In his new book, Rory Naismith, the author of Money and Power in Anglo-Saxon England (2011) and the editor of the eighth volume of Medieval European Coinage (2017), addresses conceptual questions related to early medieval coinage. This fundamental work is interdisciplinary, combining a wide range of written sources with coin finds primarily from Western and Southern Europe, specifically regions directly connected with the ancient Roman Empire. It explores inquiries beyond the informative value of the coin itself, such as the extent to which early medieval Europe was monetized—specifically, whether people living in a period of scarcity thought in terms of money and regarded it as a measure of materiality and exchange—as well as who used minted coins, why, and for what purposes.

The book is divided into two parts, each comprising five chapters. In the first part, the author discusses theoretical questions about using coined money and its circulation. The second part follows a chronological interpretation of the Roman legacy, debating continuity and discontinuity in the fifth to seventh centuries, the rise of the denarius (c. 660–900), up to a monetizing economy in the eleventh century.

Naismith’s innovative approach—interconnecting history, numismatics, archeology, economy, and sociology—strongly emphasizes the social aspect of coinage: he examines how social ties and networks influenced the use of coins in different contexts among the elite and the peasantry. The author’s focus on the secondary use of the coin outside the elite is crucial in his interpretation. He illustrates that coinage was an integral component in the dynamics of trade relations at the peasant level and that the elites heavily relied on them. Without the commercial activities of the peasants, they could not augment their monetary rent.

Naismith rightly asserts that monetization cannot be viewed as a continuous process of quantitative growth; such an idea is unhelpful. The pace and timing of change varied significantly depending on regional and social differences. Balanced reciprocity with strangers appeared to be fundamental. People who did not know each other were united by trust in the coin and its issuer. Consequently, coins began to circulate more rapidly as the complexity of social and economic relations increased.

As with any good work, the presented theses, including three monetization models, are formulated as open-ended, raising new questions and stimulating further discussion. However, one of the few weak points is that the book does not cover the entire territory of Europe evenly (East Central and Eastern Europe are mentioned very minimally). This raises the question of the extent to which conclusions drawn from Western European sources apply to areas that did not have direct contact with the ancient Roman Empire. Did individuals there in the early Middle Ages also conceive of monetary terms? When interpreting conditions in Central Europe, which is not his field of research, Naismith relies on the works of German authors that are, however, not always reliable. In his review (Památky archeologické 104, 2013, pp. 17–19), Petr Hrubý points out the inaccuracies in the geography and topography of territories lying outside the current borders of Germany in the cited work Geschichte des deutschen Bergbaus, Band 1: Der alteuropäische Bergbau. Von den Anfängen bis zur Mitte des 18. Jahrhunderts (2012). Thus, it could have happened, for example, that Příbram was included in the map of areas of significant silver mining in the years 500–1100 (27), for which there is no direct support in the sources, leaving aside hypotheses that silver could have been mined here already by the Celts.

In any case, I find the reviewed book beneficial and inspiring. It is equipped with many maps, a rich bibliography, and an index. As such, it is an essential contribution to research on early medieval coinage. Using specific examples, it demonstrates that in the long period between the fall of the Roman Empire and the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, when coinage reached a new peak, even a tiny amount of coined currency could be meaningful.