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<p>[QUOTE=&quot;Nap, post: 8319196, member: 73099&quot;]I agree with you, but for different reasons.</p><p><br /></p><p>Hoard evidence will not be very helpful.&nbsp; There are extremely few sceatta hoards in Britain, certainly no large ones of note.&nbsp; So negative evidence isn’t of great weight.</p><p><br /></p><p>Interestingly, a large hoard of thrymsas is known (nearly 100 coins from Crondall, 1828), and several large hoards of stycas are known (Hexham, Bolton Percy, York, etc.), but nothing for the sceattas.</p><p><br /></p><p>With regards to the variety, sceattas were produced at several locations, across different kingdoms, but there probably were not that many mint sites, and not all regions had a mint.&nbsp; Therefore, in places that had no mint, foreign coins might have remained in use alongside sceattas, even with the great variety of English coins.&nbsp; Keep in mind the heavy penetration of the “porcupine” series E sceat, produced in Frisia but found in huge numbers in Britain.</p><p><br /></p><p>However, I did say I agreed with you.&nbsp; I have a very hard time believing that silver currency remained around in the early 7th century.</p><p><br /></p><p>The monetary economy of the southern kingdoms of England moved in the late 500s to a gold coin economy.&nbsp; Much like in Merovingian France.&nbsp; How much this involved the common person is up for debate; the answer is probably ‘very little’ as a barter economy persisted; but for large transactions the gold thrymsa, or shilling, was the currency of southern England.&nbsp; Silver coins really did not become part of the currency until the late 670s and the introduction of the silver sceattas.&nbsp; It should be noted that the famous Sutton Hoo hoard, with its vast treasures, only contained gold coins (all Frankish.. the Merovingians were also only using gold coins in the early 600s.)</p><p><br /></p><p>So the idea that silver coin made long before the shift to gold would have persisted throughout a silver-less monetary period of over 100 years in both Britain and France seems very far-fetched.&nbsp; Clipped or not.</p><p><br /></p><p>Rather, siliquae were clipped in Britain nearly exclusively, and I would presume it related to the abrupt withdrawal of Roman forces around 400.&nbsp; The western Roman currency mostly became a gold-only coinage in the late period, after about 420, but because Rome left Britain before then, this shift did not happen until much later.&nbsp; Rather for a few years, decades probably, Roman coins in various metals continued to circulate in Britain.&nbsp; And clipping probably occurred then.</p><p><br /></p><p>Why are the clipped coins in decent shape?&nbsp; Can only speculate here, but presume that the economy had a cataclysmic implosion with the departure of Roman legions and arrival of the Germanic invaders.&nbsp; Suspect that all coin usage was quite limited.</p><p><br /></p><p>It may not be unreasonable to think that clipped siliqua were a prototype for the later gold and silver coinage to follow.&nbsp; Rather than siliqua being clipped to look like sceats, it’s possible that sceats were small to look like a clipped siliqua.&nbsp; But even this theory fails a bit, as Saxon coinage did not develop from the imagination of a people starting a new coinage, but rather as imitation of existing coins from Merovingian France.[/QUOTE]</p><p><br /></p>

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