Reckoning counters found in a 15th-century landfill of the Kalamaja suburb of Tallinn

Abstract

In 2018–2019, at least 35 000 finds were gathered from the plot at Jahu 6 in the medieval and early modern suburb of Kalamaja in Tallinn, which had been transported to the disposal site together with waste and garbage from the walled town. The 249 coins that were unearthed suggest that most of the garbage was disposed of in the 1470s and 1480s. It seems that waste disposal may have ceased sometime before 1490. Late medieval and early modern reckoning counters, which were produced at first mainly in France and then in Nuremberg, and were meant for calculating on lines, are common finds in Estonia. They have been discovered both as stray finds in fields and during archaeological excavations in village cemeteries and towns. The majority of such counters date back to the 16th–17th centuries, while earlier finds are rather rare. The garbage layer of the plot at Jahu 6 has yielded at least 61 jetons, of which only four date from the 17th–18th centuries. All the other tokens came from the layers dating back to the end of the 1480s at the latest. Thus, the assemblage of the counters from the plot at Jahu 6 is unique and enables us to specify the dating of several counters previously described in the literature. Forty-eight of the medieval counters are likely to have been produced in Nuremberg and 12 in France, but it was impossible to determine the origin of one coin. In addition, there are only four perforated reckoning counters from the Middle Ages, one of which is supplied with a bronze suspension loop. It suggests that in towns, counters were used for their intended purpose, i.e. for calculation and not for decoration.

Keywords

• archaeology
• middle ages
• counters
• reckoning
• livonia