Archaeologists have found hoards of ancient silver in Gaza, Palestine and Israel. The hoard is in the form of pieces of precious metal that are cut irregularly. Possibly the earliest known silver currency in the region.
Another allegation, researchers estimate that this ancient silver came from a distant area in what is now Turkey and Europe. The newly analyzed find dates to around 1550 B.C., hundreds of years earlier than other silver coin finds in what is now Israel and Gaza.
However, not everyone agrees that this is a new finding. Some scholars note that other studies have found that silver currency was in use during the Middle Bronze Age in this region.
astounding
The practice of using cut silver as currency may be a sign that administrators in the region, more literate than their predecessors, allowed them to measure the weight of silver accurately when making payments.
"We know that the Middle Bronze Age was a period of building great forts. But how did they pay the workers?" said Tzilla Eshel an archaeologist at the University of Haifa, quoted from Live Science, Thursday (26/1/2023).
It is possible that the workers would have been paid an agreed weight in silver, following a practice already used in the northern Levant, the area that now includes Lebanon and Syria.
The practice of trading silver by weight for other valuable objects was also common during the Viking Age in Europe, where silver for this purpose came to be known as 'hacksilver' or 'hacksilber'.
"The use of silver as currency in the southern Levant occurred in this period because it was needed, and there was a large enough organization that could manage it," says Eshel.
Place of discovery
Eshel and his colleagues studied 28 pieces of silver from four hoards found at Bronze Age archaeological sites, one from Gezer in the Judean Mountains, one from a tomb at Megiddo in northern Israel, one from Shiloh in the West Bank, and one from Tell el- Ajul in Gaza.
Researchers reported that silver hoards from Gezer, Shiloh, and Tell el-Ajjul were not found alongside silver-making tools. This fact they interpreted as proof that the hoard was only used for exchange, and not for making other silver objects.
Eshel and his colleagues are also trying to determine the origin of the silver in these deposits by studying impurities and their chemical isotopes that change over time due to radiation.
Analysis reveals there are signs of a broad transition between sources around 1200 BC, possibly from silver mined in Anatolia (now Turkey) to silver mined in Southeastern Europe, which was then brought to the Levant via long-distance trade.
The silver that came from later was surprisingly similar to silver found in famous tombs from the Mycenaean Bronze Age culture in Greece. These hoards may share a silver source with those from Tell el-Ajjul.
"Because the silver items from Tell el-Ajjul are isotopically similar to silver from the (Mycenaean) Shaft Graves, it is possible that the two assemblages came from the same source," the researchers said.