The Viking Great Army: Weighing Up Reuse

Summary

This is an abstract from the "Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts" session, at the 89th annual meeting of the Society for American Archaeology.

This paper focuses on reuse of material culture looted by the Viking Great Army when it raided England in the late ninth century CE. This material included gold, silver, and copper alloy, which was sometimes melted down to turn into other artifacts and also cut up for use in exchange in the form of bullion. Bullion exchange required weights to portion out the loot. Many of these were fashioned from lead and inset with fragments of jewelry, other decorative metalwork, and coins, often of some antiquity. This paper will survey the range of insets, exploring the messages that were conveyed through their reuse. This will be shown to extend far beyond traditional interpretations that they served a mere decorative function or a means of distinguishing one weight set from another. These lead inset weights were symbols of political authority, sometimes drawing on the authority of coinage. They also reflected the adventures of the army and the places they had visited and peoples they had encountered, in England, Ireland, and on the continent. Some of these inset weights have been found in ritual deposits, including burials, reinforcing the symbolic associations of the weights and their reused insets.

This Resource is Part of the Following Collections

• Reinvent, Reclaim, Redefine: Considerations of "Reuse" in Archaeological Contexts   •
• Society for American Archaeology 89th Annual Meeting, New Orleans, LA (2024)

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Record Identifiers

Abstract Id(s): 38621.0