Overzicht van buitenlandse loodjes waarover iets bekend is.
Lead tickets and tokens
Figure 1 (not to scale)
Lead, as it is soft and prone to oxidisation, has rarely been used for coinage proper, and never in England. However, since it is cheap and easy to melt and cast, coin-like objects of lead, and sometimes also of pewter and tin, were widely produced in medieval times up to the nineteenth century. These lead pieces probably
had a range of functions, perhaps
a cheaper versions of reckoning counters and as token coinage in small scale dealings, and more certainly, as chits, tickets or passes. Ecclesiastical bodies used such
tokens to register attendance
at services. In most cases it is impossible
to ascribe a particular function to these lead pieces.
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Medieval lead pieces come in a variety of forms. Among the commonest are the so-called 'Winetavern' or 'London Wall' tokens, dating to the late thirteenth to early fourteenth centuries. These are very thin and well-produced with pictorial designs (e.g. fig 1). Late medieval lead pieces were
smaller but comparatively well made, employing pictorial and geometric pattern designs (e.g. fig 2). They seem to have been produced in hugh quantities, to judge from their survival rate. A number of moulds for their
production have also survived.
Early sixteenth century tokens were larger and thicker, with distinctive
designs. Some were based on medieval
coin types; and some ecclesiastical issues can clearly be
identified by references to liturgical Hours. The St Nicholas 'Boy' Bishop tokens of East Anglia, with their
bishop's mitre design, relate to a religious festival,
at least in inspiration.
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Elizabethan tokens
are usually small and dumpy and often have letters or designs which may have identified merchants, taverns or vocations. Seventeenth century pieces continue the practice of
using initials, emblems or geometric
patterns as their main designs. Their execution tended to become cruder
towards the end of the century
(fig 3), and if anything eighteenth century lead pieces are cruder still. |
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EARLY LEAD TOKENS
Lead tokens are not exactly
scarce detector finds, but at the same time they are not something
that you recover on every
outing. Those dating to the 17th and 18th centuries are more numerous than the medieval or Tudor examples,
but nevertheless each has a special place in our history.
Unfortunately, lead is a poor survivor both
in terms of its softness (and therefore it might suffer
damage in use), and also from its
rapid oxidisation and decomposition in the ground. This begs the qustion
as to why it enjoyed such widespread
use by our
ancestors, going back at
the very least to Roman times. The answer is that it was cheap,
readily available, easy to work, and had a low melting
point. It was easy to mould
or stamp with the most primitive of equipment, and if a mistake was made during manufacture the lead could go straight back into the melting pot to be recycled and used again.
Some of the known examples of 17th and 18th century tokens have initials on them,
these occasionally being mirror-reversed. A rare few sometimes
carry a date (ie 1694) usually with initials
above.
Research has shown that these initials normally relate to the landowner, who would have originally owned and worked the property on which
they were found. This carries
the implication that they would have been given to casual farm workers as tallies for work carried out, and could have been used at the end
of a period of time to purchase
supplies from the landowner or be
redeemed with him against coins
of the realm. However, there are many lead tokens that,
although they carry a variety of designs, do not have initials.
Possibly these could have
been used on a number of farms, within an area, as tallies or currency.
The whole situation, though, remains something of a mystery and perhaps we will never know
the exact use of these pieces.
Information taken from an article on
Early Lead Tokens in Treasure Hunting Magazine, February 1998.
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7.3-9 Lead tokens, 4th century B.C. D.: 0.015-
Decorated with various images-a bow, a cow, a dolphin,
crossed torches, rosette, Nike, a ship, as well as letters (E or K) - these small tokens were turned
in for pay, allowing poor citizens
to participate without losing
a day's wages.
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Loden Tessera
uit de 3e / 2e eeuw voor Chr. Met op de voorzijde een Gorgoneionkop
frontaal. |
