Anyone collect ancient trinkets?

Syrian spindle whorl, 4th-7th centuries AD...

 

Log in or Sign up to hide this ad.

Medieval pipe, 4th-7th centuries AD...

 

I'd love to get an ancient oil lamp in my collection, especially one that is still functional. I'd love to try it out when writing at night.

 

What did they smoke John? I know tobacco was unknown at the time - hashish?

 

Mostly Maryjane, but other options were clarified butter (ghee), fish offal (blech!), dried snake skins and various pastes molded around incense sticks, smoking substances that go back 2000 years in Europe and the Middle East.

However - as a dealer, if you offer such a pipe for sale you must clearly mark that it is for use with TOBACCO ONLY! Otherwise you are selling drug paraphernalia.

 

I did not KNOW that! For some odd reason, I always thought that Europeans were introduced to smoking substances from the Amerinds of North America... with Tobacco the main catalyst. Wow, smoking ghee, fish guts, snake, and molds seem desperate.

LOL, when I was a wee tyke I remember lighting up wild carrot stalks to be cool smoking them. They were a tuber that grew to 8' with a sharp root that made cool spears when they dried out in the Fall. However, they were also hollow that made cool smoking sticks. Nothing came of it, no buzz, no different feeling other than it would be hot as heck when you cut the stalk too short. We dropped that "fun thing" after a couple experiments, and continued on with our SPEAR WARS using those wild carrot stalks! You could throw them a country mile then!

Here is a spear and the kinda warriors we were when I was a wee lad (probly 6-8 yo) with those Wild Carrot Stalks (galvanized steel garbage can lids made a cool shield!):


Sicily Mamertini 264-241 BCE AE Pentonkion Zeus Warrior Shield Spear Mercenary Samnites- Messana

 

I think some of those things were used as ritual substances. Cannabis was the preferred drag. It was, after all, grown in huge quantities throughout Europe in the Middle Ages for use as hemp to make sails, rope, fishing nets, clothes, etc. In the modern world we've forgotten just how ubiquitous hemp was in ancient cultures. They used it for everything and anything, including as a euphoriant.

 

Yeah, I understood they used it for all kinds of working materials, but had no idea they imbibed / ingested it!

 

Well, like so much about the ancient world, we can only make educated guesses. Herodotus reports that the Scythians made incense from hemp, other psychoactive substances like henbane show up in Viking graves, and the consistent use of cannabis appears in Arabic sources around AD 1100. Language and translation are always issues though - we assume these various sources are talking about cannabis because of the effects described.

Native Americans figured out that drying and smoking tobacco leaves gives you a little high. I think we can safely assume that Europeans figured it out for marijuana buds, as they were surrounded by hemp being used for other reasons.

 

Arabs also chewed myrrh and frankincense, in addition to qaat. Whatever floats your boat I guess...

 

And Hippocrates, the "Father of Medicine" recommended smoking herbs for various ailments.

 

Plenty of Egyptian mummies have tested positive for nicotine, leading some to believe there was some sort of trade between the new and old worlds. Nicotine (as I recall) only comes from new world plants. Personally I have no idea, but as yet it hasn't been explained.

 

Norse type lunar amulet..

 

Status and bullion
The Viking Age saw major changes in the economy of Scandinavia. At the beginning of the Viking Age, few people in Scandinavia had any knowledge of coinage. Some foreign coins entered the region as a result of trading contacts both with western Europe and the Islamic world to the east. However, except in major trading centres such as Hedeby and Ribe, in Denmark, the idea of coinage as such was unfamiliar. Coins were valued only for their weight in silver or gold, and circulated alongside many other forms of precious metal.

This is what is known as a bullion economy, in which the weight and the purity of the precious metal are what is important, not what form the metal takes. Far and away the most common metal in the economy was silver, although gold was also used. Silver circulated in the form of bars, or ingots, as well as in the form of jewellery and ornaments. Large pieces of jewellery were often chopped up into smaller pieces known as 'hack-silver' to make up the exact weight of silver required. Imported coins and fragments of coins were also used for the same purpose. Traders carried small scales which could measure weight very accurately, so it was possible to have a very precise system of trade and exchange even without a regular coinage.


(Just think. Some Viking took out his axe and 'chopped' off this piece of silver to pay for something.)

 

Roman battle axe.

 

Here are a couple of things I picked up recently. They all come from Donick Cary's personal collection. You can find more about him on Wiki (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donick_Cary):

Pre-Columbian, Guatemala, Maya Late Classic Period (ca. 550-900 CE) Poison Jar




Pre-Columbian, Maya, Ulua Valley, Honduras (ca. 550-900 CE) Four-legged Rattle Plate/Bowl




Pre-Columbian, Guatemala and Southern Mexico, Mayan Late Classic Period, Copador, (ca. 700-900 CE) Copador Polychrome Olla




Pre-Columbian, Southern Mexico and Northern Central America, Mayan Territories, Late Classic (ca. 550-900 CE) Rattle-Legged Tripod Plate

 

Gold Leaf, from Laurel wreath - Roman

 

Very cool @Topcat7 !

I have hacksilber and a partial axhead (as proto-currency)


Israelite
AR 2 Gerah Hacksilber
ca 8th-6th C. BCE
8.8x10mm 1.12g
ex David Hendin
RARE


ITALIA Aes Formatum AE Bronze Ax Head ca 5th-4th C BCE sextans size 44.8mm 56g

 

What, exactly, is hacksilber? Heard that term several times without having a good understanding of its use...

 

I think @Topcat7 did a great job laying it out...

I have seen it written as "hacksilber" and "hacksilver" ...