File:Post Medieval manilla (FindID 262246).jpg

English: An incomplete ‘manilla’: a penannular copper alloy ring with flared terminals, used as currency with West African countries and associated with the slave trade. The ring is solid cast with a circular cross section and about one third remains, the rest is lost to an old break. The flared ends are circular, slightly offset and very slightly convex with file marks on the end face. It is 79.1mm long, the ring is 12.6mm in diameter and the ends 30.7mm, it weighs 95 grams.

These items, known as ‘manillas’ (the Portuguese word for bracelet), can vary in size and style and were treated as ingots. They were usually made in Europe to exchange for trade items including slaves, in countries such as Nigeria, and were commonly used from the late 15th century until the 19th century, although some were still used in the earlier half of the 20th century. Manillas are also sometimes known as ‘bracelet money’ or ‘legband money’ and they mimic the bracelets worn to display wealth, although bracelets or legbands were used to store and display wealth in West Africa long before the local populations had any sea contact with Europeans. They were usually melted down and recast when they reached Africa. This meant that manillas were regarded as currency rather than jewellery and led to mass production in standardised sizes for trading purposes. This manilla is likely to be of the type classified as ‘Late British’ or Okpoho and probably dates to the 18th-19th century.

Although most were exported to Africa a few have been found in this country, including some recorded through the PAS. A complete half-mould for a manilla similar to this example was found during the 1984 excavations at Cowick Street, Exeter. Blaycock (2000) comments "They [manillas] were widely exported to West Africa in the 16th century and later, and have been identified as the source of the raw material from the famous cast bronzes of Benin. Whilst it has long been known that manillas were widely produced in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries (in Bristol and Birminham amongst other places) the Cowick Street finds attest that manillas were produced in this country at a much earlier date than had previously been known." (p. 45). (Blaylock, S. 'Excavation of an Early-Post Medieval Bronze Foundry at Cowick Street, Exeter, 1999-2000' (Devon Archaeological Society Proceedings vol. 58, 2000).