Weights and Measures (Archaeology)

Poigt, Th., Les instruments de pesée en Europe occidentale aux âges des Métaux : Conception, usages et utilisateurs (XIVe-IIIe s. av. n.è.). In : Nordez M., Rousseau L. et Cervel M., Recherches sur l'âge du Bronze, Nouvelles approches et perspectives, Actes de la journée d'étude de l'Association pour la promotion des recherches archéologiques sur l'âge du Bronze, 28 février 2014, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Bulletin de l'APRAB, suppl. n° 1 (Nantes, 2015), p. 177-179.

Un résumé de la thèse en cours, portant le même titre, publié dans le supplément n°1 du bulletin de l'APRAB.

This is a German translation of my paper "As Pilhas de Pesos de Dom Manuel I: Contributo para a sua Caracterização, Inventariação e Avaliação", Portugalia: Nova Série, vol. 39, 2018, p. 217-251. Many thanks to Rolf Laufkoetter, Ludwig Ramacher and Ludwig Wieprecht for their enthusiasm and effort in preparing this translation.

In the scope of an important charter reform, Manuel I of Portugal was particularly careful regarding weights, distributing bronze standards to a significant number of municipalities. The existence of these standards, which are in the form of nesting weight piles and are dated of 1499, is well known. However, there isn't an exhaustive inventory of the extant standards and it remains largely unknown which counties actually acquired such standards. We begin by presenting a brief synthesis on the manueline reform of weights. The general characteristics of the manueline standards are identified and the chronology of their production is discussed. Based on literary sources, including the reports of the evaluations carried out in 1857-1860, and direct search in museums, it was possible to identify the existence of 128 manueline nesting weight piles and, for 73 of them, the municipalities to which they belonged. It was also possible to gather evaluations for 265 weight pieces from 42 piles. Based on these evaluations, an estimate of the manueline arratel was computed. The manuelin reform of weights is unparalleled in its time in Europe in which concerns the number of distributed piles, the large size of the piles and the elaborate decoration.

Quando empreendeu a reforma dos forais, Dom Manuel determinou que as novas unidades legais de capacidade passassem a ser as de Lisboa  . O alqueire de Lisboa teve um valor estável, em torno de 13.1 litros, entre os séculos XIV e XVIII. A incerteza é um pouco maior quanto ao almude de Lisboa, mas tudo indica que a sua capacidade terá também tido um valor estável, desde a idade média até ao fim do antigo regime. No âmbito da reforma de Dom Manuel, apenas foram distribuidos padrões das unidades de peso. Só Dom Sebastião viria a distribuir padrões das medidas de capacidade em 26 de Janeiro de 1575. Neste artigo, são analisadas as cópias dos padrões de medidas de capacidade dadas à cidade da Guarda por Dom Sebastião.

A collection of 35 iron weights, currently preserved in the Museu Nacional Machado de Castro, is studied. These weights, dated of the 18th/19th centuries and some of them identified as belonging to the University of Coimbra, do not contribute to validate the widely spread idea that Portugal enjoyed uniform weights throughout the country. On the contrary, they show a crossing of influences leaving little room for the legal system. In particular, the use of libras or arrátels with medieval roots (12.5, 14 and 15 onças) was detected, instead of the legal arrátel of 16 onças. Moreover, foreign weight standards, such as the English avoirdupois standard or the Cologne mark standard, appear to be more important than the Portuguese standard, a variant of the Cologne mark called marco de Colonha in medieval times.