The Purpose of the Sutton Hoo Coins

Abstract

The purse found at Sutton Hoo contained forty-two gold objects. Thirty-seven of them were Merovingian coins of the last decades of the 6th and the first half of the 7th century, three were unstruck circular blanks, and two were small rectangular ingots (Bruce-Mitford, 1968, 47-51; Lafaurie, 1968, 258-60, correcting Marseilles to Arles as the mint of no. 3). The coins weigh from 1.221 grams to 1.388 grams—Bruce-Mitford's text by a slip reads grains—and average 1.27 g. (= 19.6 grains), the theoretical weight of the Merovingian gold coin at this period being 1.3 grams, i.e. 20 grains. They are generally termed tremisses or trientes, this being the name of the third of the Roman solidus from which they were derived, but they were in fact somewhat lighter—1.3 g. as against 1-5 g.—and no longer represented the Roman tremissis of eight carats but the Germanic shilling of twenty grains (Grierson, 1961, 351-2). The three blanks, which are about the same diameter as the coins, are of much the same weight (1.09 g., 1.38 g., and 1.46 g.: average, 1.31 g.). The ingots are heavier, weighing respectively 5.21 g. and 4.97 g., i.e. 80 grains and 76-7 grains, and are also of slightly inferior gold. It is probable that they were each intended to represent four shillings.

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