Engaging with money in a northern periphery of early modern Europe

Abstract

While contextual and interpretive approaches to money have recently emerged in archaeology, coins have attracted little serious attention in the post-medieval archaeology of the western world. The relative neglect of coins as archaeological finds probably derives from an (implicit) assumption that the function and meaning of coins is readily apparent. A close study of coin finds, however, combined with various sources of contextual data, can provide new views on how people understood and engaged with coinage even in the comparatively recent past, as this article seeks to illustrate by considering money and coin finds from a northern periphery of early modern Sweden. Economic factors are important for appreciating the significance of coinage and the patterning of the studied coin finds, but this article proposes that non-monetary uses of coins were more important to the local understanding of money than has previously been recognized.

Northern Archaeology and Cosmology

“…Some of this money consisted of thick copper plates (Sw. plåtmynt) that could weigh several kilograms. The plan did not work, as copper coins floated out of the country to be re-melted, and the price of copper -and consequently of copper moneyfluctuated radically (see further Herva et al 2012). But although Sweden failed to control the markets the way it had hoped, the case again demonstrates the importance and implication of mining to other domains of society.…”