Gabriel Burin

When Anglo-Saxon and Frankish kings resumed minting coins to restart their economy, they had no working silver mines or sources, so they melted down precious Byzantine silver works accumulated at their courts to make their first coinage. Isotope values for post-Roman coins in Northwest Europe match Byzantine silver, showing that the first Anglo-Saxon and Frankish coinage were minted from recycled Byzantine silver. "Erratic, gold content offers further confirmation that the silver did not stem from fresh mining but must have been drawn from recycled metal." "The similarity with these Eastern Roman/Byzantine objects is sufficiently close to suggest that Byzantine silver was the dominant source of the silver powering the great seventh-century surge of minting around the North Sea. This has previously been suggested, but the results presented here offer the first physical confirmation of the use of Byzantine silver."