The purpose of this paper is to analyse the silver hoards from 10th century Greater Poland in the context of the Piast “state” formation and try to explain the expansion of Piast rulership and power in relation to the long-distance trade.

The reign of Bolesław I the Brave has for many years been very popular among historians and numismatists. The political history of his rule is at the centre of the research of the first one, and the history of his coinage of the latter. On the other hand, much less attention is paid to the fiscal and prestigious-symbolic contexts of the circulation of bullion, which at the turn of the 10th and 11th centuries consisted almost exclusively of imported coins and silver in a non-monetary form, mainly jewellery. This raises many questions: how did access to luxury goods affected the exercise of power? What equivalents and under what circumstances were foreign coins purchased? How did the desire to take control of the silver distribution networks between Meissen, Prague and Kiev in the first decades of the 11th century directed Bolesław’s expansion? Methodologically, the article combines the analysis of the hoards with the interpretation of written sources.