Complexity, chronology and context in the early medieval economy

Early Medieval Europe

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Complexity, chronology and context in the early medieval economy

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Economies are complicated things, even in the early Middle Ages. Bytheir new material and arguments, the essays above illustrate that com-plexity, offering much that will require careful consideration by futureinvestigators of the grand problem of the early European economy. Ishall confine my comments to highlighting some paths which seem tome particularly promising or problematic. In the meantime, it bearsemphasizing that unexpected evidence keeps emerging from processesspanning several continents and centuries (for new coins, see below).Thus, the chemical signature of the garnets used in sixth-centuryMerovingian cloisonné now proves that most were mined in north-eastern India. Supply contracted sharply and definitively, apparentlyaround 580, perhaps in connection with Sasanian successes in theArabian peninsula.

1

The archaeozoology of black rat migration offers anew proxy witness to communication; the way rats piggybacked onships and other conveyances illuminates the ancient world’s changingtransport infrastructures. Because the Justinianic pandemic presumablykilled so many, some suspect black rats became locally extinct andreturned to Britain, for instance, only aboard Viking vessels.

2

The pan-demic itself now looms larger over the end of the ancient economy.

3

Ongoing research should clarify how, in repeated waves from Justinianto Pippin III, it decimated the population – the foundation of theeconomy – and affected communications networks. Molecular analysismay decide whether it was indeed plague (

Yersinia pestis

), and locating

1

Susanne Greiff, ‘Naturwissenschaftliche Untersuchungen zur Frage der Rohsteinquellen fürfrühmittelalterlichen Almandingranatschmuck Rheinfränkischer Provenienz’,

Jahrbuch desrömisch-germanischen Zentralmuseums Mainz

45 (1998), pp. 599–643; Uta von Freeden, ‘DasEnde engzelligen Cloisonnés und die Eroberung Südarabiens durch die Sasaniden’,

Germania

78 (2000), pp. 97–123.

2

Michael McCormick, ‘Rats, Communications and Plague: Toward an Ecological History’,

Journal of Interdisciplinary History

34 (2003), pp. 1–25.

3

Peter Sarris, ‘The Justinianic Plague: Origins and Effects’,

Continuity and Change

17 (2002),pp. 169–82.


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mass graves should sharpen its fuzzy map.

4

A hitherto neglected cosmicevent in 536 provoked ‘the years without summer’, which surelyaffected the climate and food production, at least over the short term.

5

And if, as some now maintain, the medieval warm period really beganaround 800, that too would have obvious implications for farming.

6

For Europe’s economic upswing began in the countryside, with food.Accumulating excavations confirm that rural recovery was under wayby the time the Carolingians seized power. This was the broad eco-nomic context for the resurging communications of the later eighthcentury. That multiplying material vestiges make new demands on oldtexts needs no better illustration than Joachim Henning’s daring hypo-thesis. Archaeologists may now be detecting the dismantling of Romanestate structures of production in the shift from dispersed to nucleatedsettlement. Henning in any case thinks the new arrangements fostereda kind of managerial freedom for peasant smallholders, which sparkedthe rural upswing. Distinguished historians have emphasized just theopposite, the organizing – coercive – power of the elites, who possessedboth the wealth to invest in the structures of production, and the powerto dictate the duties of others.

7

Nevertheless, Henning’s idea seems pro-mising. A like freedom perhaps arose when lords and peasants (as wellas merchants) were left to their own devices by a royal power whichlacked the administrative ability to regiment the details of its subjects’economic life.

8

A similar lesson beckons from the divergent post-Carolingian coinages: in the creative anarchy of France, microregional coinproducers followed – and, possibly, served better – the differing needsof their local markets, whereas the impressive uniformity of the power-ful German emperors’ coins perhaps fitted local economies less well.

9

As Henning notes, it is hard to assess exactly who profited and howmuch from specific phases of the slave trading which so differed acrossEurope. That is particularly true for the Table (25.2) on which hecomments, which does not seek to address that issue. It lists the

move-ments

of specified large numbers of enslaved Europeans, in order to give

4

I am preparing an inventory of mass graves from the early medieval Mediterranean to this end.

5

David Keys,

Catastrophe. An Investigation into the Origins of the Modern World

(London,1999); Joel D. Gunn (ed.),

The Years without Summer: Tracing A.D. 536 and its Aftermath

,BAR International Series 872 (Oxford, 2000).

6

Willie Soon, Sallie Baliunas

et al.

, ‘Reconstructing Climatic and Environmental Changesof the Past 1000 Years: A Reappraisal’,

Energy and Environment

14 (2003), pp. 233–96, esp.pp. 236 and 238.

7

See e.g. Georges Duby,

The Early Growth of the European Economy

, trans. H.B. Clarke(Ithaca, 1978), pp. 229 ff.

8

Michael McCormick, ‘Was hat der frühmittelalterliche König mit der Wirtschaft zu tun?’, inB. Jussen, S. Weinfurter

et al.

(eds),

Königsherrschaft in Europa

(Munich, forthcoming).

9

Hans-Werner Nicklis, ‘Nahmarktlandschaft und Fernhandelslandschaft. Über die unter-schiedliche geldgeschichtliche Entwicklung in Frankreich und Deutschland (9.–12. Jhd.)’,

Hamburger Beiträge zur Numismatik

36–38 (1982–1984), pp. 15–34.



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an idea of potential scale. The specific numbers do happen to comemostly from the south, and sources which mention numbers are notnecessarily much help for the commercial aspect of such movements.Conversely, witnesses who hint of the commercial side happen not tosupply specific numbers. But different sources can illuminate differentfacets of the same reality. Powerful testimony that wealth generated bythe slave trade went to merchants in the territory of modern Francecomes, for example, from the bishops of the provinces of Sens, Rheims,and Rouen. In a period of warfare in the east, Canon 76 of their councilof 845–846 states:

Let the merchants

of this kingdom

[sc. West Frankland], whether theyare Christians or Jews, be compelled by our pious Christian princesto sell, inside the Christians’ frontiers, the pagan slaves whom they,crossing through so many populations and towns of the faithful,convey into the hands of our cruellest infidel enemies – from whichcause both the wretched slaves themselves perish miserably whocould be saved were they bought by Christians, and the very greatnumber of the kingdom’s enemies is increased, lest God be angeredby such horrible cruelty, open infidelity, and loss of souls, and theenemies’ forces be increased.

10

Though there are no specific numbers here, the scale is clearly substan-tial. The profits too, one would think.

It is possible to address, at least in part, Henning’s question whetherany slave movements, listed in Table 25.2, brought wealth to anyone in‘the West’. The texts about Constantine-Cyril and Methodius supplyspecific numbers for two large groups of slaves assembled on the bor-ders of the Frankish empire, one of which explicitly was destined forsale in Venice (

Origins

, p. 773, Table 25.2, nos. 6 and 7; cf. pp. 766 ff.).If, as seems probable to me, the first group (supposedly 900 slaves) wasalso intended for the block before the saints had them liberated, theprofits would presumably have been going to the Slav princes who freedthem, as well as to any merchants, hunters and shippers involved in theDanubian trading chain and beyond. The sources identify who profitedfrom the sale of the second group, drawn from Methodius’s 200 priestsand seminarians: the Frankish soldiers who sold them to Jewish mer-chants, and those traders when they sold them in Venice. More profitswould have accrued to any Venetian who conveyed them further in the

10

Wilfried Hartmann (ed.),

MGH Conc

. 3, p. 124; for Louis the German’s frontier raids aroundthat time, see Johann Friedrich Böhmer, Engelbert Mühlbacher

et al

.,

Die Regesten des Kaiser-reichs unter den Karolingern

, Regesta imperii 1, 3rd edn (Hildesheim, 1966), nos. 1377a and 1386a.


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supply system.

11

Sales involving ‘Byzantine enclaves in Italy’ certainlybrought wealth to towns under the nominal political sovereignty of theeast. Nevertheless, geographically and economically, Naples, Venice,Amalfi, and Rome were indubitably in the west, and the profits theymade stayed in the west, as Venetian church building and the tradingports’ later history show. Even for manifestly ‘eastern’ raids alongEurope’s southern edge or by Vikings along northern shores, slavingcould hardly have lasted as long as it did without local collaborators,and therefore some local profits. By 836 Latin Campanians were sellingBeneventans ‘overseas’, and Italo-Byzantines hunted fellow Christiansor bought them from Arab hunters in order to resell them on the beach.European Christians became middlemen in the ninth-century phase ofArab slave raiding (

Origins

, pp. 770 ff.).Consider too the troops of pagan slaves transiting through the

French towns described by the bishops in 845–846. As the sad convoystrudged to the ‘infidels’, they needed food, wood, drink, and fodder,some of which certainly would have been paid for. Horses and mulesgot hurt and required replacing. The slaves and their drivers neededferries, such as those profitable ones that moved travellers across theAlpine Walensee (

Origins

, p. 642), and they will have paid the usualfees at bridges and bottlenecks. That such fees proliferated in the ninthcentury surely suggests increasing opportunities for making moneyfrom them. Like other merchants carrying other goods, the Frankishslave traders also will have paid the stiffer royal tolls assessed

ad valorem

.As the slave trains crossed France, they shed some wealth wherever theypassed. And when the slaves were finally sold off, the profit ended inFrankish traders’ purses.

The words ‘Europeans hunted and captured across the continent’(p. 733) may seem a broad characterization about an unpleasant aspectof European history. What was going on inside the empire – aside fromViking and Arab slave collecting – was, plausibly, on a smaller scalethan the proceeds of warfare on the marches. Nevertheless, slave salesclearly were occurring in Frankland, which means money was changinghands. This we can tell from the prohibitions: at Aachen, for example,Charles the Great forbade his servants (

servi regis

) to sell slaves to hisown officials. That can only mean some such sales – and profits – hadbeen occurring inside the empire in 802–803. A small fortune in earlymedieval terms, the Frankish slave price of 240 to 360 silver pennieshelps explain the powerful temptation. One sale could finance a horse;

11

Ihor

Í

ev

ç

enko, ‘Constantine-Cyril, Apostle of the Slavs, as “Bibliothecary,” or How Byzantinewas the Author of Constantine’s Vita?’, in N. Balázs and M. Sebök (eds),

The Man of ManyDevices who Wandered Full Many Ways . . . Festschrift in Honor of Janós M. Bak

(Budapest,1999), pp. 214–21.



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seventeen to twenty-five cows; or enough wheat bread to feed a familyof four for two to three years.

12

In the 820s, kidnapping and selling aslave (

servus

) happened often enough in northern France that thebishop of Cambrai specified a standard penance for it.

13

Similarly in thearchdiocese of Mainz, on the Rhine; there, however, Hrabanus Maurusseems to narrow the offence to the sale of fellow Christians.

14

By about900, a bishop visiting churches near Trier was expected routinely tointerrogate the faithful about kidnappings and sales into foreign slavery,or sales of Christian slaves involving Jews or pagans.

15

In each case, theway the offence was recorded suggests that such sales were a recurringproblem. The essential point is kidnapping and sales were occurringeven inside the Frankish empire. They could not have been happeningwithout the slaving circuits into which such unlucky individuals passed,and which likely had sprung up to deal with the booty collected inwarfare. Although plausibly different in scale, the two forms of slavecollecting, warfare and kidnapping, were intimately connected. Indeed,in the words of slavery’s leading sociologist, ‘the distinction . . . cannotbe too rigidly held’.

16

As

Origins

states (p. 747), there is no explicit mention of the sale ofcaptive Saxons abroad. The argument is that it is well attested that earlymedieval armies took humans as well as animals and movables as booty,that war slaves (captivi ) could be and were sold, that moralists beseechedCarolingian kings not to sell Christians to infidels, and indeed, not totake Christians as war slaves at all – which strongly suggests to me thatthey were doing it, that slaves are known to have been exported from theFrankish kingdom, and that the influx of Arab wealth corresponds toperiods of Carolingian expansion. It is important to understand just howtaciturn the sources are when they describe the conquest of Saxony.

12 Origins, p. 747, n. 77; Pierre Riché, Daily Life in the World of Charlemagne, trans. J.A.McNamera, revised edn (n.p., 1988), pp. 118–19.

13 Halitgarius, Liber poenitentialis, PL 105.700B: ‘Si quis servum, aut quemcunque hominem,quolibet ingenio in captivitatem reduxerit, vel transmiserit, sicut supra poeniteat.’ The phras-ing indicates a slave or other person was sold as a captivus, i.e. a war slave, and makes noexplicit limitation by religion. This canon first appeared in a widely diffused treatise com-posed in France between c .700 and 750: Raymund Kottje et al., CCSL 156 (1994), pp. xxii–xxv. See the synoptic edition, c. 39, ibid., pp. 57–9.

14 Using Deuteronomy XXIV.7, Hrabanus responded to a chorepiscopus’s query, ‘quid de eofaciendum esset, qui hominem christanum sollicitando furatus fuerit et in paganam gentemtradendo vendiderit, a quibus ultra ille venditus se eruere non possit’, ed. E. Dümmler, MGHEpp. 4.449.

15 Regino of Prüm, Libri duo de synodalibus causis 2, 41: ‘Interrogandum, si aliquis hominemliberum aut servum alterius, aut peregrinum et adventitium furatus fuerit, aut eum blandi-endo seduxerit et vendiderit et extra patriam in captivitatem miserit, aut si aliquis Iudaeo velpagano Christianum mancipium vendiderit, aut, si ipsi Iudaei Christiana mancipia vendant?’,ed. F.G.A. Wasserschleben (Leipzig, 1840), p. 212. See ibid., 2, preface, p. 206 on the inter-rogation in local churches.

16 Orlando Patterson, Slavery and Social Death (Cambridge, MA, 1982), p. 115.

Early Medieval Europe () © Blackwell Publishing Ltd

312 Michael McCormick

Typical accounts of Pippin III’s invasions of Saxony range in detailfrom ‘King Pippin in Saxony, and bishop Childegarius died’, up to themost expansive report of the same campaign, which occupies elevenlines in the Fredegar Continuator.17 The situation under Charlemagneis not much better. In these circumstances, arguing from chroniclers’silence that sales were not occurring carries limited weight.

Henning rightly draws attention to the Saxon deportations and theirconnection, or lack thereof, with the taking of war slaves. They deservemore study. Beginning in 795, Charlemagne embarked on what appearsto be a new strategy of uprooting massive numbers of (presumablyChristian) Saxons and resettling them inside his empire, a policy thatcontinued for nine years. It culminated in the final deportation of 804.According to Einhard, 10,000 people were transferred to various placesin Gaul and Germany.18 We need to know where exactly the deportedSaxons were settled, under what conditions, and for how long. Thoughplace names outside of Saxony may indeed preserve memories of theirpresence, each hypothetical identification needs archaeological verification,since other explanations exist for many of the ‘Saxon’ toponyms. Some,for instance, derive from a person’s name that included the Germanic root‘Sahs-’, and so do not testify to a Saxon ‘colony’.19 Old material cultureretained in new homes may identify transplanted Saxons; the newmolecular archaeology of migration might also help. The settlements’ geo-graphy, economic status, and duration should illuminate Charlemagne’sintentions. In any case, the written sources imply that the deportees’status differed from that of war slaves. The victims of the 795 deporta-tion, for instance, are explicitly identified as hostages (obsides, or hospites),a special legal status now coming under renewed study.20

17 Annales Petaviani continuati, a. 753, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS 1.11; Continuation of Fredegar,35, ed. B. Krusch, MGH SRM 2.182.19–183.1: ‘The following year the Saxons again broke thefaith which they formerly had promised to the aforesaid king and again revolted. Angered bythis, king Pippin assembled the whole army of the Franks, and having crossed the Rhineagain, came to Saxony with a great force, and there put their country to the torch mostextremely, and in the same place took war slaves (captivi ), both men and women, along withmuch booty and killed very many Saxons. Seeing this the Saxons were moved by contritionand, with accustomed fear, petitioned the king’s clemency that he grant them peace, and theywould deliver oaths and much greater tribute than they had previously promised, and theywould never rebel again. Thanks to Christ’s propitiousness, king Pippin returned with greattriumph to the Rhine, to the castle named Bonn.’

18 The Chronicon Moissiacense, a. 795, ed. G.H. Pertz, MGH SS 1.302, records the novelty ofthe mass deportations: ‘tantam multitudinem obsidum inde tulit, quantum nunquam indiebus suis, aut in diebus patris sui, aut in diebus regum Francorum inde aliquando tulerunt’;Einhard, Vita Karoli magni, 7, ed. O. Holder-Egger and G. Waitz, 6th edn, MGH SRG (1911),p. 10. Cf. Lampen, ‘Sachsenkriege’ (above, Henning, n. 10), pp. 268–71; Louis Halphen,Charlemagne et l’empire carolingien (Paris, 1947), p. 71, thought the policy began only in 799.

19 Henning Kaufmann, Altdeutsche Personenamen. Ergänzungsband (Munich, 1968), pp. 299 ff.20 Adam Kosto, ‘Hostages in the Carolingian World (714–840)’, EME 11 (2002), pp. 123–47,

esp. 131 ff. on the sources’ distinction between captivi and hostages.

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Complexity, chronology and context 313

Andreas Schwarcz emphasizes seventh-century themes: Spanishtravellers, whether the Avars traded between east and west, and theeconomic significance of Thessalonica. This century urgently requiresmore study. The problem has been that the texts are scarce and un-evenly distributed. Archaeology is beginning to remedy this, as theCrypta Balbi at Rome makes remarkably clear.21 Excavation will multiplythe sites around the Mediterranean and beyond where we can followdevelopments through the seventh and eighth centuries. Then it will bepossible to return to the texts, including from Thessalonica, and reap-praise them in the light of the material record. And it certainly wouldbe rewarding to expand Origins’ prosopographical method beyond thetwo centuries which I examined.22

How far, however, does recent archaeology challenge the traditionalview that the Avar settlement impeded overland commerce betweeneast and west? Schwarcz notes that Byzantine coins found among theAvars date overwhelmingly from Heraclius’s reign (610–641), when theAvars besieged Constantinople and received great tributes. He furtherrecognizes that direct Byzantine imports seem to disappear in the eighthcentury.23 And, interesting though it surely is in its own right, theimportation into the Avars’ western territory of some objects fromneighbouring Bavaria and the eastern Adriatic does necessarily implysignificant commerce across the entire Avar dominion.24

Florin Curta’s impassioned plea would have us put eastern Europe atthe centre of European history. One can only agree that western Europe’shistoriographical dominance has fostered an unjustified neglect ofeastern Europe, and not just in the early Middle Ages. But if Schwarczsuspects that commerce crossed the Avar realm, Curta seems to doubtthat Roman collapse and the rise of new ethnicities caused major dis-ruptions in overland communications through east central Europe.

Using valuable material drawn from eastern European publicationswhich are rare in North America, Curta contends that additionalarchaeological evidence from south-eastern Europe modifies some pat-terns which Origins detected. Most importantly, he believes that east–west communications along the Danube connected the area near the

21 Clementina Panella and Lucia Saguì, ‘Consumo e produzione a Roma tra tardoantico ealtomedioevo: le merci, i contesti’, in Roma nell’alto medioevo 2, Settimane 48 (Spoleto, 2001),pp. 757–820.

22 For Visigothic Spain, see already J. Vilella Masana, ‘Relaciones exteriores de la PeninsulaIbérica durante la Baja Romanidad (300–711): Prosopografía’, doctoral thesis, Universitat deBarcelona (1987).

23 The late seventh-century Zemiansky Vrbovok hoard has been interpreted diversely as theproperty of a Byzantine silversmith or, at least partially, as remnants of Byzantine tribute toa foreign ruler: Origins, p. 851.

24 Distelberger, ‘Import’, (Curta, above, n. 11), pp. 287–308, identifies those imports, chieflyfrom the eighth century.



Black Sea to the edge of Carolingian territory even before the periodwhen I observed them. Moreover, between the seventh and ninth cen-turies, he thinks, the Via Egnatia never ceased connecting east and west.Both opinions merit close scrutiny.25

Origins argued that in the eighth century, a new communicationsnetwork coalesced to link the Mediterranean with the upper andmiddle Danube area following, approximately, the southern reaches ofthe prehistoric ‘Amber Trail’. This was deduced from the patterns ofArab and Byzantine coin finds along the route, not the mere presenceof coins. Although ‘one or another Byzantine coin may have workedits way westward across the Balkans’ (Origins, p. 370), most tended toshow the same dates, types and mints as those then circulating alongthe Adriatic coast, and to differ from those attested in the Byzantineheartland. Arab coins, which seem unlikely to have reached the middleDanube from Byzantium, provided a second, independent indicator ofthis north–south movement. Both are reinforced by travellers betweenFriuli and Pannonia (p. 556), as well as, now, by the eighth-centuryAvars’ Adriatic links adduced by Schwarcz. Then, in the course of theninth century, east–west movements resumed along the length of theDanube corridor, linking this region to the Black Sea zone dominatedby the Bulgarian empire.

Against this, Curta suggests from pottery evidence and becauseByzantine coins ‘show up’ on the lower Danube, that coins may havetravelled westward up that river axis, rather than northward along theamber route. A new archaeological report argues that certain potteryforms attested in Bohemia and Moravia may have been inspired by‘Danubian luxury wares’, a potentially valuable insight for these textlessterritories that could link the middle Danube and the Black Sea region.Again, the question is when. The ceramicist herself is circumspect,assigning one bottle to ‘perhaps as early as the close of the seventh orthe first half of the eighth century’, and that is on purely typologicalgrounds. Beyond a few forms tentatively situated c. 800, she dates mostof the ceramics to the ninth century, that is to say, the broad periodwhen communications suggest nascent links between the first Bulgarianempire and the Frankish west.26

25 Curta’s contention that the Baltic economy was not linked with the southern reaches of theAmber Trail is somewhat puzzling insofar as the same conclusion was already drawn inOrigins (p. 376). Curta also finds the evidence about the Carolingian slave trade ‘slim’. It maynot be as voluminous as one would wish – what early medieval evidence is? – but textualreferences to it are far and away the most abundant for any form of early medieval trade, andmuch thicker than for the Bulgarian slaving Curta postulates.

26 Profantová, ‘Danubian Influences’ (above, Curta, n. 6). ‘Find context’, that is, dating evid-ence independent of the pot itself, is ‘deficient or even non-existent . . . all too often’. Bothquotes from p. 233. As cited by Curta (ibid.), a second study pointing in this direction, by



But the coins are the main argument, and their dates of issue andeastern origins are firmer than stylistic inferences from pots. Chrono-logy counts: Byzantine coins could indeed travel from east to west, Ithink, but only from the ninth century’s middle decades, when Danu-bian communications resumed. Curta maintains that Origins omittednumerous non-Carolingian coin finds stemming from his own area ofexpertise, chiefly the territory of present-day Romania, and that thoseomissions fundamentally change the overall picture. To observe ‘omis-sions’ from the lower Danube is in fact to regret that the book did notextend its purview to study systematically the coin finds of the firstBulgarian empire and its margins. That would be a marvellous endeav-our which might yet shed light on coin movements into the Caroling-ian borderlands, some 1000 kilometres west of the Black Sea. But anysuch study will be massive in its own right, and will have to be con-ducted primarily in the context of the Byzantine, not the Carolingianempire. In this age, Byzantines and Bulgarians were locked in conflictand cooperation. From 756 to 816, and again from 894, they attackedeach other; in 763 Byzantine cavalry even travelled by ship into theDanube estuary. Bulgarian armies reached Constantinople, andreturned home laden with slaves and plunder, presumably includingcoins. Peacetime trade between the two empires was regulated andimportant. In these circumstances, the many Byzantine coins found inand around the areas under Bulgarian control will first have to beinventoried and analysed in their own, local historical context before weappraise how they relate, or do not relate, to finds far to the west.

There is no contesting that the maps of coin finds would look dif-ferent if they included tenth-century issues: every map would look dif-ferent if the book were about the tenth century. Chronology counts,and one cannot mix indiscriminately early medieval data from differentcenturies any more than one would for Roman or early modern his-tory.27 Insofar as I could verify the references given for what apparentlyamounts to fifteen finds, most were published only summarily andtypically lack details such as type or mint needed for closer comparison

Stefanoviçová (or Ítefanoviçová?), was, according to the national online catalogues, not avail-able in North American or German libraries when I wrote this.

27 On this score, the hoard discovered at Raducaneni (east of the Carpathian mountains) andsome 170 kilometres north of the Dobruja, contained mostly local and Byzantine metalwork,along with seven dirhams struck in the eighth or ninth centuries. Teodor, ‘Tesaurul’ (above,Curta, n. 10), pp. 417–20, concluded that the treasure was concealed between 875 and 920 inconnection with the Magyars or Pechenegs. These silver coins seem too distant, too different,and their deposit too late, to relate obviously to the closest Arab coins, the gold ones foundnear Sirmium, nearly 700 kilometres to the south-west. Rather, as Teodor suggested, thesilver coins reflect the well-known dirham flow westward across Russia.



with the coins found well to the west.28 Even so, the geography of thefinds Curta assigns to the eighth and ninth century allows some clari-fication. Ten of fifteen come from or near the Dobruja, a coastal strip60 to 130 kilometres wide, between the last stretch of the Danube and theBlack Sea, and a favourite north–south corridor between the Ukraineand Thrace.29 The Dobruja greatly interested the Byzantine military,and it is not surprising to find the empire’s coins clustering there.30

More importantly, it lies 700 kilometres due east of my main group ofByzantine coins on the southern Amber Trail, and considerably fartherby any possible travel route. An eleventh coin, in Croatia, was in factexcluded from Origins for reasons stated there; in any case, its attributionto an Italian mint militates against Curta’s opinion that it evidences anearly flow up the Danube.31 The four remaining coins were found welleast of the Iron Gates, the Danubian rapids about midway betweenthe Black Sea and the Carolingian frontier. One discovered at SalcutaPanaghia was in any case minted in the name of Theophilus (829–842),when communications were certainly moving again along the lengthof the Danube. An eighth-century coin lay beyond the mountains and200 kilometres north of the river, so it is hard to relate it to Danubiancommunications. Before Danube travel certainly resumed, this leavestwo coins which might link the Dobruja finds with Origins’ Byzantinecoins. The one of Nicephorus I (802–811) – destroyed with his armyinside the Bulgarian empire – comes from north of Bucharest (Sirna),250 kilometres east of the Iron Gates; and a gold coin came from theregion of Oltenia, some 90 kilometres north-east of the Iron Gates. Thetwo Greek coins are certainly interesting, but they do not seem to me

28 Curta’s admirable goal of bringing south-eastern European research into the scholarly main-stream naturally rests on rare publications from the region, in languages which few medieval-ists master. Unfortunately his essay, as communicated to me, seems to display inaccuracies inthe references which complicated the challenging task of verifying the data on which his essayis founded. For instance, I hunted in vain for the article of ‘I. Dimian’ (Curta, above, n. 5)in the journal cited. Cf. e.g. below, n. 37.

29 The two finds near the Dobruja are the coin of Leo IV (775–780), found at Tichileßti on theDanube’s west bank, only 200 kilometres upstream from the modern mouth of the river; andthe gold piece of Michael III (842–867) from Gavanoasa (Moldava), 35 kilometres north ofthe Dobruja.

30 See e.g., George Ostrogorsky, History of the Byzantine state, trans. J. Hussey, 2nd edn (NewBrunswick, NJ, 1969), pp. 168 and 256.

31 The publisher suspects the gold coin of Leo III (717–741) in the Istrian Society for Archae-ology and Local History, which Curta gives as coming from ‘Vodinjan’ (i.e. ‘Vodnjan’, Italian‘Dignano’), was minted at Syracuse. Origins’ coin counts could have been much increasedhad I reckoned as local finds every coin in the museums of eastern Europe (Origins, p. 815).However, my criteria for inclusion tended to be restrictive, because, to avoid muddying thewaters, it seemed wiser to start with a smaller but surer evidentiary base. Coins lacking findprovenances abound in European museums, since collectors often bequeath the coins theyhave purchased locally and in the course of their travels. The coin in question was such a giftof a private collector, T. Luciani of Vodnjan, and lacks a provenance: Gorini, ‘La collezione’(above, Curta, n. 5), p. 146, no. 43.



to prove that the group of Byzantine and Arab coins which clustersseveral hundred kilometres west of the Iron Gates got there from thehinterland of the Black Sea, rather than from the Adriatic.

Plotting ‘Arab silver finds in all of Europe’ certainly indicates a majordifference east (and north) of a line drawn from the Elbe to the Danube.32

To the north-east is the well-studied later ninth-century zone dominatedby Arab silver coins which travelled across Russia to Scandinavia andcirculated there without interference (Origins, pp. 350 ff.; 376). South-west of the imaginary line are the territories whose Frankish rulers triedto exclude foreign coinage: they naturally show smaller numbers ofmostly earlier deposits, and coins mentioned in texts, especially but notexclusively of gold, which did not compete directly with the royal silverissues. It is with them that Origins is principally concerned.33 In any case,even in areas lacking royal control, numbers of coins need not reflect dir-ectly the quantity of exchange, for one should not assume that merchantspurchasing goods from central European populations paid cash. Tradersreceiving money for human wares in Muslim markets probably wouldnot have used those same coins to purchase their slaves: paying slavesuppliers with other, less valuable wares such as textiles, beads, weapons,spices and drugs, would have been more profitable. Precisely this patternnow seems confirmed by the flow from the Adriatic into central Europeof another trading ware which Curta cites. As Johan Callmer has shown,glass beads manufactured in the Middle East began moving along theroutes from Venice to central Europe in the later eighth century.34

Curta is right that cowrie shells from the Indian Ocean trace yetanother connection between the Middle East and Europe. Again, thequestion is when. The specimens from the seventh-century Ukrainebear comparing with the dozens of shells from contemporary Anglo-Saxon cemeteries.35 Their appearance at opposite ends of Europe c. 600invites continent-wide investigation. But their seventh-century depositdate means they likely still reflect late antique transportation networks.They shed little light on changes in the eighth century.

32 The ‘discrepancy’ that Curta notes between Origins’ maps of Arab coins and those publishedby Herrmann and by Brather is not surprising. The latter focus on the ‘northern arc’;Herrmann did not know most of the finds identified in Origins, and includes a map thatextends to 950, while Brather treats only silver hoards, not Origins’ silver, gold and copperhoards and single finds; moreover, two of the three maps Curta cited as showing the ‘discrep-ancy’ concern the tenth century, not the eighth and ninth.

33 The two Arab coins of unknown provenance in the museum at Novi Sad which Curtaproposes to add to Origins’ catalogue are apparently misidentified as dirhams (i.e. silver).Stanojevic, ‘Naselja’ (Curta, above, n. 9) clearly states they are dinars, i.e. gold; they wereexcluded from my catalogue because of their murky status: Origins, p. 816; cf. above, n. 31.

34 ‘Oriental Beads’, (cited by Curta, above, n. 20).35 See C.J. Arnold, An Archaeology of the Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 2nd edn (London, 1997),

p. 119, with 121, Fig. 5.12.



A recent synthesis sketches a pattern which, in part, corresponds tothat outlined in Origins for other materials, even though cowries occuralmost exclusively as grave-goods. They peak around 600 then decline,with a slight increase around 700. Cowries seem then to vanish until adifferent species appears in eastern Europe in the ninth century. Sincedifferent cowries have different origins (e.g. the Merovingians’ cypraeapantherina come only from the Red Sea and the Gulf of Aden), thepotential is great.36 Whether or not the specific finds Curta identifiesas early eighth-century cowries also reached eastern Europe and weredeposited then are stimulating and open questions which deservedeeper scrutiny.37

Finally, Curta accepts that, from the sixth to the ninth century, tradeceased along the Via Egnatia, the Roman highway that bridged theBalkans. He believes, however, that communications continued. Thisleads him to doubt a more general connection between communicationsand commerce. Nevertheless the evidence that the Via Egnatia continuedto link east and west in the eighth century seems inconclusive. Includ-ing its late antique extension to Constantinople, the Egnatian Waystretched well over 600 kilometres from the Adriatic. Use of parts of solong a highway are not the same as use of the whole. One can wellimagine that here as elsewhere in Europe, segments of Roman highwayscontinued to serve local communications, as they still do today in someparts of the countryside. But this in no way proves that the commun-ications travelled regularly from end to end of that highway.

Early medieval settlements are indeed attested at several points alongthe Way. The question is their nature, date, and how they show traffic

36 See the concise survey of K. Banghard, ‘Kaurischnecke’, in Reallexikon der GermanischenAltertumskunde 16 (Berlin, 2000), pp. 344–7.

37 His dates for some finds differ from those in the publications themselves, which is perhapssmall surprise in the vexed area of early Slav chronology. Vuzharova, Slaviani i Prabulgari(above, Curta, n. 17), p. 54, reports a ‘mussel’ shell from Grave 39 of the cemetery at Babovo whichshe dates between the late eighth and tenth centuries. The implications of this date for com-munications patterns would be quite different from Curta’s early eighth-century date; Fiedler,Studien (Curta, above, n. 17), dates the same cemetery to the later seventh to early ninthcenturies (see e.g., 1.270, Abb. 1). Vuzharova, Slaviani, p. 321 reports a necklace of ‘snails’ inGrave 39 at Ninovitsa; there is no ‘p. 468’ as cited by Curta. The ‘cowrie’ Curta cites fromRazdelna Grave 33 appears problematic: it comes from an apparently undated grave in acemetery used (according to Fiedler) from the late seventh to the late ninth centuries: Fiedler,Studien, 2.468; ibid., 1.227–235 and 240–1. Moreover, it is unclear on what grounds Curtaidentifies the unspecified mussel shell as a cowrie: the drawing on vol. 2, Taf. 61, no. 16 doesnot seem unequivocal, the excavators reported it as a group of c. 20 shells (of which only one wassaved), and Fiedler interprets it (1.187) instead as the remains of a funerary meal. No cowriesoccur on pp. 221 and 231 of Bulle, ‘Ausgrabungen’ (above, Curta, n. 17). A ‘necklace of smallmussels’ is reported for Grave IV, on p. 219, which Bulle dates to the seventh century. Finally,what Curta identifies as a specimen of Cypraea voluta from Rhé and Fettich, Jutas und Öskü(Curta, above, n. 17), p. 24, is described differently by the excavators, who thought it wascarved bone; the drawing (Abb. 6) shows a kind of mushroom shape. Curta’s divergentidentifications may derive from first-hand inspection, but it would be good to know that.



from end to end of the route. Some situated roughly on the westernend of the road, between Ohrid and the Adriatic, have been ascribedto the ‘Komani culture’ on the basis of grave-goods. Scholars associatethese cemeteries with groups of Roman ethnicity who still inhabited theplaces after imperial administrative structures disappeared. They assignthem to the seventh and eighth century, although ‘it is impossibleto date them with precision’. The three cemeteries farthest from theAdriatic that Curta attributes to this culture lie between 50 and 100kilometres north of the Via Egnatia. This is rather distant for arguingthey are part of that road, and one in any event reportedly lacks burialsbetween the fifth and tenth centuries.38 Much like what was adducedfor the Danube, these sites seem meagre evidence that the Via Egnatiafunctioned as a long-distance route in the eighth century.39

Alan Stahl rightly insists that the Carolingian silver coinage was initself a significant economic development, as Origins’ study of the trans-alpine circulation of Carolingian coins (pp. 681–7) underscores. Barringnew insights into the sources of Frankish silver, or into the relativeimportance of coins produced in mints at entry points into the empire,such as Dorestad, Venice or Treviso, what Carolingian coins can showabout external trade is naturally limited. But they do seem to illuminateregional trade inside the empire.

Our opinions differ on the foreign coins. Stahl contests the veryevidence for these coins and its interpretation. Thus he suggests thatthe Arabic word manqUsh, Latinized as mancusus or mancosus, enteredItalian usage by 778 only in order to differentiate the Italian solidus (theold Roman name for the unit of account of the gold coins that circu-lated in Italy), from Frankish silver pennies, which were also countedin solidi. The reasoning is unclear. Italians had no new need to specifytheir meaning of the word solidus as designating gold coins, since, in778, the well-established Frankish use of the word for silver coins stillexisted only on the far side of the Alps. In fact, the new word mancosusappears at least three years before the silver penny was introduced in

38 Quote from Saradi, ‘Aspects’ (Curta, n. 24), p. 121. Curta appears to extend this culture tothe east of where Popovic and Saradi situate it. Although Viniçani’s cemetery ceramic has infact been associated with the Komani type, it is about 50 kilometres north of the Way.Krusarski Rid and Goren Kozjak are both about 100 kilometres north of the Via Egnatia;Krusarski Rid lacks burials between the fifth and tenth centuries according to Maneva, ‘Lasurvie’ (Curta, n. 23), p. 851.

39 The same objection holds against the medieval reuse of early Christian cemeteries in theterritory of the Macedonian Republic. Only two or three seem to have been in use at somepoint between c. 600 and 800; most are stated to have returned to use only in the ninth ortenth century: Maneva (above, Curta, n. 23), p. 844. The ‘evidence’ for eighth-century repairson the Way between Ohrid and Vodena is apparently only a hypothesis to explain why theroute remained unchanged in later centuries: Oikonomides, ‘Via Egnatia’ (Curta, n. 22),p. 13, with notes 25 and 26. Oikonomides himself (p. 11) believed that communications tothe west ceased beyond Thessalonica.



Italy.40 Anyhow, the usual eighth-century Italian documentary formulaabout coins almost always specifies that they were ‘solidi of gold’ (aurisolidi ). Mancosus was added to this formula in the term’s earliest auth-entic occurrences (Origins, pp. 812–14). Whatever the motive for addingthe new word to the old formulas, that does not affect the adoption ofan Arabic term and the finds of the Arab coins themselves.

Stahl simply dismisses the testimony of penalty clauses withoutengaging with the analysis that substantiated their significance. In anycase, whether or not one shares the appraisal that ‘places like Veniceand southern Italy’, where he states that the new coin name appears,were ‘marginal’, that word seems to me ill-suited to Milan, Verona,Spoleto, Farfa and Rome, all of which are in northern and central Italy.As Map 11.1 (p. 325) shows, none of the coins which I tracked occur insouthern Italy: Rome is the southernmost attestation on that map. Thatthe appearance of the new coin in central and northern Italy might beconnected somehow with southern Italy’s efforts to ‘maintain economicand political independence from both the Carolingian and Byzantineempires’ is therefore not easy to grasp.

Stahl contests the uncontested coins’ significance because of theirlocation (outside the Carolingian heartland) and number (too few insidethe Frankish realm). Most numismatists and historians, however, thinkthat the Carolingians so effectively controlled the coinage circulatinginside Frankish borders that few foreign coins of any sort are foundthere.41 One therefore would expect that non-Frankish coins occurmostly on the margins of that territory. Foreign coins that entered theFrankish empire normally will have been restruck as Frankish currency.As far as numbers are concerned, an average of sixteen finds of varyingquantities of coins per twenty-five-year period may seem to some toosmall for drawing any conclusions. That is the value of comparing thosefinds to the entirely independent archival records of foreign coins,especially when their patterns strikingly resemble those displayed bythe coins which have come from the ground. What is more, the coinswhich have emerged since I wrote the book confirm the patterns. Thecounterfeit eighth-century Arab dinar discovered near Paderborn –where Charlemagne oversaw the Saxons’ subjugation – sits well amongthe coins associated with the Rhône–Rhine corridor.42 A dirham excav-ated in the emporium of Ribe, on Jutland’s west coast, probably also

40 Grierson and Blackburn, Medieval European Coinage, vol. 1 (Stahl, above, n. 3), p. 208; Stahl(above) prefers a later introduction, in 787.

41 E.g. Simon Coupland, ‘Money and Coinage under Louis the Pious’, Francia 17 (1990),pp. 23–54, at pp. 32–3.

42 Michael McCormick, ‘Charlemagne and the Mediterranean World’, in P. Godman, J. Jarnutet al. (eds), Am Vorabend der Kaiserkrönung. Das Epos ‘Karolus Magnus et Leo Papa’ und derPapstbesuch in Paderborn 799 (Berlin, 2002), pp. 193–218, at pp. 193 ff.



belongs with this group, since it was associated with a phase yieldingeighth-century Frisian sceattas.43 The missing dinars which have turnedup at the Novi Sad museum (Serbia), were struck at Baghdad under AlMansur between 762 and 775.44 If they were found locally, they wouldreinforce the cluster around Sirmium which prolongs the find patternof the southern Amber Trail (Origins, p. 377 ff.). Struck at Romein 715–718, the stray Byzantine gold piece from Mistelbach (LowerAustria) certainly adds yet another link between the Adriatic and theDanubian regions.45 Finally, the eighth-century gold solidi from Romerecently excavated on Majorca invite comparison with Sardinia’s com-munications patterns.46

I agree (Origins, p. 381) that bronze coins cannot directly representlong-distance trade, i.e. payments in connection with trade. There is nosuggestion in Origins of the ‘integration of the bronze . . . into the silver-based economy’ of the Carolingians. Given their small intrinsic value,the foreign bronze coins lost around Carolingian Europe were not somekind of international instrument of payment: rather they represent incid-ental losses by people who, directly or indirectly, had access to placeswhere these coins were used. And in that sense, they indubitably testifyto communications. They testify only indirectly to trade. As for thegold, my suggestion is that the Venetians kept it for themselves (p. 758).

Regardless of how one interprets their testimony on economic change,the foreign coins of gold and silver flowing toward the Carolingianempire possessed intrinsic economic value. Though the early medievalwritten record is notorious for its incompleteness, it is possible to docu-ment 1647 dinars (i.e. of gold) from coin finds and texts, not including themany coins mentioned in penalty clauses. If this seems a small number,remember that, translated into the silver on which Carolingian coinagewas based, it was the equivalent of 28,281 dirhams. That much silverrecycled into Carolingian pennies would make over 49,000 of them.

Long-term continuity must not blind us to short-term change. Stahltakes issue with my citing (p. 671) numismatic research which deducesthat Dorestad’s ‘economic boom’ lasted down to about 840 (rather thanc. 830, as previously thought) ‘when in fact Dorestad had been animportant mint in the Merovingian centuries as well’. He states that I

43 If the early deposit date is correct, this badly corroded coin arrived before the ninth-century‘Viking’ flow across the northern arc: Kirsten Bendixen, ‘Sceattas and Other Coin Finds’, inM. Bencard, L. Bender Jørgensen et al. (eds), Ribe Excavations 1970–76, 1, trans. J. Hines(Esbjerg, 1981), pp. 63–101, at p. 97.

44 Above, n. 31; Stanojevic, ‘Naselja’ (above, Curta, n. 9), pp. 130–1; cf. Origins, p. 816.45 Distelberger, ‘Import’ (Curta, above, n. 11), pp. 305–6. 46 Hans Roland Baldus, ‘Die Goldmünzen [= “Die frühchristliche Anlage von Son Fadrinet

(Campos, Mallorca), III.” ]’, Madrider Mitteilungen 43 (2002), pp. 289–92, which I owe tothe kindness of Cécile Morrisson.



view ‘monetary phenomena of the era as innovations rather than partof a longer process of development’. This is to conflate the simpleexistence of a mint (‘long-term continuity’) with the changing short-term history of its production and therefore its changing monetary andeconomic significance. The numismatists’ argument which I followed isthat the volume of production of the Dorestad mint surged in the latereighth and early ninth century. Similarly, Origins nowhere argues thattolls were a Carolingian innovation. Rather, and much more import-antly, the evidence shows that royal (and other) concern with tollsincreased, which seems to me a good indicator that trade was thengaining importance.

David Whitehouse summarizes the important new findings aboutlarge-scale raw glass production in the late Roman Levant and its exportto the western Mediterranean. They open yet another path to trade. Iffurther research sustains the reasoning derived from chemical analysis,the presence of certain proportions of certain chemicals (e.g. soda)means use of raw materials from Egypt and the Levant; others point tohome-made potash glass. Two crucial questions will shape the implica-tions for the early medieval economy: chronology and recycling. Withrespect to the second, Whitehouse suspects that the volume of glassproduced in the early Middle Ages rules out significant recourse torecycled Roman glass. That may well be, but we must evaluate the stillscarce data in the light of several factors, starting with the fact that theearly medieval population was much smaller than the late Roman one.A sharply reduced population meant sharply reduced aggregate demandfor all goods, including glass, in comparison to the late Roman period,even if per capita demand stayed the same (which seems unlikely).

Take the city of Rome. The fourth-century city met the glass needsof, conservatively, some 500,000 people for vessels and windows. Sinceit is virtually eternal, much glass which had been imported before 400must still have been available for recycling in subsequent centuries.Now the early medieval population of Rome is generally reckoned atwell under a tenth of the fourth-century figure. How much (expensive)new glass would Romans have needed to import to satisfy their needsin the eighth or ninth century? An analogy suggests not much: earlymedieval builders in Italy relied massively on recycled ancient materialsfor cut stone, bricks and tiles. If the analogy holds, the reduced needsof early medieval Rome would not have required much new raw glass.The availability of recyclable material must factor into analysis along-side the supply networks.47

47 Tuscany probably recycled bricks at least until the tenth or eleventh century: Fabio Redi, ‘Ilaterizi nell’edilizia medievale a Pisa e a Lucca’, in P. Boucheron, H. Broise et al. (eds), La



In fact, new analyses of glass from Rome’s Crypta Balbi reveal a sig-nificant shift around 700, when a change in chemical signature signalsa marked increase in recycling. The chemistry coheres with the siteevidence which yielded old mosaic tesserae.48 Of course, the amount ofold glass available for recycling varied from place to place. Sites withoutaccess to major ancient constructions may have relied less on recycling.Charlemagne’s transport of columns and glass across the Alps to hisnew palace at Aachen (Origins, p. 704, n. 43) is an extreme example forwhat must have been especially desirable materials.

Here, too, precise chronology is critical for the broader history oftrade: in the absence of recycling, finding Egyptian natron in Italianglass around 675 would mean something very different from finding itaround 775. Recycled Roman glass may also have been preferred forsome functions, and new potash-based glass for others. For instance, atCharlemagne’s Paderborn palace, the abundant window glass is potash-based, but some especially high-quality stained glass still uses soda. Asmall workshop that briefly produced soda glass seems to have recycled,for sixty-seven old tesserae were found scattered around the oven.49 Insum, each individual find of glass will have to be analysed on its ownmerits in order to unlock its new testimony on Mediterranean trade inlate antiquity and the early Middle Ages.

These remarkably diverse and stimulating contributions make onething crystal clear. Historians of the early medieval economy are enter-ing a new era in which new methods, new data and new spatial under-standings will foster new insights and correct old ones, so long as weare attentive to when and where the evidence comes from, to the com-plexity, chronology and context of the data. The hope expressed in Originsthat new kinds of evidence could be brought to bear on this greatquestion, to test and improve the findings of that book, is becomingreality far more swiftly and broadly than I would have dared to imagine.

brique antique et médiévale, Collection de l’Ecole française de Rome 272 (Paris, 2000),pp. 193–218, at pp. 193–5; Roberto Parenti and Juan Antonio Quirós Castillo, ‘La produzionedei mattoni della Toscana medievale (XIII–XVI secolo)’, in ibid., pp. 219–36, at pp. 220–2.Repairs on Rome’s walls and the newly discovered ninth-century house on the Forum reliedon recycled stone and bricks: Roberto Meneghini and Riccardo Santangeli Valenzani, ‘Latrasformazione del tessuto urbano tra V e IX secolo’, in M.S. Arena, P. Delogu et al. (eds),Roma dall’antichità al medioevo. Archeologia e storia nel Museo nazionale romano Crypta Balbi(Milan, 2001), pp. 20–33, at pp. 27–9.

48 P. Mirti, P. Davit et al., ‘Glass Fragments from the Crypta Balbi in Rome’, Archaeometry 43(2001), pp. 491–502, at p. 500.

49 Sveva Antonella Gai, ‘Glas in der Karolingerzeit’, in C. Stiegemann and M. Wemhoff (eds),Kunst und Kultur der Karolingerzeit. Karl der Grosse und Papst Leo III. in Paderborn. Katalogder Ausstellung, 1 (Mainz, 1999), pp. 160–74, at pp. 162–5.

Complexity, chronology and context in the early medieval economy

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