Curiosities of natural history. 2nd series / by Frances T. Buckland.

  • Francis Trevelyan Buckland
Date:
1865
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Curiosities of natural history. 2nd series / by Frances T. Buckland. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    368/392 (page 340)
    coal money,” and as their real nature is somewhat obscure, I here append a manuscript note of my father’s about them :— “It is mentioned by Hutchings in his history of Dorset, that flat and circular disks of Kimmeridge coal, from 2 to 3^ inches in diameter, and commonly known by the name of coa] money, are found abundantly on the surface of the fields above the cliffs of Smedmore, near Kimmeridge; they are also found together with sepulchral urns in our ancient British barrows; the prevailing idea has been that they were used as money or amulets. A different opinion has been suggested by the late Mr. J. S. Miller, of Bristol, viz. that they were used in the ancient potteries in the fabrication of their rude vessels, and that each disk was employed as a base or plug, by means of which the lump of clay was affixed to the chuck of the lathe in the process of turning; as these vessels were only sun-baked, or imperfectly dried near a fire, it would not have been easy to extract from their lower margin any substance that might have been inclosed within it; they would remain attached like plugs of wood inserted in the false bottom of a modern porter pot. Thus attached, one of these plugs would have been buried together with each vessel in the sepulchral barrow, where it would in time be liberated by the decay or fracture of the vessel in whose lower margin it was inclosed. We have thus an explanation of the association of these disks with sepulchral urns ; one such disk has been found adhering to the vessel in the place assigned to it by this theory, and seems decisive on this subject. The thickness of these disks varies from a quarter of an inch to about an inch; some are frustra of cones, others bevilled unequally at the edge; they have all been turned on a lathe, and scarcely any two are exactly alike, though a general resemblance pervades them all; they are never without perforations, on at least one side, but are either penetrated entirely through the centre by one large square hole usually exceeding half an inch in diameter, or penetrated on one side only to the depth of about half an inch by two, or three, or four circular small holes, about one-fourth of an inch in diameter; these conditions