Silver from the Americas may have entered the Spanish economy later than thought
Wednesday, June 8, 2011 - 14:30
in Paleontology & Archaeology
European metal dominated Spanish silver coinage up until the reign of Philippe III (1578-1621) and it was only in the 18th century that it was completely replaced by Mexican metal. Using mass spectrometry analyses, researchers have succeeded in determining the provenance of coinage circulating in Spain after 1492. These results call into question the hypothesis according to which the massive influx of metals from the New World was directly responsible for the inflation that occurred in Spain in the 16th and 17th centuries.