... another word for "coinage". So posted last Wednesday and on Saraceni's aggregate yesterday.
2150 to 1700 BC marks Early Bronze in Europe. With the rise of metals, and especially when / where came a metal trade, the metals got commoditised. There arose an objective value in a "hundredweight" or a "talent" in silver or (perhaps especially) in tin.
So some cultures developed a standard. A city in Crete or in Sicily, maybe even in Cornwall, would carve a mould in rock or maybe bake one in ceramic. That mould would make standard shapes - ribs, perhaps. If you got your wares in that shape, you knew the volume of tin you were buying. Or in rings, for smaller values.
Later, over the 1700s (between Avellino and Kabri, much before Thera), cities evolved a new invention: the scale. Trying to sell your pewter blend as pure silver? Molecular-weight, sucka! With that, the ribs and rings got replaced by ingots (pieces of casting cakes
), and by mystery-metal scrap where - I guess - the trader flat didn't know what was in his carriage and hoped to dump it at discount.
The sequel of course is when tin and copper weren't worth so much no more. New Lamps For Old.
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