Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 4.djvu/217

 FOUND IN CUERDALE. 199 Various kinds of personal ornaments, such as armlets, fibulae, rings, &c., have been called ring-money, and it has been maintained that such objects Avere formed for the purpose of circulating as money, that they were adjusted to a regulated weight, and that their value was universally recognised as soon as they were looked at. AVe believe the whole of this notion to be erroneous ; that all these ornaments and lumps of metal were negotiated always by weight and never by tale, and that it was for the purpose of facilitating mercantile transactions so conducted that these objects were ready cut up into pieces of such various dimensions, as we find them in this mass of Cuerdale treasure. It is not impossible but that this division into small pieces may have had a double object, viz., the convenience of traffic, as has been already mentioned, and the preparation for coining money. It has already been stated as highly probable that a large portion of the coins discovered at Cuerdale were struck by the northern sea-kings, and it is remarkable that when the whole mass of silver Avas looked at in the state in which it was disinterred, it had the strongest possible resemblance to the stock of a maker of money in the east at the present day, where the process is to run the silver into holes of various sizes made in a box of sand, or on the ground, according to the quantity of bullion the coiner has got to melt at any particular moment. These ingots are cut into small pieces, adjusted to weight, then melted into globules, flattened and struck with the proper type for circulation. Though this similarity of appearance exists, it is not probable that such was the object with the depositors of the Cuerdale treasure, as no implements of any kind for the purposes of coining were found. EDWARD HAWKINS.