Nick Szabo  🔑

Cowry shells were common too no? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_money …

Do you know how standard were the sizing was? Just looking at pictures from Germany, Denmark and Poland findings, in each site they seem pretty regular, but I didn't see any clear statements in the sources i found. I'm especially curious of uniformity across sites.

"From the verified invariance of the spring wire’s diameter (0.4 mm), it is possible to assume the use of a procedure employing a calibration system."

(it also got me excited thinking "homologous jewelry" is a technical term in archeology, which unfortunately it is not, and annoyingly presented a false color map in grayscale ;-)

Another interesting article, "The Production of Gold Wire in Antiquity" discusses wire drawing, and disputes claims that wire drawing was known as early as 1800 BC, because "hand-made gold wire can be extremely even in diameter" https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2FBF03215438.pdf …

block twisting, strip drawing, are two methods described that produce an even diameter across the length and strip twisting is described as fairly consistent. as I understood these methods, it seems like they can be used to produce consistent results, not just a single even wire

And a quote from another blog post: "For one thing, the gold was not hammered but drawn, a more advanced technique that historians didn’t think was used during the Bronze Age." http://www.thehistoryblog.com/archives/15215