Hacksilver

Hacksilver (sometimes referred to as hacksilber) consists of fragments of cut and bent silver items that were used as bullion or as currency by weight during the Middle Ages.

Hoards may typically include a mixture of hacksilver, coins, ingots and complete small pieces of jewellery.

The Cisjordan Corpus (c. 1200–586 BC) is the largest identified concentration of pre-coinage hacksilver hoards, and provides key evidence for the Phoenician and wider Near Eastern roots of the development and proliferation of the earliest silver coinages in the Greek world and western tradition.

Within the Cisjordan Corpus, a concentration of hacksilver hoards occurs in a part of southern Phoenicia that was recorded in antiquity as a territory of the Shardana tribes of Sea Peoples associated with Sardinia.

[3] The same hacksilver hoards have provided the first recognized provenance-evidence for far-reaching contact between Europe and Asia related to the prehistoric trafficking of metals.

The mixed Viking Cuerdale Hoard , deposited in England before c. 910, also contains 8,600 coins, as well as these ingots and pieces of jewellery and plate.
Hacksilver from the medieval period, Museum für Hamburgische Geschichte, Hamburg, Germany.
Viking age settlement, eighth to eleventh centuries; trade and raid routes are marked green.
Eastern hacksilver from the Achaemenid Levant , including jewellery and Greek coins, 425–420 BC. These formed a part of Achaemenid coinage .