Jettons have poured from the Jamestown site since the first
shovel pricked the ground.
Along with Irish half-pennies and pennies, these thin
counters represent the most common “coins” dug from within the palisades of the
fort.
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| Krauwinckel Jettons |
But they are not really coins. Rather, they are counting
pieces. They were produced in great numbers and are not rare. Jettons were
typically sold in packets of 50 or 100. At least one full packet was brought to
Jamestown.
The term “jetton” (or “jeton”) is derived from the French
“jeter” and means “to cast” as in casting or moving markers on a counting
board. Arithmetic problems could be solved very quickly using this method. The
use of jettons was on the wane during the first quarter of the seventeenth
century – replaced by paper calculations using Arabic numerals.
The jettons found at Jamestown were made in the Krauwinckel
workshops during the late 1500s and early 1600s. The pieces were imported from
Nuremberg. The standard reference for these pieces is Mitchiner’s 1988
catalogue: Jetons, Medalets and Tokens:
The Medieval Period and Nuremburg. Check it out.
Krauwinckel jettons were discovered all across the Jamestown
site. In the first season of digging, seven jettons were unearthed from Pit 1
in 1994. Alongside the jettons were Nueva Cadiz beads, book clasps, a matchlock
plate, many jar and bowl fragments, of course a slew of pipe stems, plus a
complete cabasset helmet!
But the largest of cache of jettons was to come a few
seasons later.
A longhouse, of mud and stud construction, known as the
Factory yielded a whopping 99 jettons. Thirty-one were discovered on the cellar
floor. And, 54 more were mixed in the backfill from the 1610 rehabilitation of
the fort when Lord de la Warr arrived and had the longhouse razed. The
remaining 14 jettons were closer to the surface and not in a sealed context.
The Factory has been interpreted as an industrial and trading
center. It also might have served as a supply depot. It makes sense that the
jettons were found there, as they might have been used as intended – for
accounting. Alternatively, some historians have argued that they were used for
copper trading with the natives. This is an open debate.
