Richard Kelleher, Department of Archaeology, Durham University is doing a project, the full title of which is: Patterns of monetisation and coin loss in England during the Middle Ages (11th-16th centuries). New interpretations made possible by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (PAS).This collaborative doctoral award project between Durham and the British Museum uses the information from the 18000 finds made by members of the public and recorded in this archaeological outreach scheme
This will address major questions of the use and loss of money in England from the Conquest to Henry VIIIs debasement of the coinage in 1544 by an analysis of the over 18,000 coin records recorded by the PAS. It will plot and interpret the expansion and monetisation of the economy over time and enable comparison between target regions and between urban and rural sites. This project will be the first of its kind to formulate a numismatic methodological framework for the medieval period into which future find evidence can be placed and tested.Obviously such a methodology could not emerge in England and Wales while many if not most of these coins were coming to numismatists with poor information on the context of discovery. Once the objects were retaining the information on findspots, a new quality of numismatic information starts emerging. The primitive no-questions-asked mode of collecting which dissociates the collected item from even basic data on their origins and collecting history is simply destroying information, information that other (real) numismatists need.
