February 4th 2020

Contact and commerce between Portugal and United Kingdom during Medieval and Post-Medieval periods, from a numismatic perspective.

Tiago Gil Curado

 
The lecture will be my Masters’ dissertation subject about the contact between Portugal and England (later the United Kingdom). Between these two countries is considered to exist the oldest alliance still valid in the world.

That cooperation was more than just royal weddings, as matter-of-fact it was an excuse to both reinforce military defences against common enemies, and also to reduce taxes on businesses. The alliance, nowadays 646 years old, left some remains in archaeological contexts of both countries since the medieval ages.

Commerce, more than the goods they were trading, also involved the currencies of both countries. Some of these coins were lost or thrown away and today they can be found in many places all over the country that directly or indirectly bought things coming from Portugal.

After recording 291 Portuguese coins dated between the 13th and the 18th century, found in archaeological excavation, in wrecks, but mostly casual finds with metal detectors, it was possible to confirm the history and bring new information to the story of both countries and to the beginning of the era of globalization.
 

Tiago Gil Curado.

I was born in Lisbon in 1990.
I started my academic path in Archaeology in Lisbon in 2008 in Faculdade de Ciências Sociais e Humanas of Nova University of Lisbon.
During my first degree, for one semester, I complemented my studies through the Erasmus program in Roma Tre University.
After my graduation I moved to Durham to do my MA in Archaeology in Durham University.

Since the beginning of my studies I always tried to improve my knowledge on the numismatic field, so when I had to choose the subject of my dissertation, I wanted it to be about coins too. It was in that moment when I started to look for all the Portuguese coins found in United Kingdom to make a thesis about how, when and why they ended up there.

Once I finished it I went back to Lisbon and a few months later in 2013 I started doing my European PhD degree between Nova University of Lisbon and Complutense Univeristy of Madrid.

At the same time I became a researcher of CHAM – Centro de História Além-Mar, an important academic research group supported by Nova University, Azores University and Algarve University among other universities all over the world. The subject this time was a socioeconomic study of Lisbon through the coins found in many archaeological excavations in Lisbon. After almost seven years of researching, reading and writing I will defend my final work next year.