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Title: Leominster lead tokens Post by: Chef Geoff on April 14, 2015, 01:42:09 PM As Nonker has said on another thread one of the most intriguing parts of metal detecting for many is the questions it poses as to the why and how finds come to be where they are and one of these must be the shear amount of lead tokens found at the Leominster rally ???
Firstly the possible answer comes more from Deadlock than from me and they aren't really tokens as that implies they are in place of something, these are tallies and were used during harvest when gathering crops that could be measured in units ie bushels, baskets etc and so a type of "Piece work" these were then exchanged for cold hard cash at the end of a day, a week, harvest? My immediate thought was Herefordshire = apples ;D but Deadlock with far more local knowledge said "Hops" and it looks as if he could be right. This link is to the Herefordshire page relating to hop growing and as you can see Leominster was a major producing area. http://htt.herefordshire.gov.uk/551.aspx (http://htt.herefordshire.gov.uk/551.aspx) And this takes you to a PDF from kent archaeology from 1953 relating to the use of "hop tokens" http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Pub/ArchCant/Vol.066.1953/066-06.pdf (http://www.kentarchaeology.org.uk/Research/Pub/ArchCant/Vol.066.1953/066-06.pdf) I've got to say here though conterary to what Neil said the pellet design has no bearing on age as it was still being used well into the 19th century ;) |