TRANS-SAHARAN GOLD TRADE AND BYZANTINE COINAGE

Abstract

It is often argued that northward trade in gold from sub-Saharan West Africa began after the establishment of Islamic control late in the seventh centuryad. This paper questions that conclusion, and suggests that minting at Carthage of the Byzantine gold coins known as globular solidi was related to the acquisition of metal through developing trans-Saharan contacts. Political developments in the late sixth century may have interrupted the supply of gold to Byzantine Carthage; this problem intensified during the following decades when production of globular solidi began. It is suggested that trans-Saharan imports comprised gold that was cast, for export and apparently also for local circulation, at Tadmekka in north-eastern Mali and perhaps elsewhere, into lumps of standardised weight calculated to meet the needs of the Byzantine mint at Carthage. Preliminary archaeometallurgical investigations provide some degree of support for this hypothesis, and further analyses are planned that may identify the sources of the gold minted in seventh-century Carthage. If and when such detail becomes available, it may have major implications for our understanding of the nature and instigation of ancient trans-Saharan connections.