PLACE NAMES THAT ARE GUIDES TO ARCHAEOLOGICAL FINDS—“MIDDLETON” AND “MELTON”. In the post that Surrey Medieval linked to, my interest was that place names that combined Viking names and Anglo Saxon names were evidence of Vikings and Anglo Saxons living together. Robert J S Briggs is interested in place names which combine variants of the old English word “middel” (meaning “middle”) and the syllable “ton”, (meaning “place”). In this “unabridged” essay which elaborates on the post I linked to yesterday, he says that he is “positing a translation along the lines of ‘tÅ«n which serves as the centre of economic/exchange activity within an estate/territory (of a different name?)’†A place name like “Middleton” or “Melton” suggests that this was the location of a local market, which would be a place where coins and other objects would be lost—making it a “productive” place to search for coins.
Briggs extends the theory to those Grimston hybrids which include a Norse variant of the word “middel”. The following quote from Briggs enables me to include a letter that is not on my keyboard: Briggs refers to “the late Anglo-Saxon mint of Meðeltun, representing a part-Norse hybrid version of middel-tÅ«n”.
So place names such as “Middleton” or Grimston hybrids such as “Melton” would be good places to dig.