ABSTRACT
This chapter aims to explore the issues and to consider their implications for exchange, exchange mechanisms and the market in Christian Spain at a time when contemporary narratives were overwhelmingly preoccupied with the theme of conquest and reconquest. The systems of the meseta were even more obviously thriving, more commercial, as also more urban and less characteristically rural, and already by the late tenth century were beginning to be related to wider economic networks – of Spain and of the world beyond. The contexts are so similar – in the availability of silver and the absence of local minting – that some comparable ‘metal-weight’ economic system is worth considering for the León/Sahagun zone, where argenzos feature frequently. The use in practice of pieces of silver called argenzos in the tenth century seems to have occurred but was far from standard: they are especially characteristic of the Sahagun and León regions, both covering the hinterland of the city of León.
