Early Medieval Monetary History

Coins have been part of the mainstream evidence for early medieval history for several decades. As the result of a widespread material culture ‘turn’ in traditionally text-based humanities (although early medieval historians—rarely as adept as their modernist colleagues in theorising what they do—would be unlikely to phrase it like that), coins now figure prominently in most accounts of post-Roman Europe, of the Insular world, and of both the Viking homelands and diaspora. It is normal to see analysis of coins in discussion of markets and trade and, via minting and iconography, governmental power. But coins are also being used in more cultural ways, as signs of belief-systems and rituals, as markers of place and carriers of identity, through their use as grave goods, in hoards and their transformation into jewellery and charms. There have always been exemplary figures willing to reach across the divide between coin cabinet and history department. Philip Grierson and Peter Sawyer spring to mind immediately in this context. But the late Mark Blackburn, Grierson’s assistant, collaborator and eventual successor at the Fitzwilliam Museum, was, from the 1980s, a key figure in the growing familiarity between what seemed the austere classificatory discipline of the numismatist and the more eclectic interests of the historian. This fine volume of twenty-five essays by former students, colleagues and friends pays a fitting tribute to the man, who died prematurely in 2011

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