HARVARD UKRAINIAN STUDIES - See also - Harvard University

MONETARY HISTORY OF KIEV IN THE PRE-MONGOL PERIOD 399of goods and thus required no coinage to make up deficits on the Byzantineside (or Byzantium had no coins to make up such deficits). The number ofByzantine imports found at Rus' sites tends to support this answer. On theother hand, the extent of the fabled Rus'-Byzantine trade, especially in theninth and tenth centuries, may be exaggerated. There is no compelling evidencefor the existence of this trade in the ninth century. The so-calledRus'-Byzantine trade treaties and the report preserved by Constantine Porphyrogenitusmay have led us to overestimate the volume of this trade inthe tenth century. In any event, it seems clear that Byzantine coins had avery negligible place in the monetary and economic history of Kiev duringthe pre-Mongol era.West European CoinsWest European silver coins or deniers first began to appear with regularityin Eastern Europe during the last quarter of the tenth century, and they continuedto reach the Rus' lands until the early twelfth century. 68 One recentestimate puts the number of deniers from Rus' hoards at just under37,000. 69 Allowing for small and stray finds, we can estimate that there isinformation on some 40,000 deniers from Rus'. In other words, whileimports of deniers to Rus' were far smaller than the import of dirhams, avery significant quantity of West European silver coins did reach the Rus'lands. Deniers had a key role in Rus' trade with the Baltic, just as dirhamsdid in its Islamic trade.In his study of denier finds from Rus', V. M. Potin gave the followinggeographic breakdown:Novgorod lands—45 hoards and 83 separate findsPolotsk (Polatsk) lands—7 hoards and 5 separate findsSmolensk lands—6 hoards and 16 separate findsRostov-Suzdal' lands—7 hoards and 44 separate findsRiazan' lands—3 hoards and 4 separate findsHalych lands—1 hoard and 2 separate findsVolhynian lands—7 hoards and 2 separate findsKiev and Pereiaslav lands—5 hoards and 4 separate findsChernihiv lands—4 hoards and 4 separate finds68The most recent full study of these coins is by V. M. Potin, Drevniaia Rus' i evropeiskiegosudarstva vX-XIII vv.: lstoriko-numizmaticheskii ocherk (Leningrad, 1968).69Bernd Kluge, "Das angelsachsische Element in den slawischen Miinzfunden des 10. bis12. Jahrhunderts. Aspekte einer Analyze," in Viking-Age Coinage in the Northern Lands: TheSixth Oxford Symposium on Coinage and Monetary History, ed. M. A. S. Blackburn and D. M.Metcalf (Oxford, 1981), p. 281.