Iron currency

Iron currency bars are objects used by Iron Age people to exchange goods.

Materials

The bars were expensive objects, as it would take 25 man-days to produce 1 kg (2.2 lb) of a finished bar, usually shaped with a small socket at one end, and consume 100 kg (220 lb) of charcoal.[1]

Usage history

Iron spits were used as money in Greece before silver currency. Sparta deliberately used iron currency to make amassing wealth unwieldy, and remained on an iron currency standard all through Greece's golden age.[2]

Julius Caesar's Gallic Wars, mentions iron currency in Britain.[3]

"For money they use bronze or gold coins, or iron bars of fixed weights." — Julius Caesar, 54 BC[1]

Iron hoes circulated as money in India, Africa, and Indochina, and were the smallest monetary unit of the Bahnar people.

During the nineteenth century, iron bars circulated as money in the Congo. During the nineteenth century, iron hoes circulated in the remote areas of Sudan. The western Uganda Chiga used hoes as their unit of account without using of them as a medium of exchange or store of value. In Portuguese East Africa a hoe standard replaced a cattle standard, and some hoes circulated only as currency and were never used agriculturally. In the French Congo, iron bars, shovels, hoes, blades, and iron double bells played the role of currency. In mid-nineteenth-century Nigeria, a slave cost 40 iron hoes.

In 1824, 394 currency bars were found, 1.2m below the surface, at a re-used camp on Meon Hill,[4][5] Mickleton, Gloucestershire.[6][7]

In 1860, currency bars were discovered at Salmonsbury Camp, Bourton-on-the-Water.[8][9]

In 1942, Iron currency bars were found around Llyn Cerrig Bach and the surrounding peat bog in Wales.[10]

See also

References

  1. ^ a b "Object : Currency Bars". A History of the World in 100 Objects. BBC. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  2. ^ "Iron Age: Coins & Currency". study.com. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  3. ^ "Earliest use of money". Van Arsdell Celtic Coinage of Britain. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  4. ^ "Findspot - Iron Age currency bars". Our Warwickshire. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  5. ^ "Meon Hill". Department of Classics and Ancient History. University of Warwick. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  6. ^ McGrory, David (1999-09-07). "Roman invasion; COVENTRY: The making of a city". Coventry Evening Telegraph (England). Free Online Library. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  7. ^ Lennox, Marsya (1999-09-10). "Property: Unlock the secret history of Shangri La". The Birmingham Post (England). Free Online Library. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  8. ^ "Object Talk: Ancient Money - Iron Age Currency Bars". Cheltenham Art Gallery and Museum. Retrieved 10 January 2022.
  9. ^ Allen, Derek (February 1968). "Iron Currency Bars in Britain". Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. 33: 307–335. doi:10.1017/S0079497X00014110.
  10. ^ Parri, Ian (2005-11-12). "Ironage gifts to the gods resurface; 60 years after they were found 2000 year old artefacts come home". Daily Post (Liverpool, England). Free Online Library. Retrieved 10 January 2022. Tongs and sickles turned up unaltered in basic design down the millennia. The hoard included swords - some purposefully bent in offering, as well as daggers, shields, horse bits, chariot wheels, lynch pins, and currency bars.