Finds of European leads seals of the late Jagiellonian time in Druck and Novaharodak regions of the former Grand Duchy of Lithuania
ENTo put it simply: numismatists are supposed to study coins and medals but those who have been collaborating with archaeologists will have experienced that often their opinion is asked on all things round and metal. One type of object with which numismatists are confronted is lead seals that are not only found during archaeological excavations but also by metal detectorists. Lead seals have rarely been in the center of scientific research. The study of seals is basically the domain of sigillographers who are nearly always archivists for who seals are closely associated with documents. In Western Europe, unlike in the lands of the former Kievan Ruthenia, the lead seals found by archaeologists rarely have anything to do with documents. Here most of them are so-called cloth seals, an expression which is somewhat misleading since lead seals not only can have different functions but also were not necessarily always attached to cloth or other kinds of textiles. The lack of a generally accepted terminology severely hampers the study of these seals, especially when dealing with publications in different languages. There seems to be a general consensus that lead seals were used in Western Europe during the Middle Ages as a kind of quality guarantee. But many questions remain about the period when they were first used and where the different kinds of seals originated. New discoveries in a secure archaeological context are essential for answering these and other questions. Most such seals that are found are younger. They date from the 16th till the early 19th century. By the second half of the 18th century, lead seals were much more extensively used than for cloth alone and a century later lead seals were obsolete on cloth. [Extract, p. 166]
