The speaker at this month’s Medieval Section lecture will be Tony Abramson. Tony has studied early Anglo-Saxon coinage since the early 1990s. He has written a number of books on the topic, the most recent of which reclassified the silver proto-pennies or ‘sceats’ issued from the 670s to the 750s south of the Humber and well in to the ninth-century in kingdom of Northumbria. There are more than 630 varieties of these tiny coins, rich in the iconography of the Conversion Period. Tony initiated the biennial symposia in early medieval coinage and is editor of the resultant publications.
Tony qualified as a chartered accountant after graduating in economics from the University of Lancaster in 1970. He spent the last 25 years of his career launching technology start-up companies but has recently retired to take a PhD in numismatics at the Department of Archaeology, University of York.
His illustrated talk will trace the evolution of the coinage of Northumbria from the élite gold of the seventh-century, through the mercantile silver sceats of the eighth, to Northumbria’s unique brass widow’s mite or ‘styca’ issued in huge numbers before the fall of York to the Vikings in 866/7.
Medieval Section of the Yorkshire Archaeological and Historical Society 