Re: (Medieval) Massive Anglo-Saxon treasure trove unearthed in England!

Curt Emanuel wrote:
"David Read" <david2463@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:0aidnQlYf9CzaSHXnZ2dnUVZ8gednZ2d@xxxxxxxxx


"Curt Emanuel" <cemanuel@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:h9iqs8$b11$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

"David Read" <david2463@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:isKdnaNAV4cEeiHXnZ2dnUVZ8iKdnZ2d@xxxxxxxxx


"Curt Emanuel" <cemanuel@xxxxxxxx> wrote in message news:h9ioa4$kt1$1@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx



We'll see - an Arles/Narbonne/Merovingian to England transmission of products from the Eastern Empire isn't an unreasonable concept, even if it gets pushed to the 8th century. Have to have the evidence though.


Indeed. But any evidence, should it exist, needs to show that such transmission was part of normal trading patterns to be of real value and interest rather than just the odd piece turning up here and there.

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Cheers,

David Read



Sure. Personally, I think right now it isn't evidence of trade - just contact. A Merovingian/Carolingian makes a gift to an A-S ruler, that sort of thing. We'd need a quite bit more to postulate on any sort of regular Byzantine-England trade route, even one running through Francia.


Yup.

Extract from "Byzantine Pottery" by Ken Dark. Tempus 2001:-

"The East-West trade route co-existed with a north-south trade route between western Europe and North Africa. The latter was probably differently organized and not wholly under Byzantine control. The two systems accounted for almost all of Europe’s fifth- to seventh-century-century overseas trade and formed an important routeway for new beliefs and cultural practices to enter the West.

In fact, the largest assemblage of such pottery outside the Mediterranean occurs at the rocky erode coastal headland at Tintagel in Cornwall. There, ARSW, PRSW and a range of Byzantine amphorae are associated with what may be a royal fortress of fifth- to seventh-century date. This was in an independent British kingdom far to the west of the part of Britain under ‘Anglo-Saxon’ control. The finds include ceramic stoppers from amphorae, indicating that at least some probably arrived at the site still-sealed, and Byzantine coarse-wares. The possibility that the latter indicates the presence of Byzantine merchants at the site – a substantial settlement probably containing over 100 buildings – is enhanced by the discovery of ship’s water jars of Byzantine form.

If so, this may be the best candidate from Britain for a Byzantine mercantile community of the sort attested in Gaul., Spain and Italy. Interestingly, that possibility is further supported by Anne Bowman’s demonstration that sailing times from the eastern Mediterranean to Britain would probably have precluded trade for profit alone. This suggests the possibility of Byzantine traders fulfilling a diplomatic as well as an economic function at the site.

The links established by these mercantile communities might, therefore, have extended across most of Europe in the later fifth and sixth centuries. But neither Byzantine ceramic imports nor Byzantine mercantile communities are evidenced in the West after the seventh century. Information from pottery about the trade networks of the Byzantine empire in the eighth century is scarce, partly due to the difficulty in identifying eighth-century material. No Middle Byzantine shipwreck containing whitewares has been published (although a ninth-century shipwreck containing whiteware is said to have been identified), and around the Black Sea shipwreck evidence and amphorae suggest an interruption of seaborne trade from the seventh to the eleventh centuries.

This seems borne out by terrestrial pottery distributions. Byzantine whitewares of the eighth to tenth centuries are found largely within the empire, rather than beyond its borders to the west. There is no evidence of Byzantine merchants providing such fine-wares to Western markets, and Middle Byzantine ceramics of other sorts, including amphorae, are extremely rare in the west, even in Italy. Trade was clearly reorganized after the seventh century, and cargoes mostly shipped between Constantinople and the other ports of the Empire in the seventh to eleventh centuries, not beyond the imperial frontiers.

The pattern alters again in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, when trade appears to ‘internationalize’ once more. Shipwreck sites become more common, as for example, at Peristera in the north Sporades, where the ship carried a carfgo of amphorae. Eleventh-century shipwrecks are especially common in the Aegean, and finds from these wrecks suggest that cargoes comprised of fine-wares and amphorae (at least 1500 vessels are known from one shipwreck site) were being shipped across political, religious and geographical frontiers to supply distant markets at this time." pp. 91-92.

I'm sure you have your own sources ... :-)

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Cheers,

David Read



I generally use Wickham and McCormick as economic/trading overviews. They both say pretty much the same thing - Byzantine and African ceramics and amphorae finds to about 700, then stopping. That broader network was replaced by smaller, regional networks, for example, one exchange network involving Francia, the Rhine and Scandinavia with finds throughout that region of Badorf, Mayen and Tating ware.

A big question though is whether such Byzantine traders would have traded with the Anglo-Saxons....the Anglo-Saxon situation in England was so much different than Gaul and Spain and "British (caveat lector and all that)" controlled areas of Britain. I can think of no reason why not, but the areas mentioned as yielding specific evidence of such trade have a different relationship to the Roman "past" than A-S England did and that may have made a difference.


To return to England, Wickham says, "Western Britain, as already noted, went largely aceramic in the early fifth century. Only in the far south-west did local hand-made wares survive, or become established, for they are found on some west Cornish sites, in particular, by the sixth century or perhaps a century later. This does not in itself have to prove economic simplicity, if glass, wood, and metal filled the gap, but here is little sign of large-scale production of these either. The high-status sites of the late fifth and sixth centuries in Wales, Cornwall, and Somerset did have imported luxuries, or what were seen as luxuries here at least, African and Phocaean *RS, DSP atlantique, eastern Mediterranean wine amphorae, and glass (cf. above, pp. 327-8). Political leaders here must have chosen a Mediterranean or Aquitainian connection, clearly distinguishable from the north Frankish conection which came through Kent. On the other hand, the quantities of imports were small and the Mediterranean link was brief. In the seventh and eighth centuries imports continued (by now they were glass and Aquitainian 'E ware'), but were no more elaborated; and, indeed, there were no further developments in the exchange patterns of Wales or Cornwall across our entire period or for some time later." pp. 814-15

Chris Wickham, Framing the Middle Ages: Europe and the Mediterranean, 400-800, Oxford University Press, 2005. ISBN: 978-0-19-921296-5

And thanks....
.

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