smith. Even the Bible mentions Tubal-Cain in the book of Genesis as the first blacksmith.

Metalworkers originally worked with gold, silver, and copper, which are all found in their native states as pure metals. They are also fairly malleable, and so could be shipped and hammered relatively easily into whatever was wanted—mostly small decorative objects like jewelry. Phoenician trade brought together tin from Cornwall and copper from Cyprus and the discovery that a mixture produced a stronger metal with a lower melting point we call bronze, making it easier to shape into larger objects that would be stronger, such as a weapon.

The so-called Iron Age came about around 1500BCE, when the Hittites in the Middle East began working with iron, much of which was embedded in other ores. (Many early peoples first used iron found in meteor deposits, where the iron was mixed with up to 40% nickel.) The armor and weapons of The Iliad are bronze, but Homer refers to arrowheads as iron. At the time of its composition (or its later revision), iron was known, but was not being easily worked into larger items.

One difficulty with iron compared to previous metals is that its melting point is very high (2800°F), and so the heat produced by the blacksmith could soften it so that it could be hammered and shaped, turning it into a liquid to pour into a mold was not within the power of most forges. If a village had a blacksmith, it likely only had one. On the other hand, a village without a blacksmith was in a sad state. Smithing was a necessary craft for the functioning of the Middle Ages. It was one of the seven essential Artes mechanicae (to parallel the seven Liberal Arts).

Tomorrow we'll look at the medieval blacksmith in more detail, and the men and women who were employed in this important trade.

Debasing Coinage

Let me explain how you can turn a finite number of metal coins into more coins.

You may have seen medieval coins that weren't entirely round; they were lop-sided somehow or had a flat edge to them. That was not necessarily the action of years or wear and tear through handling. That was more likely because of coin-clipping.

Coin-clipping was a popular way to make more money for personal use. Medieval coins were solid metal all the way through, not cheaper metal covered with another layer to make them shiny, as much modern coinage is in the promissory system. The Medieval English penny was solid silver. A known practice was to "clip" the edges of the coin, reducing its size, and using the clipping from several coins to make an additional coin (or a silver lump that had value).

This, of course, debased the value of the original coin(s) because they were expected to have a specific weight of silver (or gold, in some cases). The illustration above is not medieval, but from a hoard of clippings from 16th century coins found in 2015.

One of the ways to guard against coin clipping was to put a design or milled edge on the coin to make it clear of the edge has been altered; United States quarters and dimes show this, nickels and pennies are made of such cheap metal that a milled edge isn't considered worthwhile.

Other methods of debasing coinage were "sweating" and "plugging." In sweating, coins were placed in a bag and shaken vigorously so that bits of metal might flake off and could be collected at the bottom of the bag to be re-used. Plugging was the act of punching a hole in the middle of the coin, knocking out a bit of metal, then hammering the coin to fill in the hole. With the edge of the coin intact, the flattened image in the center could be explained as normal wear and tear.

These practices were bad for the economy, devaluing the actual coin (which was based on weight of silver), and promoting inflation. They were considered extremely serious offenses. Suspicion of coin-clipping in the time of King Edward I (1272-1307) lead to hundreds of deaths in a single outrageous over-reaction.

But that's a story for tomorrow.

What Is Hacksilver?

Silver has always been valuable as a unit of exchange, but it would be wrong to assume silver was always in the form of coins or small (or large) bars. It might be shaped into bracelets or chains or other items, such as a decorative pin or brooch, etc.

Those who wanted silver—for themselves or to trade—did not always need a pin or a bracelet, however. Sometimes it was only necessary to have enough silver of sufficient value to exchange for what you wanted. If the item you wished to purchase was worth less silver than the weight of the silver item in your hand, what would you do? Simple: you would hack off the amount you need.

Hacksilver (from German "hacksilber," meaning exactly what it looks like) refers to pieces of silver that are incomplete, hacked from a larger chunk or finished item, or simply from a time prior to coin-making becoming the norm. The picture above comes from the British Museum, and if you care to click this link, you can see close-ups of many pieces of hacksilver and their sizes.

Picts and Vikings collected—through pillaging, but also through trade—hacksilver—it was easier than finding and mining and smelting ore on their own, and some of the largest hoards of hacksilver are connected to those groups. The Traprain Law Treasure (Traprain holds an ancient hill fort in Scotland), found in 1919, contains 53 pounds of Late Roman silver tableware, all of high quality silver and all sliced up into smaller pieces. It was either given by Romans to Picts, or taken by Picts and stashed underground.

Hacksilver was not just a Pictish and Viking trend; silver was considered valuable long before it was turned into coins. What was Southern Phoenicia has produced several hoards of hacksilver dating as far back as 1200BCE. The collection of these sites is known as the Cisjordan Corpus. The silver came from Sardinia and Spain, showing that there was trade across the length of the Mediterranean a very long time ago.

Here's some interesting trivia: the Russian unit of currency, the ruble, is derived from the verb "rubit" (рубить), meaning "to chop." Hacksilver is a well-known concept in a popular computer game series.

Speaking of huge collections of valuable metals tucked away long ago and found in modern times, let's go treasure hunting and look at some hoards, starting with the Vale of York Hoard.