L. Peyronel, Weighing Silver on the scales. An overview of silver hoards and balance weights during the Middle Bronze Age in the Near East (original) (raw)

2019, in L. Rahmstorf and E. Statford (eds.), Weights and Marketplaces from the Bronze Age to the Early Modern Period., Wachholtz Verlag, Göttingen 2019, pp. 67-86

AI-generated Abstract

This volume presents a comprehensive examination of silver hoards and balance weights from the Middle Bronze Age (circa 2000-1600 BC) in the Near East, highlighting silver's role as a key medium of exchange and standard of value. The analysis emphasizes the importance of balance weights in understanding official standards, their distribution across territories, and the interconnectedness of various metrological systems. It is based on an interdisciplinary approach involving archaeologists, assyriologists, and numismatists, aiming to shed light on the practicalities surrounding the exchange of silver.

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The Earliest Balance Weights in the West: Towards an Independent Metrology for Bronze Age Europe

Cambridge Archaeological Journal, 2018

Weighing devices are the earliest material correlates of the rational quantification of economic value, and they yield great potential in the study of trade in pre-literate societies. However, the knowledge of European Bronze Age metrology is still underdeveloped in comparison to Eastern Mediterranean regions, mostly due to the lack of a proper scientific debate. This paper introduces a theoretical and methodological framework for the study of standard weight-systems in pre-literate societies, and tests it on a large sample of potential balance weights distributed between Southern Italy and Central Europe during the Bronze Age (second–early first millennium bc). A set of experimental expectations is defined on the basis of comparisons with ancient texts, archaeological cases and modern behaviour. Concurrent typological, use-wear, statistical and contextual analyses allow to cross-check the evidence against the expectations, and to validate the balance-weight hypothesis for the sample under analysis. The paper urges a reappraisal of an independent weight metrology for Bronze Age Europe, based on adequate methodologies and a critical perspective.

The concept of weighing during the Bronze Age in the Aegean, the Near East and Europe

In this paper I am discussing the units of weight and their implications for the Aegean and the Near East in the third millennium BC, in particular with regard to the questions: 1. What objective criteria are there to indicate with certainty that a special group of artefacts are weights? 2. Are there recurring traits in the appearance and actual shaping of weights? Why were certain shapes, materials, surface treatments and so on chosen? 3. Was the concept of weighing invented at one place, and did it spread from there, or are independent inventions at various places possible? 4. Is the concept of weight and weighing connected to a certain degree of development in societies, and to other major changes, like intensive metallurgy, long-distance trade and urbanisation? At the end of this contribution I will turn to evidence for weighing in central Europe during the second millennium BC. In an addendum from from September 2009 a much deeper understanding of the Bronze Age east Mediterranean weight units of 7.83 g, 9.4 g and 11.75 g is reached. The convergence from one unit to the next is based on fractions which have the denominators 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. Sixty is the smallest number divisible by every number from 2 to 6. Hence the ratios of the three different units can be expressed as fractions of 60. Through these ratios the actual numbers can be traced backwards: the integers 10, 12 and 15. Important common multiples of 7.83, 9.4 and 11.75 are 47 g (= 60) and multiples of it, especially at 470 g (= 600, the mina) and 28200 g (= 36000, the talent). It seems that the exceptional fractional qualities of the number 60 were fully understood by the middle of the third millennium BCE and therefore 60 was chosen as the basis of this sexagesimal weight metrology.

The identification of balance weights in pre-literate Bronze Age Europe: Typology, chronology, distribution and metrology

Weights and Marketplaces from the Bronze Age to the Early Modern Period, 2019

In this chapter we address the archaeological evidence for balance weights in pre-literate Bronze Age Europe (ca. 2300-800 BC, with the exception of the Aegean), as a proxy for the adoption of weight-based trade. The study is introduced by a theoretical and methodological framework for the identification of balance weights, in the absence of inscriptions and texts. The analyzed sample amounts to 566 potential balance weights, with a distribution covering most of continental Europe and major Islands. Five major formal types are identified. The statistical analyses support the identification for the sample under analysis, and suggest the existence of a “Pan-European” weight system. The results of the study show that weighing equipment, and hence weight-based trade, was widespread in Bronze Age Europe at least by the mid-2nd Millennium BC.

Early Bronze Age balance weights from Tarsus, Alishar Höyük and other sites

Within my project of documenting the earliest evidence for weight metrology in the Aegean and Anatolia I was allowed to study possible balance weights in the Archaeological Museums of Ankara and Istanbul as well as in the excavation depot at Tarsus during September 2006 and September 2007. Here I would like to present the results of these investigations which form part of my studies on the earliest balance weights from the Aegean and Anatolia dating to the Early Bronze Age.

Weights and Weight Systems in Tell el-Dabʽa in the Middle and Late Bronze Age

CAENL 12, 2021

In this contribution we present weights from the Middle Kingdom, the Second Intermediate Period and the New Kingdom (c. 1800-1200 BCE) from Tell el-Dab‛a/Avaris. These data are a rare example of stratified sets of weights from an urban context in Ancient Egypt. As the data cover a time-span of more than six centuries, it is possible to investigate changes in material (from various types of stone to dark iron-rich sedimentary rock-'hematite'), in shape (from parallelepiped to sphendonoid) and in metrology. We test the weights currently known from the site through Cosine Quantogram Analysis and Frequency Distribution Analysis and compare them to weight sets from Middle Bronze Age West Asia and the Late Bronze Age East Mediterranean. On the basis of the limited data available, we conclude that the system represented by the sphendonoid weights of Tell el-Dab‛a was compatible with both the 'Mesopotamian' (c. 8.3 g) and the 'Ugaritic' (c. 9.4 g) shekel. The adoption and use of weights with this specific morphology, material and metrology suggest that, by the advanced Middle Bronze Age, Egypt was much more incorporated in international trade than it had been before.

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Weighing Artefacts in the Ancient Near East: For a Dialogue between Epigraphy and Archeology

dans P. Matthiae, F. Pinnock, L. Nigro and N. Marchetti (éds), Proceedings of the 6th International Congress of the Archaeology of the Ancient Near East (ICAANE), 5 May-10 May 2008, »Sapienza«, Università di Roma, vol. 1, Harrassowitz, Wiesbaden, 2010, p. 351-367., 2010