Issuing Cast Lead Coins in Byzantine Cherson: A Local Phenomenon or a Technological “Flaw”?

Although the aspects of the production of Byzantine-Cherson cast coins and the technological nuances of their manufacture have been repeatedly studied in Russian scholarship, every time there appeared various hypotheses and assumptions, mostly remain highly debatable so far. For a long time, the lack or difficulties of access to the special equipment allowing the one to determine coin alloys allowed the researchers to draw conclusions about the coin material only against the background of some definitions from the scholarship and visual indicators. Among the disputable aspects is the casting of Cherson-Byzantine lead coins. In this connection, we have studied 30 specimens of coins by laboratory research of the alloy composition by X-ray fluorescent analysis. The samples selected for examination visually suggested a high content of lead. It has been found out that in the samples examined have similar elemental composition of coin alloy, lead with additions of arsenic. It is possible that, in the Byzantine Period, the Taurica received lead from the mines located in the Caucasus area, which were typical of a high content of arsenic. The most part of the of samples (27 specimens) contained more than 2/3 of lead; the alloy of three coins contained similar proportions of copper and lead. Taking the said results into account, we can suppose that the “almost pure” lead coins most likely were a specific kind of technological “flaw” in the casting in Cherson. It is still possible that, in the sorting of the ready-made coins, the specimens not corresponding to the standard samples and having casting defects (partial casting of the mould or lead casts) were withdrawn and returned to remaking. This interpretation explains why the so-called “lead” coins are relatively rare: they occurred mostly in the coinages from the age of Basil I and Leo VI, though in some series they were unique or unknown.