Anglo-Saxon Trading Centres: Beyond the Emporia 187344804X, 9781873448045

Table of contents :
Contributors v
Preface vii
1. Beyond the emporia / Mike Anderton 1
2. Of cabbages and kings: production, trade, and consumption in middle-Saxon England / Paul Blinkhorn 4
3. Metalwork and the emporia / David Hinton 24
4. Wics, trade, and the hinterlands - the Ipswich region / John Newman 32
5. Hamwic in its context / Alan Morton 48
6. The Russes, the Byzantines, and middle-Saxon emporia / Alex Woolf 63
7. Illusory emporia and mad economic theories / Ross Samson 76

Citation preview

Anglo-Saxon trading centres BEYOND T HE EMPORIA

M ike Anderson C R u i T

h

N

e

P

r e s s

Cover: Ross Samson

1999

© individual authors Cruithne Press 197 Great Western Road Glasgow G4 9EB Great Britain

All rights reserved; no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, tele­ pathic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without either the prior written permission of the publishers or a licence permitting restricted copying in the United Kingdom issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London W1P 9HE.

B ritish Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

ISBN 1 8 7 3 4 4 8 0 4 X

Set in Palatino by j o 2* Comets Printed and bound by Intype, London

C

Contributors Preface

ontents

v vii

1. Beyond the emporia Mike Anderton

1

2. Of cabbages and kings: production, trade, and consumption in middle-Saxon England Paul Blinkhom

4

3. Metalwork and the emporia David Hinton

24

4. Wics, trade, and the hinterlands - the Ipswich region John Newman

32

5. Hamwic in its context Alan Morton

48

6. The Russes, the Byzantines, and middle-Saxon emporia Alex W oolf

63

7. Illusory emporia and mad economic theories Ross Samson

76

C

on tributors

Mike Anderton, National Monuments Record Centre, Kemble Drive, Swindon SN2 2GZ. Mike graduated from the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield in 1997. For many years he has worked on a range of archaeological projects in England, France, and Cyprus. He is currently working for the aerial survey unit of English Heritage, exam­ ining the survival of twentieth-century military installations. However, he has not disowned his first love - early medieval archaeology. Paul Blinkhom, 60 Turner St., Abington, Northampton NN14JL. Currently a freelance ceramicist, Paul graduated from the University of Bradford with a degree in archaeological sciences. He was then employed by the Ipswich Archaeological Unit to study pottery from Saxon and medieval Ipswich and later worked in a similar capacity in Northampton and Oxford. He has carried out a nation-wide research project for English Heritage on Ipswich Ware. David Hinton, Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Highfield, Southampton S0171BJ. After seven years at the Ashmolean Museum, David became a lecturer in the Department of Archaeology at the University of Southampton, where he is now a professor. Special interests include medieval metalwork, on which he has published a catalogue of the Ashmolean7s late Saxon col­ lection, and a monograph on the Saxon Southampton assemblage. He edited Medieval Archaeology during the 1980s for the Society for Medieval Archaeology. Alan Morton, 32 Graham Road, Southampton S014 OAW. Alan Morton left Jersey more than thirty years ago and followed ancient trade routes northward to Southampton. He is employed by the city council to arrange the investigation of its archaeological heritage. John Newman, Archaeological Service, Suffolk County Council, St Edmund House, County Hall, Ipswich IP41LZ. John is a field officer with the Archaeological Service at Suffolk County

Contributors

Council, having previously run the South East Suffolk Survey for the Sutton Hoo Project, supervised various excavations in Ipswich, including the Boss Hall Anglo-Saxon cemetery, and liased with numerous metal detectorists. The culmination of these interests is a fascination with Ipswich and its hinterlands. Alex Woolf, Department of Celtic Studies, 19-23 George Square, Edin­ burgh University, Edinburgh EH8 9LD. Alex Woolf completed his doctoral research at the Department of Archaeology and Prehistory at the University of Sheffield. He is now a lecturer in Celtic and early Scottish history and culture at the University of Edinburgh. Ross Samson, 197 Great Western Road, Glasgow G4 9EB. After twelve years of study at six universities in five countries in three languages, Ross started Cruithne Press. Eight years later, after succesfully solving such riddles as the meaning of the Pictish symbols and the cause of the disappearance of early medieval slavery, the polymath became a furniture maker (free brochure on request).

[vi]

P

reface

T/ ms book stems from a conference that took place back in 1996. As president of the Sheffield University Archaeology Society I was in the enviable position of being able to organise a conference on a subject that held some considerable personal interest. I wanted to know what went on beyond the emporia written about in Richard Hodges's Dark Age Eco­ nomics: how were the regions and hinterlands involved in this process? Were the elite alone responsible for the changes involved? The conference proved a great success and I decided then that a vol­ ume which contained papers based upon the conference theme would be a useful addition to the study of early medieval trade and society. This book is the final result and consists of a combination of papers given at the conference and others that were specifically commissioned at a later date. It is my hope that this book will lead people away from the Hodgescentred view of early medieval trading centres and will encourage them to focus on the re-examination of earlier evidence and look at new evid­ ence in a different light. The study of early medieval trade is a complex one and is the sum of many parts. It will be a dream come true if this book provokes people into examining all of the 'parts' at the same time rather than using the Hodgean approach. Mike Anderton Swindon June 1998

Ack n o w led g em en ts

First, I would like to give a great deal of thanks to those who contributed to the conference (without you this book would never have materialised): Dave Barrett for acting as chairman at such short notice; Paul Blinkhom, Ewan Campbell, David Hill, David Hinton, Alan Morton, and John Newman for speaking on the day; Colin Merrony, John Moreland, and Alex Woolf for their help and advice prior to, during, and after the con­ ference; and, Ross Dean, Gillian Riley, Derek Roberts, Ann Schofield (and anyone else I have forgotten), who helped out with the arrangements and

Preface

organisation on the day of the conference. Second, my thanks go out to those who have helped during the pro­ duction of this monograph. To all the contributors, you have my warmest thanks, and a medal for your patience is in the post! Similarly, medals should go to Ross Samson and his staff at Cruithne Press for their patience and tenacity in seeing this work through to completion. Finally, I would like to give a mention to a set of people who have given me their continued support throughout the time it has taken to see this book through to publication: Ross Dean, Donna Goldsmith, Chris and Joan Huxley, Alan Morton, Bruce McSloy, John Mitchell, Colin Merrony, the Thomases (you know who you are!), and Alex Woolf.

[viii]

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O

ne

B eyond the emporia Mike Anderton

H o d g es

a n d t h e h in t e r l a n d s

W / ien r e a d in g R ic h a r d H o d g es’s Dark Age Economics (1982) as a first year undergraduate I did as most students would do at first, I skim read the recommended chapters. Without too much thought I assumed that what Hodges had to say, particularly in view of the fact that the book had been described by the lecturer as seminal, could be taken as gos­ pel. However, further reading later in my student career led me to less unquestioning conclusions. AstilTs (1985) critique of Hodges's work forced me to wonder how far one could be completely reliant on his ideas about trade in the early medieval period. Astill was quick to point out that Hodges did not consider what effect trade, and in particular the emporia, were having upon the regions. My mind began to wander and I became keen to know what was going on beyond the emporia. How were the regions affected? What other contemporary factors contributed to trade? How would more recent study treat Hodges's earlier ideas? Hodges laid out criteria for types of trade centres which were based around a fixed interest in the control of prestige goods by the rulers of contemporary society. The elite, kings and chiefs, used the more luxuri-

B eyond the emporia

ous, prestige items for redistribution as tribute and other forms of social obligation. In the first instance Hodges's type A emporia, primarily fairs held annually or seasonally on boundaries, were seen as a useful means of obtaining these luxury items. However, as time went by, and as the power of the elite increased, there arose a need to control the distribution of prestige goods, and the ordinary person's access to trade and traders, at even the most basic level. Type B emporia, structured, tightly con­ trolled trading areas, were thus brought into operation. Through these areas, as Hodges saw it, the elite now controlled every aspect of early medieval trade - from the production of the raw materials down to the traders and their operations. The evidence for the different types of emporia was backed up archaeologically by Hodges. He provided a gazetteer of emporia (1982: 66-86) which included sites such as Southampton and Dorestad which had been deliberately laid out in a regulated pattern suggestive of a major control­ ling influence. For Hodges the sites were designed by and for the people in charge of the whole operation, and from these sites the flow of goods and people/traders would also be controlled. The fact that the remains of luxury goods are to be found concentrated at these sites is further evid­ ence for his theories. However, Van Es's (1990,172) reports on Dorestad suggest that its role in the redistribution of prestigious goods was not as large, or significant, as has been suggested. This prompts us to consider what was really happening at these sites; and it also prompts us to look at Van Es's other suggestion that Dorestad primarily concentrated on its immediate, local areas and 'attempted to sell its wares as close to home as possible' (1990:169). TO THE EMPORIA AND BEYOND

Following on from the questions brought up by Van Es there is a wealth of separate work that also questions the linear, dendritic, elite-oriented approach of the theories put forward in Dark Age Economics. Recent ana­ lysis of the glass from Saxon Southampton (Hunter and Heyworth 1998, 61) indicates that what were previously called 'luxury' items are more likely to be domestic items (probably within something resembling a traders'/merchants' quarter). Also, studies relating to the 'emporia' at Ribe (Bencard and Jorgensen 1990) have shown that these sites operate on a much more localised scale than was anticipated by Hodges. How­ ever, this is not to suggest that these sites were not set up to service the elite's need for increased revenue. Kelly (1992) and Lebecq (1990, 87) [2]

Anderton

have shown how tolls on trade were more important than the actual goods traded. Finally, Ewan Campbell (1996) has provided an excep­ tional account of why we must remember that Hodges only concentrates on a limited geographical area. In the oft forgotten 'Celtic West' a thriv­ ing trade structure was also apparent, but the methods of obtaining the goods does not match the emporia system. The wind of change is in the air and this book is designed to continue the debate surrounding what was occurring beyond Hodges's emporia. David Hinton and Alan Morton question the previously assumed, over­ inflated role of Saxon Southampton. Paul Blinkhom explains how the distribution of Ipswich Ware provides us with a major re-evaluation of social and trade systems in Ipswich and beyond. John Newman reminds us that archaeological analysis is only as good as its available evidence, providing details of the varied nature of the hinterlands of eastern England. Alex Woolf provides a plausible Byzantine model for the Frisian trade and elite influences in the early Middle Ages. Ross Samson urges us to Beware the Jabberwock, and treat the findings in Dark Age Economics with extreme caution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY Astill, G. 1985. Archaeology, economics and early medieval Europe. Oxford Journal ofArchaeology 4(2), 215-31. Bencard, M. and Jorgensen, L. B. 1990. The foundation of Ribe. Antiquity 64, 576-83 Campbell, E. 1996. The archaeological evidence for external contacts: imports, trade and economy in Celtic Britain A.D. 400-800. In K. R. Dark (ed.) External Contacts and the Economy of Late Roman and PostRoman Britain, 83-96. Woodbridge: Boydell Press. Hodges, R. 1982. Dark Age Economics. London: Duckworth. Hunter, J. R. and Heyworth, M. P. 1998. The Hamwic Glass. CBA Research Report 116. Kelly, S. 1992. Trading privileges from eighth-century England. Early Medieval Europe 1(1), 3-28. Lebecq, S. 1990. On the use of the word 'Frisian' in the 6th-10th centuries written sources: some interpretations. In S. McGrail (ed.) Maritime Celts, Frisians, and Saxons, 85-90. CBA Research Report 71. Van Es, W. A. 1990. Dorestad Centred. In J. C. Besteman, J. M. Bos, and H. A. Heidinga (eds) Medieval Archaeology in the Netherlands, 151-82. Assen: Van Gorcum.

[3]

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tw o

O f cabbages and kings: production, trade, and consumption in middle-Saxon England

Paxil Blinkhom

I n t r o d u c t io n

'This paper is a précis of some of the findings of the research project, funded by English Heritage, into middle-Saxon Ipswich Ware pottery. The project is more than an exercise in 'traditional7 pottery analysis; it deals with the basics of form, fabric, and function but also gives serious consideration to both the social role of the ware and the trade systems which gave it a distribution area unparalleled by any other English pot­ tery of the period. Here, attention will be focused upon the insights the project has given into the production and movement of goods in middle-Saxon England. Ipswich Ware, which appears to have been manufactured exclusively within the eponymous Suffolk wic, is unlike any other English ceramic of the middle-Saxon period. It was made on a slow wheel, kiln fired, and

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traded over a wide area of eastern England, occurring on sites of the period from York to Kent. All other native wares had a far more limited distribution, were hand-made, and probably fired in bonfires. Ipswich Ware also had a wider range of vessel forms than the native industries, including the only English-made pitchers of the middle-Saxon period (Fig. 1). Assemblages from sites outside East Anglia usually have a far higher proportion of storage jars and pitchers than those within the king­ dom, suggesting that it was used as a container for items of trade or, in the case of the pitchers, to fill a gap in the functional range of other ceramic traditions. The fact that Ipswich Ware was made in a major emporium and widely distributed suggests that it is a useful indicator of the trade routes of the period, and has the potential to reveal the 'zone of influence' of Ipswich (Hodges 1982, 147). Consequently, this discussion will be concerned mainly with find spots located outside East Anglia, most of which are within what was, during the eighth century, the hege­ mony of Mercia. A brief summary of the results of the distribution analysis will be fol­ lowed by a review of the chronological associations of the ware and the archaeological and historical evidence for the production and redistribu­ tion of various other traded commodities. Finally, a model will be sug­ gested for the structure of the production and redistribution mechanisms and how this manifests itself in non-wic sites. Several references will be made to Richard Hodges's seminal work Dark Age Economics. Despite being published in 1982 there has not really been a major re-evaluation of the work since then. The findings from the Ipswich Ware project, along with evidence from more recent excavations, means that there is now an opportunity to do so. TH E DISTRIBUTION

The majority of finds of Ipswich Ware were made during field survey or small-scale excavation, with most assemblages consisting of less than ten sherds. In addition to this, the data is likely to be weighted by the fact that the majority of the sites which have been extensively excavated were either wics or ecclesiastical settlements. Additionally, the Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and Norfolk fens have been intensively surveyed, as have large areas of Suffolk and parts of Northamptonshire. In Norfolk and Suffolk the density of distribution (Fig. 2) and the lack of other locally made pottery (apart from a few hand-made waxes) in­ dicates that Ipswich Ware served as the 'local' pottery for the kingdom, [5]

Of

cabbages and kings

Fig . 2 . Ipswich Ware pottery (after Hurst 1976).

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Fig. 2. Find spots o f Ipswich Ware (from Blinkhom forthcoming).

despite there being no definite evidence for its production outside Ipswich. This suggests that the kingdom had a highly organised redistri­ bution network which linked sites of all types to the Suffolk emporium. The majority of sites in Lincolnshire, Cambridgeshire, and north-east­ ern Norfolk are on the fen edge or in major river valleys (Hall and Coles 1994) with the fenland itself appearing to have been largely uninhabited during the middle-Saxon period, apart from low islands in the marshes [7]

Of cabbages and kings

known as roddons. Examples of these are known at Gosberton, Quadring, and Pinchbeck in Lincolnshire; Tydd St Giles in Cam­ bridgeshire; and Tenington St Qement and Walpole St Peter in Norfolk (ibid., 122-6). These sites have produced evidence of trade for, as well as Ipswich Ware, they have produced imported lava quern fragments at Quadring; the first sceatta to be found in the Fenland at Walpole St Peter; and imported pottery at Terrington St Qement (ibid.). In Northamptonshire the majority of finds of Ipswich Ware were made in or near the Nene valley and a significant proportion have ecclesiastical or royal associations. Brixworth was an ecclesiastical centre of some im­ portance (Cramp et al. 1977) and there sire documentary references to a Mercian royal nunnery at Weedon (Morris 1989, 67-8; Merriman 1994). However, the largest assemblage of Ipswich Ware occurred at North Raunds, which appears to have been a farmstead (Audouy in print). With the exception of Canterbury, all the find spots in Kent are coastal and many have ecclesiastical associations. Others are likely to have been long-established fair sites or market centres as the imported items found in pagan Kentish graves indicate that the inhabitants of the area had es­ tablished cross-channel contact long before the growth of the emporia. Essex demonstrates a similar pattern to Kent with few inland finds except in the extreme west of the county in the vicinity of the river Lea, a major north-south route since Roman times. Detailed examination of the Hamwic archive revealed that there is only a single sherd known from the settlement, mistakenly published as a local fabric (Timby 1988, fig. 4.48). The ware is, however, relatively common in London and at Thames estu­ ary sites such as Barking Abbey (cf. Blackmore 1989; Redknap 1991). In Yorkshire the three Ipswich Ware find spots all appear to be of high status, comprising York, Beverley Minster, and Wharram Percy. Traditionally, Ipswich Ware was seen as an indicator of high site status. Whilst this is to a certain extent true, especially on the fringes of the distribution area, it generally occurs at all categories of settlement: emporia; royal vilis/ palaces; nucleated rural settlements with a signific­ ant ecclesiastical component ('ecclesiastical settlements'); and, rural farming communities ('rural sites'). CHRONOLOGY

Traditionally, Ipswich Ware was dated 650-850 (Hurst 1976) but the findings from the project have indicated that there are, at this time, no solid grounds for postulating a mid-seventh-century start for the indus­ [83

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try. There are no direct numismatically or scientifically derived dates for before 700 and all the seventh-century artefactual associations are some­ what questionable (Blinkhom forthcoming). It would appear, therefore, that a dating scheme of c. 720-850 is probably more appropriate for the lifespan of the material, although it is entirely possible that it may have ceased production slightly later. The review of the chronology of the finds of the ware from sites outside East Anglia has, however, revealed a very significant insight into the economic cycles of the period. Hodges (1982,71) stated that: From the imported ceramic evidence, it can be suggested that Ipswich experienced a trading 'peak' in the early seventh century and at the end of the eighth or in the early ninth century. However, excavations in the emporium have shown that it expanded to around three times its previous size c. 700-725 (K. Wade pers. comm.). It appears that Ipswich Ware was being traded in quantity outside East Anglia at least fifty years before Hodges postulated a peak in overseas trade. Ipswich had until recently produced only three primary sceattas but over 70 secondary series examples (J. Newman pers. comm.). The latter are roughly dateable to the second quarter of the eighth century, indicating that this was the time when there was a significant increase in the involvement of the emporium of Ipswich in trade. The fact that coins minted in London were in widespread circulation from the seventh cen­ tury onwards (Vince 1988, fig. 44), but not found in Ipswich until much later, appears to underline this. Coinage is not in itself unequivocable evidence of trading activity (Vince 1988,85): Trade can take place without coins and coins can be minted for non-economic purposes, but the history of coinage in AngloSaxon England supports the view that it was used first and fore­ most as a medium of exchange and as such was particularly sens­ itive to fluctuations in trade. Furthermore, Ipswich Ware did not arrive in London until the second quarter of the eighth centuiy (L. Blackmore pers. comm.), which co­ incides with the sharp increase in both the size of the settlement and the occurrence of coinage at the Suffolk zoic. Similarly, at Flixborough, Humberside, one of the most northerly find spots, Ipswich Ware first occurred in horizons dated to c. 750 (G. Watkin pers. comm.), although the evidence from York is less clear (Kemp 1994, 546-7; Mainman 1990, 394). In the south, Minster-in-Sheppey in Kent has an Ipswich Ware PI

Of cabbages and kings

assemblage associated with a Northumbrian styca with a postulated loss date of c. 740 (N. MacPherson-Grant pers. comm.). It would seem, therefore, that there is a good case for suggesting that there was a major expansion of the use-zone of Ipswich Ware during the second quarter of the eighth century, which is seen here as the manifesta­ tion of a significant increase in trade in eastern England. This implies that there was a fully operational internal trade network in eastern England at least fifty years before Hodges's boom in overseas trade of c. 800. It seems highly likely that the internal trade was concerned with more than just small quantities of Ipswich Ware and lava querns. The next section of this paper is an examination of the objects of this trade and how the pro­ duction and redistribution systems were structured and controlled. P roduction , consumption , and tra d e in m id d le -S axon E ngland It is reasonably well attested that the emporia were controlled by the elite, usually from a base at a nearby royal estate, and that all trade trans­ actions were subject to taxation (Hodges 1982, 52-6). The wics appear, from the archaeological and historical evidence, to have subsisted by trading goods imported from the continent and manufacturing and ex­ changing utilitarian commodities, such as cast metalwork, pottery, leather, cloth, and glass. It is suggested here that the importance of 'luxury7 imported goods in the economy may have been somewhat over­ stressed; although such items, especially pottery, are relatively common in the emporia, they are rarely found in the hinterland, other than in small quantities at ecclesiastical sites and, possibly, royal vills. Few of the latter have been excavated in eastern England, although John Newman's field survey work at Rendlesham in Suffolk, a place described by Bede as the 'royal village' (Bede III. 22; Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 284-85), has suggested that they can be identified by the presence of imported pottery, coinage, and metalwork. Limited archaeological excavations at Higham Ferrers in Northamptonshire have suggested that the site may be part of a bifocal Offan royal vill, as there is a documentary record of Offa en­ dorsing a charter at Irthlingborough, on the opposite bank of the river Nene (Stenton 1971, 211). The Higham Ferrers site has produced quantities of Ipswich Ware. The other possible focus, at Irthlingborough, was destroyed without record in the early 1980s, although metal detectorists are reported to have recovered significant quantities of highquality metalwork (B. Dix pers. comm.). [iO]

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Duncan Brown's work (1997) on the social significance of the imported pottery of Hamwic has suggested that the non-local wares were regarded by consumers as simply another choice in the range of goods available, or, in the case of pitchers, a functional type which was not part of the range of the local pottery. I agree and suggest that we may have been somewhat blinded by the (to us) superior aesthetics of the imported pot­ tery when compared to the contemporary English wares. It seems more likely that the occurrence of imported pottery at non-wic sites is due to the vessels in question being closely associated with the wine trade (Hodges 1982, 58-9). There seems little doubt that wine, as the drink of 'the old and wise', definitely did have status and was probably available to the few rather than the many. This is perhaps reflected in the distribu­ tion of the associated ceramics. The paucity of imported middle-Saxon pottery in the hinterland can be gauged by the fact that a total of 6,002 sherds of Ipswich Ware have been found in Norfolk, but only 44 of im­ ported continental pottery. Of these, 26 occurred at the episcopal complex at North Elmham (Wade-Martins 1980) which produced 161 sherds of Ipswich Ware. In other words, 59 per cent of the imported pottery known from Norfolk occurred at a site which yielded only 2.7 per cent of the Ipswich Ware from the county. This is not the only example and suggests two things: imported luxury goods were not traded into the hinterlands in significant quantities and, in trade terms, the ecclesiastical settlements were linked directly to the emporia. I suggest that the internal trade network, evidenced by Ipswich Ware, and the paucity of imported material in the hinterland, means that nonimported utilitarian goods, and perhaps the raw materials for their man­ ufacture, were generally a far more significant trade item than luxury goods from overseas. F ood One of the most basic trade items was almost certainly food. The inhab­ itants of the emporia had to eat and must, fairly obviously, have been provisioned from the countryside. Meat appears to have been an import­ ant component of the diet, and the archaeological and historical evidence suggests that cattle and sheep were brought into the urban centres 'on the hoof, with pigs arriving as carcasses (Bourdillon 1994, 122; O'Connor 1994, 139; Rackham 1994, 131). Large numbers of pig bones, especially skulls, occurred at Wicken Bonhunt (K. Wade pers. comm.), and Terrington St Clement in Norfolk produced some evidence of brine pits (A. [HI

Of cabbages and kings

Rogerson pers. comm.), suggesting that the sites were processing pork on a significant scale. Certainly, driving herds of live pigs over long dis­ tances is considerably problematic as they are reputedly very difficult to control (Qutton-Brock 1976,378). There is also the problem of the creation of the surpluses necessary to support a non-productive (in food terms) stratum of society. Hodges (1982,138) has suggested that the craftspeople of the emporia were pro­ visioned by the surplus from the collection of food-rents which he saw as 'a food-mountain... of EEC dimensions' based upon the estimated size of Mercia in the Tribal Hidage and a late-seventh-centuiy West Saxon foodrent quoted in the Laws o f Ine. The food-rent from the Laws (Atten­ borough 1922,59) consisted of: 10 vats of honey, 300 loaves, 12 ambers of Welsh ale, 30 ambers of clear ale, 2 full grown cows or 10 wethers, 10 geese, 20 hens, 10 cheeses, a full amber of butter, 5 salmon, 20 pounds of fodder, and 100 eels [payable] as food rent from every 10 hides. The commonest size of a medieval amber was 4 bushels, or 141 litres (Zupko 1968). However, Stenton (1971, 288) noted that the food-rent of Ine occurs in the Laws o f Ine as an isolated clause, and may not be typical. For example, a food-rent from Westbury-on-Trym, from die time of Offa, is both smaller in size and from a much larger area of land. Sixty hides were expected to produce a food-rent of two tuns full of clear ale, one cumb full of mild ale, one cumb full of British ale, seven oxen, six wethers, forty cheeses, thirty ambers of rye com and four ambers of meal' (Stenton 1971, 288). In the medieval period a coomb was the same vol­ ume as an amber, and a medieval tun was usually in the region of 1,000 litres (Zupko 1968). Using this as a basis for calculation in the manner of Hodges the annual food-rent of Mercia is considerably less than when based on the West Saxon food-rent of Ine. Table 1 shows a considerably lower yield if the Offan food-rent is taken as typical. Hodges's theory assumes a constant level of agricultural yield across the whole of England, which is unlikely given the relative output of poorer land such as the Suffolk heaths, the uplands, or the Fens. The Westbury food-rent also lists a much narrower range of produce than that of the earlier Wessex estate, suggesting that it was primarily growing cereals, with perhaps secondary dairy farming. Similarly, a rent quoted in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle for the year 852, payable to die abbey at Medehamstede from an estate (of unspecified size) at Sempringham, suggests that the estate in question also had a narrow range of production. It con[12]

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Table 1. Calculation of the food-rent yield of Mercia based on the Laws oflne and Offan rent at Westbury on Trym, from the area of die Mercian kingdom in the Tribal Hidage. Law s of Ine

Offan rent

H oney

3 0 ,0 0 0 V ats'

0

Loaves

9 0 0 ,0 0 0

0

O xen

6 ,000

4 ,0 0 0

H ens

6 0 ,00 0

0

G e e se

3 0 ,0 0 0

0

Salmon

15,00 0

0

Fodder

6 0 ,0 0 0 lbs

0

Butter

3 ,0 0 0 am bers

0

C h e e se s

3 0 ,0 0 0

2 0 ,0 0 0

Eels

3 0 0 ,0 0 0

0

Ale

c. 18 ,0 0 0 ,0 0 0 litres

c. 1 ,500 ,0 00 litres

Corn

0

15 ,00 0 am bers

M eal

0

2 ,0 0 0 am bers

sisted of an annual payment of (Swanton 1996, 65): sixty wagon-loads of wood and twelve wagon-loads of brashwood and six wagon-loads of faggots, and two casks-full of dear ale and two cattle for slaughter and six hundred loaves and ten measures of Welsh ale, and each year a horse and thirty shillings and one days provisions. This indicates that the primary activity of the estate was woodland management, coupled with small-scale cereal production and animal husbandry. All this casts considerable doubt on the validity of Hodges's estimation of the food surplus of middle-Saxon England from a single rent. If the Sempringham rent rather than that of the Laws ofln e is used as a yardstick for agricultural production and food-rent levels then the wealth of middle-Saxon Mercia would have consisted largely of fire­ wood! The real picture appears to have been somewhat more complex than the one suggested by Hodges (1982,130): With the inception of competitive markets, the artisan and bureaucratic classes necessarily require a more complex agrarian regime. Foodstuffs have to be produced and traded to feed those engaged in non-subsistence pursuits. As a result, there will be in­ creasing specialisation of the economy which may not have become fully mobilised before.... It is now a commonplace that [13]

Of cabbages and kings

agricultural specialisation is linked to the institutional means of bringing potential surpluses to life. When considering this statement there does appear, from an admit­ tedly very limited archaeological and historical record, to be some evid­ ence that there was increasing specialisation of production in the rural economy and it appears to have corresponded with the expansion of Ipswich Ware to areas outside East Anglia. The production of 'cash crops' at the expense of basic commodities is not without precedent on the continent. For example, in the ninth century, grain had to be shipped up the Rhine from Alsace to compensate for the increasing specialisation in viniculture (Hodges 1982, 129). Thus, the differences in the width of the range of produce listed in the food-rents cited earlier may be due to such a specialisation of production. If this was the case then the archae­ ological record may be able to provide evidence of such action. Unfortun­ ately, few middle-Saxon rural sites in eastern England have been extens­ ively excavated; what follows is a review of most of them. The settlement at Pennyland, Buckinghamshire (Williams 1993) spanned the early and middle-Saxon periods. At first the site was a typ­ ical, dispersed sixth-century unenclosed settlement but, in the seventh to eighth centuries, a series of enclosures containing sunken-floor buildings and timber halls were constructed (Fig. 3). By the time Ipswich Ware began to arrive at the site, presumably before the middle of the eighth century, the enclosures were either abandoned or used for non-domestic activity, as no middle-Saxon pottery occurred in the features. Simultane­ ously, new domestic structures were built, largely in a single small clus­ ter to the west. A similar pattern was suggested by the limited excavation of an early and middle-Saxon settlement at Riby Crossroads in Lincolnshire (Steedman 1994). The middle-Saxon phase of activity yielded Ipswich Ware, lava querns, a Frisian sceatta, and a single sherd of imported black ware. The site appears to have consisted of a loose collection of sunkenfloor buildings in the sixth and seventh centuries but, by the time Ipswich Ware was arriving at the site, a series of enclosures and droveways (mainly unexcavated but visible from aerial photographs - ibid., illustra­ tion 4) had been constructed (ibid., 225). I would suggest that the reorganisation of the settlements is indicative of a major change in their economies, in both cases from broad-based agriculture to intensive stock-rearing. At Pennyland the nucléation of the latest phase of buildings suggests a smaller settlement population, which [14]

B

Fig.

3.

unkhorn

Pennyland,Buckinghamshire (after Williams 1993)

[15 ]

Of cabbages and kings

would correspond with a switch from broad-based agriculture to less labour-intensive animal husbandry. A transition to meat production would leave little trace in the archaeological record if the animals were killed off site, which the evidence from the emporia and the wording of the Sempringham rent (as noted above) suggests was common practice. I therefore propose that, during the second quarter of the eighth century, the time of the postulated trade boom, Pennyland and Riby responded to the need to produce surpluses by concentrating mainly upon stock-rear­ ing, with the Ipswich Ware and lava querns at the sites being the evid­ ence of contact with a redistribution centre and a trade in surplus animals. A similar transition can be postulated for the early and middle-Saxon site at North Raunds, Northamptonshire (Audouy in print). It produced the largest assemblage of Ipswich Ware from the county, as well as frag­ ments of lava querns. The middle-Saxon remains were severely damaged by post-medieval quarrying although a building, some ditches, and a well survived. The well produced large quantities of hexaploid freethreshing wheat, which has been suggested as indicating that it was the only cereal crop grown at the site at that time (Campbell in print). This is somewhat unusual, as contemporary sites usually produce a much broader range of cereals (ibid.). The Nene valley, where the site is located, was an intensive producer of grain in the Roman period and the nearby Stanwick villa appears to have functioned as a grain 'factor/ for the small towns of the area (D. Neal pers. comm.). It does not require much of a leap of the imagination to see North Raunds as having func­ tioned in a similar fashion during the middle-Saxon period. Certainly, the large quantities of Ipswich Ware at the site indicate that the settlement was extremely active in trade and suggests that, like Pennyland and Riby, the site was practising specialised commodity production by the mid­ eighth century. It is also worthy of note that the programme of organic residue analysis as part of the Ipswich Ware project has shown the pres­ ence of beeswax in an unusually large number of pots at the site (Blinkhom forthcoming). Honey was paid as a food-rent but, as well as being a sweetener and the basis of alcoholic beverages, it could also be used as a preservative, thus giving it the potential for a secondary use in the movement of food stuffs. OTHER COMMODITIES

In eastern England middle-Saxon rural sites usually produce little evid­ [16]

B linkhorn

ence of involvement in trade, other than Ipswich Ware and/or Mayen lava querns. Coinage occurs only rarely, implying that the occupants of small rural farms who indulged in trade did so by barter rather than cash. There are many possible trade goods that would have been pro­ duced in the hinterland that leave little or no trace in the archaeological record, such as honey, dyes, and salt. Archaeological evidence has shown that other produce of the countryside, such as meat, beans, grain, veget­ ables, and fruit were brought to the emporia (cf. Rackham 1994). Cut marks on bone consistent with skinning have shown that the pelts of beaver and pine marten were being processed in York (O'Connor 1994, 141) and evidence of beaver skinning was also noted at Ramsbury in Wiltshire (Coy 1980, 49-51). The disproportionately large number of goat horn-cores found in Ipswich suggests that skins were being brought into Ipswich for leather and horn working (Wade 1988, 95). The working of bone and antler in the wic are also evidenced by a comb 'factory' at the Greyfriars Road site (ibid.). Additionally, the Sempringham rent shows that even firewood was a valued commodity. The zvics must have got their fuel from somewhere, and the same applies to building materials. Metal, particularly iron, appears to have been a significant commodity. Recent excavations at St Augustine's in Canterbury have yielded evid­ ence of extensive iron-working (I. Riddler pers. comm.) and a middleSaxon charter shows that the abbey was granted an iron mine in the Kentish Weald in 689 (Kelly 1992, 15), Recent small-scale excavations in the area around Minster-in-Sheppey, Kent have produced large quant­ ities of iron slag (B. Slade pers. comm.) and evidence of iron-working was also found at Repton in Derbyshire (Webster and Cherry 1976,159). The monastic site at Hartlepool produced evidence of both stone working and metal casting and, in 835, abbess Cynewaru of Repton granted Wirksworth in Derbyshire to an ealdorman for an annual rent of 300 shillings worth of lead, payable to Canterbury (Finberg 1976, 82). In 852 King Aethelwulf of Wessex sent a cargo of lead to Quentovic for the re­ roofing of the church at Ferrières (Fisher 1973,195-6). Monk-smiths sometimes feature in Anglo-Saxon prose. For example, Bede mentions a monk who was skilled in metal-working who, despite being a drunkard, was tolerated by the other brothers 'because they had need of his manual labour, for he was a skilled worker in metal' (Bede V. 14; Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 502-3). The poem De Abbatibus also mentions one Cwicwine, who 'decked the table of the brothers by beating out vessels' (Cramp 1976, 205). Whilst this suggests that the products of the monastic manufactories were used within the walls of the production [17]

Of cabbages and kings

centres, the fact that such places were also involved in trade suggests that it is likely that some of the items were destined for a wider market. Production and smelting of ore also took place in the countryside, with the south-east Midlands being particularly rich in ironstone deposits. The middle-Saxon settlement at Maxey in Cambridgeshire yielded quantities of slag which the excavator took to indicate 'iron smelting on a fairly large and adequately competent level' (Addyman 1964, 69). The site also produced small quantities of Ipswich Ware and Mayen lava querns. Documentary evidence shows that Maxey was a holding of the monastery of Medehamstede for some time before the Norman conquest (ibid.), lying within the boundaries of the grant of land given to the monastery in 656, and recorded in The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The land was given 'so that nobody shall have any authority there except the abbot and die monks' (Swanton 1996,30). There are also other examples. As noted earlier, the charters and archaeological evidence indicate that iron mined in the Weald was worked at St Augustine's in Canterbury and a specialist iron-smelting site, dated to the late eighth to early ninth century, is known from Ramsbury in Wiltshire (Haslam 1980). The site is near a probable villa regalis which became one of the seats of the West Saxon bishopric in'the early tenth century (ibid.). Furnaces and smithing waste occurred at the site, as did ore-roasting hearths, iron ore, and smelting slag, indicating that raw ore was brought to the site. The nearest ore outcrops are some five kilometres to the south of the settlement, and a fragment of ironstone occurred which originated some thirty kilometres to the west (Fells 1980). This suggests that the processing of the ore was controlled, as transporting it from source appears far less efficient than processing at the mine-head. Mayen quemstones were present at the site and are noted as being the only finds of the material in the area apart from at Hamzvic (ibid.). This strongly suggests that Ramsbury, under the control of the elite, was supplying the emporium of Hamzvic with at least some of its iron. The role of the ecclesiastical communities in production, trade, and re­ distribution appears to have been highly significant. Such sites in eastern England invariably produce Ipswich Ware, indicating that the vast majority of them were involved in trade of some sort. As noted earlier the fact that, outside the zvics, imported pottery mainly occurs at ecclesiastical sites indicates that they were directly linked to the emporia. I suggest that there is evidence that the ecclesiastical settlements were the central places for the redistribution of goods in the countryside. Certainly, seasonal fairs at monasteries were not uncommon on the continent at that time. [18]

B linkhorn

The fair at the monastery of Saint Denys is particularly well attested, and the monastery of St Maximin at Trier is known to have had a Frisian commercial agent (Hodges 1982,89-90). There is documentary evidence that English ecclesiastical communities were transporting trade goods to and from the wics. Minster-in-Thanet, in Kent, owned three trade ships which were given toll remissions in the port of London, as were others from Rochester and Reculver (Kelly 1992, 4). Bishop Ingwald of London had at least two trading ships, as did the bishop of Worcester (ibid., 11-12). At least one of Thanet's trade ships was built at the minster, and a horde of shipwright's tools was recently discovered at Flixborough (G. Watkin pers. comm.). Furthermore, it appears that most ecclesiastical sites had the capability of manufacturing surplus goods for trade. For example, the Bishop of Worcester owned several salt-furnaces (Hodges 1982, 128), and the communities at Brandon in Suffolk (Carr forthcoming) and Castor in Cambridgeshire (Green et al. 1987) appear to have produced cloth on a significant scale. The value of English cloth is attested in the historical record and English cloaks were famously mentioned in correspondence between Offa and Charlemagne (Hodges 1982, 126). Other ecclesiastical sites have shown evidence of industrial production of commodities and evidence of glass working is known from Jarrow, Burgh Castle, and Barking Abbey (Cramp 1976,239; ibid.; F. Meddens pers. comm.). The wealth of the church in the eighth and ninth centuries is well known and its remission from taxes, combined with the rents and prod­ uce from estates, would have generated considerable income. There is also evidence to suggest that some foundations were made for economic rather than spiritual reasons. In 734 Bede wrote to Egbert of York to ex­ press his anger about the many 'false monasteries' which were being founded. The letter lists the sin and corruption rife in such places, and states that 'there has hardly been one of the reeves ... who has not pro­ cured . . . a monastery of this kind [and,] the kings thegns and servants also have exerted themselves to do the same (Whitelock 1979, 806). This suggests that members of the elite were establishing monasteries to allow themselves to indulge in the trade of the time without taxation. It may not be coincidence that the timing of Bede's letter corresponds with the apparent escalation in internal trade in eastern England. C o n c l u s io n s

The degrees of specialisation within . . . pre-market based [19]

Of cabbages and kings

economies should be reflected in the patterns of regional ex­ change. Quite simply, specialist farmers would have to trade their produce to acquire goods or food that they did not have (Hodges 1982,144). The data generated by the Ipswich Ware project suggests just such a scenario. Certainly, it would explain the changes at North Raunds, Riby, and Pennyland. If the rural settlements practised subsistence fanning and were unable to have produced a useable surplus then switching to spe­ cialised production would, as Hodges suggested, have solved the prob­ lem. This would have also meant that the rural sites would have been in a position to trade for some of the goods which they were unable to pro­ duce for themselves, explaining the rise of the internal trade network in eastern England during the second quarter of the eighth century. To summarise, the evidence presented here suggests that there was an economic boom in eastern England which started sometime during the second quarter of the eighth century, probably, from coin evidence, by 740 at the latest. The catalyst appears to have been the necessity to facilit­ ate the movement of utilitarian goods such as food, cloth, glass, and metal to the emporia as provisions, trade items, or the raw materials for the manufacture of utilitarian goods. These were consumed at the urban centres or redistributed along with items (such as Ipswich Ware) which were made from raw materials available locally. Such a model would ex­ plain the metamorphosis of the emporia from 'spontaneous' seasonal fairs held at safe anchorages to developed production and market centres (Hodges 1982, 53). Grouping craftspeople and traders in a single place, whether wic or monastery, allowed easy access for merchants to the mar­ ket-place and, perhaps more significantly, facilitated the collection of trade tolls. This may also explain why there appears to have been strict controls on how and where trade should take place (Hodges 1982,54-5). I would also suggest that a significant proportion of the trade goods was shipped to (and by) ecclesiastical houses, false or otherwise, who traded the products of their estates and manufactories for imported lux­ ury items such as wine and pottery (the two were probably inseparable) and, perhaps, hard cash. More utilitarian materials which they were un­ able to produce for themselves or obtain locally were doubtless also sought. Whilst some of these goods were consumed within the monas­ teries, some were redistributed in the hinterland, perhaps by holding sea­ sonal fairs in a similar maimer to those on the continent. In response to this some of the rural farmsteads, probably at the behest of the estate [20]

B unkhorn

owners, began to produce a narrower, more specialised, range of produce resulting in surpluses which allowed them access to the burgeoning market. B ib l io g r a p h y Addyman, P. V. 1964. A Dark Age settlement at Maxey, Northants. Medieval Archaeology 8,20-73. Attenborough, F. L. 1922. The Laws of the Earliest English Kings. Cambridge: Camdridge University Press. Audouy, M. In print. North Rounds, Northamptonshire. Excavations 1977-87. English Heritage Archaeological Report Series. Blackmore, L. 1989. The pottery. In R. L. Whytehead and R. Cowie, Excava­ tions at the Peabody site, Chandos Place, and the National Gallery. Transactions of the London and Middlesex Archaeological Society 40,35-176. Blinkhom, P. W. Forthcoming. The Ipswich Ware Project: Ceramics, Trade and Society in Middle Saxon England. Medieval Pottery Research Group Special Paper Bourdillon, J. 1994. The animal provisioning of Saxon Southampton. In J. Rackham (ed.), Environment and Economy in Anglo-Saxon England, 120-5. CBA Research Report 89. Brown, D. H. 1997. The social significance of imported medieval pottery. In C. G. Cumberpatch and P. W. Blinkhom (eds) Not So Much a Pot, More a Way of Life, 95-112. Oxford: Oxbow Monograph 83. Campbell, G. In print. Plant and invertebrate remains from Fumells, Langham Road and Burystead. In M. Audouy (ed.) North Rounds, Northamptonshire. Excavations 1977-87 English Heritage Archaeological Report Series. Carr, R. Forthcoming. The Middle Saxon Settlement at Staunch Meadow, Bran­ don. East Anglia Archaeology. Clutton-Brock, J. 1976. The animal resources. In D. M. Wilson (ed.) The Archaeology ofAnglo-Saxon England, 373-92. London: Methuen. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (eds) 1969. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Coy, J. 1980. The animal bones. In J. Haslam, A middle-Saxon iron smelting site at Ramsbury, Wiltshire. Medieval Archaeology 24,41-51. Cramp, R. J., Everson, P. and Hall, D. N. 1977. Excavations at Brixworth 1971 & 1972. Journal of the British Archaeological Assodation 130,52-132. Cramp, R. 1976. Monastic sites. In D. M. Wilson (ed.) The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, 201-52. London: Methuen.

[21]

Of cabbages and kings

Felis, S. 1980. Possible sources of iron ore. In J. Haslam, A middle-Saxon iron smelting site at Ramsbury, Wiltshire. Medieval Archaeology 24, 55-6. Finberg, H. P. R. 1976. The Formation of England 550-1042. St Albans: Paladin. Fisher, D. J. V. 1973. The Anglo-Saxon Age c 400-1042. Harlow: Longman. Green, C , Green, I. and Dallas, C. with Wild, J. P. 1987. Excavations at Castor, Cambridgeshire in 1957-8 and 1973. Northamptonshire Archae­ ology 21,109-48. Hall, D. and Coles, J. 1994. The Fenland Survey: An Essay in Landscape and Persistence. English Heritage Archaeology Report 1. London: English Heritage. Haslam, J. 1980. A middle-Saxon iron smelting site at Ramsbury, Wiltshire. Medieval Archaeology 24,1-68. Hodges, R. 1982. Dark Age Economics. London: Duckworth. Hurst, J. G. 1976. The pottery. In D. M. Wilson (ed.) The Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England, 283-348. London: Methuen. Kelly, S. 1992. Trading privileges from eighth-century England. Early Medieval Europe 1(1), 3-28. Kemp, R. L. 1994. Site introduction. In A. J. Mainman (ed.) The Pottery from 46-54 Fishergate, 546-50. London: Council for British Archaeology, Archaeology of York 16/6. Mainman, A. J. 1990. Anglo-Scandinavian Pottery from 16-22 Coppergate. London: Council for British Archaeology, Archaeology of York 16/5. Merriman, M. 1994. The legend of St Werburgh of Weedon. Northampton­ shire Local History News 3(3), 15-16. Morris, R. 1989. Churches in the Landscape. London: Dent. O'Connor, T. 1994. 8th -llth century economy and environment in York. In J. Rackham (ed.) Environment and Economy in Anglo-Saxon England, 137-47. CBA Research Report 89. Rackham, J. (ed.) 1994. Environment and Economy in Anglo-Saxon England, 126-35. CBA Research Report 89. Redknap, M. 1991. The Saxon pottery from Barking Abbey: part 1, local wares. London Archaeologist 6(13), 353-59. Steedman, K. 1994. Excavation of a Saxon site at Riby crossroads, Lin­ colnshire. Archaeological Journal 151,212-306. Stenton, F. 1971 (3rd edn). Anglo-Saxon England. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Swanton, M. (ed.) 1996. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. London: J. M. Dent.

[22]

B unkhorn

Timby, J. 1988. The middle-Saxon pottery. In P. Andrews (ed.) The Coins and Pottery from Hamwic, 73-124. Southampton: Southampton City Council. Vince, A. G. 1988. The economic basis of Anglo-Saxon London. In R. Hodges and B. Hobley (eds) The Rebirth of Towns in the West AD 700-1050,83-92. CBA Research Report 68. Wade, K. 1988. Ipswich. In R. Hodges and B. Hobley (eds) The Rebirth of Towns in the West AD 700-1050,93-100. CBA Research Report 68. Wade-Martins, P. 1980. Excavations in North Elmham Park, 1967-72. East Anglian Archaeology 9,413-78. Webster, L. E. and Cherry, J. 1976. Medieval Britain in 1975. Medieval Archaeology 20,158-201. Whitelock, D. (ed.) (2nd edn) 1979. English Historical Documents c. 500-1042. London: Eyre Methuen. Williams, R. J. 1993. Pennyland and Hartigans. Two Iron Age and Saxon Sites in Milton Keynes. Buckinghamshire Archaeology Society Monograph Series 4. Zupko, R. E. 1968. A Dictionary of English Weights and Measures Prom AngloSaxon Times to the Nineteenth Century. Madison; London: University of Wisconsin Press

[23]

chapter

three

^Æetalwork and the emporia

David A. Hinton

o b je c t

18/16 -

t h e en igm a

T hat the Sheffield conference was held very soon after the publica­ tion of a fascicule on the metal objects and metal-working from Saxon Southampton, Hamwic (Hinton 1996), had less to do with a wish to have the document available for the meeting than with the need for it to appear by the 31st March 1996 if it were to be amongst the works to be judged by the British Universities Research Assessment Panel. It was one of many volumes scrambled through the presses at that time and it is in­ structive to note how academically unfortunate the assessment procedure can be. Now that text publication direct from disc is so rapid I might very well have held back the final version of the Hamwic fascicule so that I could take account of any comments that those present at the conference might have made. That would have involved no more than a few months' delay, hardly noticeable in normal time-scales for work of this sort. I would have shown pictures, made my comments, appealed for ideas, and incorporated those that were useful. In particular, I would have

H inton

asked about an object that re-emerged into my consciousness at a very late stage in final preparation and which I squeezed in at the last moment. It is on fig. 27 of the fascicule (object no. 18/16), and is located, rather noticeably, at the bottom of the page. Object 18/16 is made of tightly twisted wires, the surviving end having a loop-ended terminal. It was in a very corroded state when I first saw it in the late 1970s and I did not pay as much attention to it as I should have done. Since it appeared to be made of some sort of lead alloy I thought it relatively modem and, indeed, likely to have recently shed an outer cas­ ing of plastic. Consequently, I did not request a second look at it when going through my notes much later. Nor did I come across it again when I went through the objects in Southampton Museum to check all those things that have to be checked when compiling a catalogue. At that time the object was in the conservation laboratory at Salisbury, but the long arm of coincidence soon struck. The object, now identified as containing silver, was returned by the laboratoiy and was waiting on the curator's desk to be re-entered into the museum records when a visitor from east­ ern Europe saw it and remarked that it was very similar to arm-rings from that particular part of the world. Anyone who reads the fascicule text describing object 18/16 can see exactly what happened next. The finds context was carefully checked, and found to be as impeccably Saxon as any in Hamzoic except for those at the very bottom of pits. A discussion was written which allows for this, but which also points out a dozen reasons why the object is probably not from an eastern arm-ring. Nothing else came from that geographical area and I was not at all anxious to have to admit that Saxon Southampton might have been trading with the Baltic, for there is no other evidence to suggest any such link. Nor could I find any good English parallels as the object is not very like the Trewhiddle 'scourge' or anything else that I recognised. What I did not do was to look further west. One of the other speakers at Sheffield, Dr Ewan Campbell, was in touch with me immediately after the conference pointing out that the object is very like the wire fittings on Irish brooches, most notably the Tara Brooch which can be seen in Youngs's book The Work o f Angels (1989) on the left of the upper colour plate of page 77 (the lower plate on the right shows that the terminal is a beast7s head). This new insight into the nature of object 18/16 means that analysis of the metal is now needed to see if it is an alloy such as might be expected of something from Ireland. In the meantime Dr Campbell's suggestion holds the field. [25]

M etalwork and the emporia

It might seem unlikely that I would accept an Irish origin for object 18/16 any more readily than an eastern European one. But there is already one other piece, a ring-headed pin (Hinton 1996, 32-3), that has been claimed as coming from Ireland, opening the way to all sorts of speculations about Irish slaves on their way to the markets of the east. A second object would therefore have been welcome, if not as confirmation, then at least as a catalyst to turn a leaf into a twig. And a twig has the potential one day to become a branch from which a plank might be hewn. M eta ls

a n d m e t a l - w o r k in g

-

t h e h in t e r l a n d s

There are so few metal objects from eighth- and ninth-century England which can be attributed to a specific area that to be able to claim one or two from Ireland becomes a minor triumph. The pins, the hooked tags, and most of the strap-ends that are so common in Hamwic are ubiquitous. Similar objects can nearly always be found in Whitby Abbey or York's Fishergate and, doubtless, Ipswich as well (if only a little more - indeed anything - was published from there). Spiral-headed pins have now been traced as far afield as Carlisle, taking them literally from one end of Eng­ land to the other. Even double-ended hooks, quite common on the con­ tinent, are no longer unique to Southampton, as one has been found in Norwich. One of the very few slightly exotic objects, a large finger-ring, has its best parallel on Iona (Hinton 1996,8-9). It is not very easy, therefore, to use metalwork for evidence of hinter­ lands in relation to Hamwic, or probably to the other emporia sites as well. Certainly the York collection from Fishergate (Rogers 1993) is no more regionally distinctive. This is by no means an unimportant point as it shows that, in dress at least, there was a common material culture in England by the end of the seventh century. There might possibly have been one or two things that would have raised an eyebrow if worn far from where they were made (e.g. the two disc-brooches with birds in relief from Saxon Southampton), but in general there was uniformity. Furthermore, this uniformity was not only at an aristocratic level, some­ thing which the seventh-century grave-goods already suggest. The set­ tlement-site finds must derive from much lower social elements. In some ways the metals are more informative than the metalwork about Hamwids hinterland. Apart from iron none of the metals were available from close by, unless what could be recycled is counted. Gold was used almost entirely for gilding and, if it came as new metal, had to be imported, as did the mercury which was also needed for the gilding [26]

H inton

process. Silver was used for a few objects, although there are many more coins made from it. Some silver could have been coming from Devon, though importation is more likely. Tin may also have come from Devon, and lead from Somerset. Such quantities as there are of these materials in Saxon Southampton could all have come from scrap (as could the cop­ per). Brass, however, may well have come directly from Germany (Bayley 1996, 89). The stone mortar that was used for grinding together gold and mercury came from the Bristol area, as did the touchstone found in contemporary Winchester, an interesting link. The metal-working and the metal objects both suggest no great level of accomplishment. Hamwic was no Faversham, Kent's 'homestead or vil­ lage of the smith' (Mills 1993, 129), where a rich sixth-/seventh-century cemetery suggests that there indeed were craftsmen 'cunning in gold and gems, when a leader bids him prepare a jewel in his honour', as The Gifts of Men has it (Whitelock 1979, 874). Southampton die makers can be assumed to have had sufficient skill to cut the designs for the coins classi­ fied as the Series H types 39 and 49 sceattas, but the general impression is of workaday standards which were good enough for practical purposes (even the big finger-ring lacks finesse). Furthermore, of course, gold and garnets had become increasingly difficult to obtain as the seventh century had progressed, so in the eighth century elites had little reason to visit a port like Southampton to acquire materials for status-enhancing brooches. For all we know, items required for such traditional gift ex­ change as was still practised continued to be imported by traditional mechanisms which had not required emporia. E xchange m ech an ism s and th e

em po ria

There was not an absolute division between old and new practices. The quantities of broken glass vessels at Hamwic are probably to be regarded as associated with wine imports, and wine had presumably been drunk by English elites, judging from the glass vessels subsequently buried in graves, long before the port was founded. The redistribution network remains obscure but some wine must have been going in a new direction, to the church. It is possible to see the emporia as ports where bulk goods, such as wool, cloth, and hides, were the main exports, with slaves being a less dependable source of profit. The former reflect growing concentra­ tion upon agricultural and other production while the latter reflect the uncertainty of success in war. Wessex, with sites like Gillingham, Worgret, and Ramsbury, has evidence of the first, but enjoyed little of the [27]

M etalwork and the emporia

second after the early eighth century until King Egbert's reign a hundred years later (Hinton 1994). Luxuries - not only wine, but sword-blades, furs, silks, and spices, perhaps - may have been imported but paid for by means other than intangibles such as alliances and subsidies. Royal inter­ est in tolls (Kelly 1992) and the increased use of indigenous and other coins suggest that exchange mechanisms at the emporia were different from any traditional exchanges that still took place through other routes. The eighth-century sceattas were of varying weights of silver and were struck with a variety of different designs, many of which are sufficiently localised to be attributable to the mints of particular kingdoms. Despite their variety, however, their underlying similarity (which alone allows modem numismatists to recognise and classify them) indicates that those who used them were fully aware of what a coin had to be like. In essence, they manifest the same cultural conformity as is recognisable in the metalwork. That the Northumbrians were later to resist the new pennies, and develop their stycas in the ninth century, should not be seen as a statement of some deep underlying difference between north and south. It should be seen as a political ploy, a sign of a kingdom's maturity. Use of emporia may have been one device which enabled English midSaxon kings to acquire the silver that they used in their coinages, and in general they may have been as interested in the revenue as in the goods that came from them, although Kelly (1992) points to the possibility of royal pre-emption rights, and directed trade for redistribution may have been important. The metalwork shows that the emporia did not prove particularly useful as production centres, for there is plenty of evidence that they did not have a production monopoly or a concentration of craft mysteries. Here, then, is one reason why Southampton did not re-estab­ lish itself in the late ninth century, for King Alfred had no great need of it. Even coins could be minted anywhere that the king licensed. Despite the fortification at the old Roman site at Bitteme, perhaps an Alfredian burh, there were obvious disadvantages in having a mint so close to the south coast where it was a target for raiders. If most of his silver was coming from the church, and from the Vikings, as some consider (e.g. Smyth 1995, 49-50, who implies subsidy payments), it was not landing at the port, so that Southampton was not the logical place in which to turn it into coin. The disruption to trade networks caused by the Viking raids meant that there was no toll revenue from imports (which is not to say that Alfred was not concerned over commerce and tolls (e.g. on salt: Maddicott 1992, 166-8)). Even if England was relatively secure in the 880s its [28]

H inton

neighbours were not and trading-partners such as Quentovic had suf­ fered to the point of extinction. If the ascetic Alfred drank wine we do not know how he obtained it, but it was probably not through Southampton. Their ultimate success in war meant that the Wessex kings could reward their followers with land and booty, rather than from the products of commerce. Su r p l u s e s ,

m a r k et s, and t h e

‘ d e c l in e 9 o f E

a m w ic

It was not only imports that were affected. Although Alfred was success­ ful in defence of his country, the Viking raiders had not only been de­ structive of trade, but also of farms. Smyth (1995,45) rightly draws atten­ tion to the problems of restocking that the ravaging of Viking bands would have created. It takes a long time for an estate with non-intensive systems to re-establish a reasonable number of animals if it is reliant solely on its own breeding stock; similar problems were encountered in the agricultural crisis of the early fourteenth century. Smyth cites the evidence of the Bishop of Winchester's 70-hide estate at Beddington, Surrey which was said to have been 'quite without stock and stripped bare by heathen men' although 'now completely stocked' (Whitelock 1979,543; the charter is not precisely dated but must have been drawn up between 899 and 908). Nevertheless, and partly because there had just been a severe winter, the estate had only 9 full-grown oxen, 114 pigs, 50 wethers (castrated rams), 110 full-grown sheep, and 90 sown acres. In addition, the herdsmen had another 20 full-grown pigs and sheep. As always with medieval documents, all this should perhaps not be taken at face value - were these figures just what a small home farm had, with an unknown number of tenants having an unknown number of animals? Certainly Beddington had not recovered if it only had nine oxen on 70 hides. Compare this with the annual render stipulated by Ine's late seventh-century law which included two cows, or ten wethers, from every 10 hides (ibid., 406; it has been suggested that the render is too high for such an estate to bear, but the economy's ability to feed the emporia, as well as kings and monks, suggests that substantial surpluses were indeed attained). Another comparison is with late-eighth-century Westbury, Gloucestershire where 60 hides had to find seven oxen and six wethers every year (ibid., 507). I had intended here to cite a few compar­ ative examples from Domesday Book, but I had not appreciated how wildly the quoted numbers of cattle vary on those estates where they are recorded. A selection from Purbeck in Dorset ranges from none on Earl [29]

M etalwork and the emporia

Roger's 16-plus hides at Worth Matravers (where he had 250 sheep and must have had something with which to pull his four ploughs), to eleven cattle on 2 hides at Church Knowle (Williams 1968, 99 and 96 respect­ ively). Consequently, if Hamwic's earlier trade had indeed been largely in agricultural products, there was little for it to export. Saxon Southampton did not become an essential part of the kingdom of Wessex. It existed to export surpluses and had no role to play if there were no surpluses to export, or markets to receive them. No one had to go there to get their pins and their strap-ends as these could be made equally well by itinerant as by sedentary smiths, and this can be seen as a microcosm of the whole. In religion for instance, even if there were a minster at Southampton, it was one of several in the area (Hase 1994, 54-5) and of no special moment, with no local cult interest, unlike Winchester. The wic was never sufficiently structured into mid-Saxon society for its near-abandonment to leave more than a few ripples. The Southampton of the late-Saxon period was a smaller and very different place. B ib l io g r a p h y Bayley, J. 1996. Crucibles and cupels. In D. A. Hinton (ed.) The Gold, Silver and Other Non-Ferrous Alloy Objects from Hamwic, and the Non-Ferrous Metalworking Evidence, 86-92. Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing. Hase, P. H. 1994. The Church in the Wessex heartlands. In M. Aston and C. Lewis (eds) The Medieval Landscape of Wessex, 47-82. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Hinton, D. A. 1994. The archaeology of eighth- to eleventh-century Wessex. In M. Aston and C. Lewis (eds) The Medieval Landscape of Wessex, 33-46. Oxford: Oxbow Books. Hinton, D. A. (ed.) 1996. The Gold, Silver and Other Non-Ferrous Alloy Objects from Hamwic, and the Non-Ferrous Metalworking Evidence. Stroud: Alan Sutton Publishing. Kelly, S. 1992. Trading privileges from eighth-century England. Early Medieval Europe 1(1), 3-28. Maddicott, J. R. 1992. Reply [Trade, industry and the wealth of King Alfred]. Past and Present 135,164-88. Mills, A. D. 1993. A Dictionary of English Place-Names. Oxford: Oxford Uni­ versity Press. Rogers, N. S. H. 1993. Anglian and Other Finds from Fishergate. London: Council for British Archaeology, Archaeology of York 1 7 /9 .

[30]

H inton

Smyth, A. P. 1995. King Alfred the Great Oxford: Oxford University Press. Whitelock, D. (ed.) (2nd edn) 1979. English Historical Documents, vol. I, c. 500 - c. 1042. London: Eyre Methuen. Williams, A. 1968. Translation of the text of the Dorset Domesday. In Vic­ toria History of the Counties of England: Dorset - vol. III, 61-114. London: University of London Institute of Historical Research. Youngs, S. M. (ed.) 1989. 'The Work of Angels'. Masterpieces of Celtic Metal­ work, 6th-9th centuries A. D. London: British Museum Publications.

[31]

C

hapter

F

our

Wicks trade, and the hinterlands the Ipswich region

John Newman

B ackgro un d -

g r o w t h o f t h e w ic s

~ySlhen co n sid erin g how th e w ics3 or trading towns, of the middleSaxon era interacted with their respective spheres of influence it is essen­ tial to remember that the area covered by their various hinterlands ex­ isted before the age of the emporia in the seventh to ninth century. Trade and craft industries, albeit on a much less intense scale, certainly op­ erated within and across the economic and social frameworks that were already in place in the preceding fifth- to early-seventh-century period. The larger emporia or wics which grew up in the late seventh and early eighth centuries must have developed in response to certain economic and social factors then prevalent in north-western Europe with the con­ trol of prestige goods often being seen as a major consideration (Hodges 1982, 36). However, it is also essential to keep an open mind as other

Newman

factors may well have influenced the development of the great emporia of the middle-Saxon period and care should be taken to keep the complex nature of contemporary society in mind when studying artefact distribu­ tions, economic activity, trade, and how the emporia operated within their regions. The main emporia of middle-Saxon England, and here one can safely list Southampton, Ipswich, London, and York as the main contenders for urban, or at least proto-urban status, can be seen to be located within an area or region which may be defined as a hinterland in simple geograph­ ical terms; with, as Hodges (1982, 55) has suggested, one of the main emporia in each of the major kingdoms of the seventh century. By the seventh century middle-Saxon society had reached a level where the various English kingdoms were already well established with their own legal and administrative frameworks, as evidenced by the Tribal Hidage (Bassett 1989, 17), and their own settlement hierarchies. In addition, the church was rapidly expanding and gaining influence as the century pro­ gressed in what was clearly a sophisticated society. The main emporia, therefore, did not grow up in a vacuum where one can regard the land­ scape as a blank sheet which could be manipulated and influenced in terms of simple, deterministic economic factors. In other words, it would be misleading to simply note that Ipswich, for example, probably had so many hectares of good arable land and so many hectares of potential cat­ tle grazing within a day or two's travel. Such an approach would ignore a variety of complicating factors, namely the influence of contemporary social, economic, and religious forces which must have been in existence and which need to be considered in order to try and understand how the larger emporia interacted with their various hinterlands. Here the term hinterland is used deliberately in the plural for the pur­ poses of this paper is to stress the complex nature of Anglo-Saxon society and how this influenced the development of trade and the emporia in the seventh to ninth centuries. To demonstrate this examples will be taken from East Anglia as the study of different archaeological markers for Ipswich and its general sphere of action and interaction indicates that.the influence of the emporium was a subtle and multifaceted phenomenon. The plotting of different artefact types, while being fundamental to archaeological research, must be done with caution and an awareness of the limitations in the data sets created by factors such as archaeological visibility and methods of collection. For example, middle-Saxon animal headed strap-ends with silver wire and niello decoration are almost cer­ tainly an East Anglian product (G. Thomas pers. comm.), yet the concen­ [33]

WlCS, TRADE, AND THE HINTERLANDS

tration of known examples in south-eastern Suffolk may be more a prod­ uct of good liaison with local metal detectorists rather than a true in­ dicator of an Ipswich-derived product. In addition, one should not be blinded by the level of fieldwork carried out within the emporia, and in particular Hamwic and Ipswich, as com­ pared to rural sites of the middle-Saxon period. While extensive re­ sources have been utilised to examine parts of these emporia, rural field­ work has generally been limited to the excavation of high-status middleSaxon ecclesiastical or secular sites. The lower levels of the rural settle­ ment hierarchy have, to date, received very little detailed or systematic archaeological study, which may have caused an over emphasis in the literature on the movement of prestige goods in the middle-Saxon period between the emporia and the textually defined high-status sites. While the distribution and possession of apparently high-status imported goods may be a major factor in understanding the development of middleSaxon society their role should, perhaps, be more critically examined in regard to the lack of evidence recovered for more commonplace rural settlement. Finally, one should take into consideration the strictly non-economic factors, such as social or religious obligations, which may influence archaeological distribution maps. The relationship of a wic or emporia to its rural region may not simply be one governed by geographical prox­ imity, the archaeological picture will almost certainly be influenced by largely invisible factors such as social or legal dues and services, which will distort the distribution map if one is unaware of their presence. Ipswich and its various hinterlands will be used in this paper as an example of a major emporia within its region, namely East Anglia. In particular, material from Suffolk will be considered using information collected through systematic fieldwork and chance discovery (with recent metal detector finds forming an important element in the latter category). For if metal detectorists' finds have contributed nothing else to AngloSaxon archaeology they have brought home the important realisation that many artefact types are really quite common. Middle-Saxon coinage and dress items, which were once thought to be mainly restricted to the wics and high-status rural sites, can now be seen to be widespread as settle­ ment and stray finds; as lists in the annual finds summaries of the Nor­ folk and Suffolk county journals and the British Numismatic Journal demonstrate. What is perceived as a rare or high status find may be more a reflection on recovery methods and fieldwork patterns than a true pic­ ture of Anglo-Saxon artefact distribution and use. [34]

Newman

Ipswich - the excavation evidence Large-scale excavation work has been carried out in Ipswich since 1974 leading to the full recognition of a major middle-Saxon trading port and industrial centre with origins somewhere around the middle of the sev­ enth century (Wade 1988,1993). It is the largest trading emporia of the middle-Saxon period in East Anglia and is situated at the head of the Orwell estuary in south-eastern Suffolk (Fig. 1). The foundation date for Ipswich is based on finds of imported pottery within the wic, with more recent support coming from some of the Buttermarket cemetery burials where the grave-goods (consisting of belt fittings and other items of Frankish origin) suggest a mid-seventh-century date (Wade 1993, 148). In addition, one of the Buttermarket graves contained two pada, pale gold thrymsas of mid- to late-seventh-century date (M. Archibald pers. comm.). The systematic excavation policy within Ipswich has allowed exam­ ination of some three per cent of the middle-Saxon town, which by the ninth century covered nearly 50 hectares (Wade 1993, 148). A seventhcentury core of some six hectares has also been identified around St Peter's Church and Stoke Bridge with every indication that an urban, or at least non-rural, type and size of settlement was established by at least c. 700. These excavations, in addition to earlier finds, have recovered evidence that Ipswich was a major manufacturing centre and trading port in the middle-Saxon period. Pottery was being manufactured in the wic from around the middle of the seventh century with Ipswich Ware being the first mass produced ceramic tradition in post-Roman Britain (cf. Blinkhom this volume) and a classic indicator of middle-Saxon activity. Ipswich Ware was initially defined by Hurst (1959, 14) from kiln sites observed during building operations in the Cox Lane and Carr Street area in the north-eastern part of the town. While the precise start date for Ipswich Ware is still un­ certain it is somewhere in the seventh century, although pottery may not have been shipped out of the wic in large quantities until after c. 700. Other craft industries that were going on in the middle-Saxon wic include antler and bone working, weaving and textile production, and leather working. However, evidence for these other Ipswich derived products can only be expected from excavated rural sites combined with good animal bone preservation and even water-logged deposits. As noted above, our evidence for middle-Saxon rural settlement is, at best, limited and therefore little can be said about organic finds in the region. (35]

WlCS, TRADE, ANDTHE HINTERLANDS

Fig. 1. Sites and areas mentioned in the text.

[36]

Newman

Ipswich also has evidence for middle-Saxon ferrous and non-ferrous metal-working with iron smithing, copper alloy and possibly silver arte­ fact production. While the iron industry probably served a local hinter­ land it will, of course, prove very difficult to tie down such utilitarian items to a particular production centre. However the non-ferrous indus­ try should have more potential and, alongside the pottery industry, should be an area where Ipswich products can be traced and a hinterland defined. Unfortunately, the non-ferrous metal-working waste recovered from the Ipswich excavations is of a fragmentary nature and it has there­ fore proved impossible, as yet, to tie down particular dress items as being 'Made in Ipswich' from the numerous but rather small mould fragments recovered to date. However, related to the non-ferrous and precious-metal-working in­ dustry in Ipswich, there is evidence for the zoic being utilised as a mint in the middle-Saxon period. Metcalf (1984,58) has suggested Ipswich as the main series R sceatta mint, and the excavation finds would certainly sup­ port this theory as fifty-two sceattas, or just under fifty per cent of the sceatta finds from the town, are of the later series R type (Table 1). I p s w ic h

a n d t h e r u r a l e m p o r ia

It is now possible to begin the process of mapping Ipswich's various hinterlands in very simple terms by looking at the distribution of the artefact types noted above: that is, Ipswich Ware and the sceatta coinage directly related to East Anglia. This mapping process can be taken as an initial stage in identifying the sphere of influence exercised by middleSaxon Ipswich within the kingdom of East Anglia and across into the other major kingdoms of Anglo-Saxon England. The presence of smaller, rural middle-Saxon emporia or trading places should also be noted as their presence undoubtedly distorted the artefact distributions that are fundamental to an understanding of Ipswich's role within the region. For these smaller, rural trading sites are certainly worthy of consideration under the general theme of emporia and hinter­ lands and their presence and operation must have interacted directly with the major sites. In the early 1980s Hodges (1982, 51) defined type A emporia as peri­ odic markets or fairs and type B sites as more permanent settlements. While the implicit assumption would appear to be that type A sites will develop into the more easily defined type B, it is worth considering how the two types may have co-existed. The type A emporia were likely to [37]

WlCS, TRADE, ANDTHE HINTERLANDS

Table 1. Summary of sceatta finds from various productive sites. (Source: M. M. Archibald andM. A. S. Blackburn at Twelfth Oxford Coin Symposium.) Series A B C D E F G H J K L M N O Q R S T

Ipswich

Barham

Royston

Tilbury

2

4 4 2 3 10

_

1 1 1 5 15

2 2 19

1 1 1

-

-

-

1

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

3 1 9

3 1 1

2 8 10

1 14 13

1 61 5 5 3 1 3 2

-

5

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

-

4 1

1 3

12 52

2 11

-

-

-

-

-

-

17

-

-

U

-

-

7 1 1

V

-

-

-

2

w

-

-

-

-

X

-

1

4

1

Y

-

-

-

Z

-

1 2

-

Total

1

-

-

-

Beonna

London

1 2 8 12 1

-

-

illeg.

H am w ic

13 11

2

109

47

6

-

-

4 1 -

3 1 2 -

1 1 2 2

-

5 1 2 11 1

-

-

-

-

-

5

2

1

-

-

-

-

62

-

86

127

-

21

have operated seasonally at rural sites which may have been associated with major ecclesiastical centres, which Blair (1992) has noted as being productive in terms of coin and other artefact finds. The type B sites were made up of the permanent zoic sites with trading throughout the year and industrial activity. Within East Anglia Ipswich is the obvious contender as a permanent wic site, while the nearby coin- and artefact-rich site of Barham (Fig. 1) may fall into the type A category. These rural emporia are more difficult to identify and define but an extensive metal detector survey at Barham [38]

Newman

has produced nearly 50 sceattas (Table 1) and numerous dress items of seventh- to ninth-century date (Martin et al. 1981, 73). That Barham was a major estate belonging to Ely Abbey at the time of the Domesday Book in the mid-eleventh century may also be significant if this close association with a major ecclesiastical centre can be projected back into the middleSaxon period (Page 1911,520) given Blair's point (1992) that such sites are of crucial importance in local economic affairs. From metal detector finds we also have similar rural 'productive middle-Saxon sites' at Tilbury in Essex and Royston in Cambridgeshire (Fig. 1 and Table 1). The former site may be associated with Cedd's monastery near the Thames and the latter one is close to a major cross­ roads in middle Anglia. While these rural sites may not spring to mind in a study of middle-Saxon emporia, their presence should be noted as the operation of any seasonal fair or trading place would have had some economic effect on the more permanent emporia in the respective king­ doms thereby distorting artefact distributions and complicating the defi­ nition of a 'hinterland'. I psw ic h

w a re

-

th e hin terlan d evid en ce

Turning back to Ipswich Ware it is possible to plot this classic indicator of middle-Saxon activity in order to define at least one hinterland for the wic as shown on Fig. 2b. The distribution of Ipswich Ware, as might be ex­ pected, covers much of East Anglia with a further coastal and riverine distribution up the east coast, along the river valleys into the East Mid­ lands, into the Thames estuary, and around the coastal parts of Kent (Coutts 1991,182). Within East Anglia the majority of Ipswich Ware sites are close to present day parish churches and systematic fieldwork will generally locate pottery scatters if arable land is accessible in these loca­ tions as has been shown in the Deben valley (Newman 1989, 17). How­ ever, some anomalies may be seen in East Anglia where Ipswich's role as the premier production centre and trading place for the middle-Saxon period might be expected to be paramount. While the high concentration of Ipswich Ware sites in the Deben valley north-east of Ipswich and the similar high density of sites in north-western Norfolk can be put down to extensive fieldwork over the years, it is also noteworthy that systematic fieldwork in north-eastern Suffolk has recovered relatively little of the pottery (Martin et al. 1987,233). In the latter area it may also be possible to identify a rural middleSaxon handmade-pottery tradition that would appear to be contem[39]

WlCS, TRADE, ANDTHE HINTERLANDS

Fig. 2. Distribution of Ipswich Warefinds: (a) Suffolk and (b) England (Sources: Coutts 1991 and Suffolk County Council SMR).

[40]

Newman

porary with the production of Ipswich Ware. Why Ipswich Ware did not reach north-eastern Suffolk in reasonable quantities is unclear and does pose the question of how such an area in East Anglia fits into the hinter­ land of Ipswich. Perhaps here there are archaeologically invisible social or economic factors complicating the picture. Similarly, in the Stour val­ ley in southern Suffolk, an area that wits certainly within the kingdom of East Anglia in the middle-Saxon period, the distribution of Ipswich Ware is limited for reasons that are, as yet, unclear. Further afield the apparent distribution of Ipswich Ware is affected by a bias towards the archaeological investigation of high-status sites lead­ ing to a self-fulfilling theory that outside of East Anglia, Ipswich Ware is only found on such sites. While this picture does appear to fit the king­ dom of Essex, Blinkhom's (1994) survey of Ipswich Ware finds in the east Midlands indicates that caution should be taken in interpreting distribu­ tion maps. The use of Ipswich Ware across the social spectrum should not be taken as a characteristic of the kingdom of East Anglia alone as finds in Buckinghamshire and Northamptonshire (ibid.) also appear to come from sites at all levels of the settlement hierarchy thus extending Ipswich's hinterland as defined by general usage of its most common product. SCEATTAS - THE HINTERLAND EVIDENCE

With die sceatta coinage it would probably be reasonable to expect a sim­ ilar distribution pattern for the Ipswich-derived series R finds and Ipswich Ware as both classes of artefact come from the same source. For die area immediately around Ipswich this is certainly true though it should be noted that a large number of metal detector finds have been recorded for south-eastern Suffolk whereas other areas undoubtedly see a lower reporting rate for stray finds. None the less, as indicated on Fig. 3a, the later series R distribution does concentrate neatiy on Ipswich and south-eastern Suffolk. Nearly fifty per cent of the urban excavation finds are of this type, confirming Metcalf's (1994,504) suggestion that Ipswich was the main m int This distribution also supports his theory that the later sceatta series tended to circulate within monetary pools made up of the separate kingdoms (1984, 34). While Ipswich Ware was moving out­ side of East Anglia, the later series R sceatta distribution was much more constrained by die political boundaries of the kingdom. To emphasise the point that the later sceatta series moved within cer­ tain definite, but ill-defined, economic or political boundaries it is useful [41]

WlCS, TRADE, AND THE HINTERLANDS

Fig. 3. Distribution of sceatta finds from East Anglia: (a) later Series R and (b) Series Q (Sources: M etcalf1994 and Suffolk County Council SMR).

[42]

Newman

to compare the coin assemblages recovered from various productive sites as summarised in Table 1. As might be expected, Barham, which is only seven kilometres to the north-west of Ipswich, has a high percentage of locally minted coins with over twenty per cent of its sceatta finds being of series R type. On the other hand productive sites at Royston, south of Cambridge, and Tilbury in southern Essex (Fig. 1), each with over fifty sceatta finds, have no series R coins at all. The summary in Table 1 also shows that the coin assemblages from the Royston and Tilbury sites do not contain any of the other East Anglian sceatta type, namely series Q. Similarly the Essex-derived series S sceatta type is not represented at Barham or Ipswich. Further afield, series Q and R sceattas are found in small numbers in London and Kent, here at least mirroring the Ipswich Ware distribution, but they did not travel further round the south coast to the Hamwic area. As an additional point it is also worth noting that sceattas of the London-derived series turn up in most large assemblages. At Ipswich they represent twelve per cent of the sceatta finds, at Barham nine per cent, at Royston and Tilbury some thirty per cent, and with some from Hamwic it is evident that one can begin to see the dominant position in English trade that London was to have at a later date. Perhaps here we have the emporium with the largest and most pervasive hinter­ land of them all. ANOTHER EMPORIUM! - E L Y AS A SCEATTA MINT

Staying with the middle-Saxon coin series in East Anglia and what they may indicate about Ipswich's hinterlands, one should also include the series Q sceatta finds. These have a definite distribution in the west of the kingdom as shown on Fig. 3b and, while Ipswich Ware reached the Fen edge and north-western Norfolk in considerable quantities, series R sceattas did not. Metcalf (1994, 484) has argued persuasively for a series Q mint in the west of the region with the additional point that this almost certainly was not Thetford. While the site of this mint remains uncertain it is possible to suggest Ely as a strong contender. This Fenland island (Fig. 1) was a monastic site from the late seventh century with a founda­ tion date of 673 by St Etheldreda, the daughter of an East Anglian king who originally received the Isle of Ely as a gift following her first mar­ riage to Tonbert of the South Gyrvii (Stephen 1889,19). As a middle-Saxon monastic site Ely is likely to have been a regionally important market or estate centre with craft workshops capable of fine metalwork production and, as already noted above (Blair 1992), these [43]

WlCS, TRADE, AND THEHINTERLANDS

ecclesiastical sites often have good evidence for intense economic activity. The Northumbrian influence in the series Q sceattas (Metcalf 1994, 495) can also be accommodated with Ely as the main mint because St Etheldreda had a strong northern connection. Her second marriage was to Ecgfrith of Northumbria which might explain the apparent northern in­ fluence in some of the series Q sceattas. Finally, with regard to series Q sceattas, it is worthwhile considering Archibalds (1991, 66) point that some of die middle-Saxon coin issues could have derived from monastic sources, and that the series Q mint is also likely to have operated as a trading place or emporium in its own right. From the example of the series Q sceattas it is clear that caution should be taken in identifying hinterlands around each of the major middleSaxon emporia. While these main emporia will naturally tend to dom­ inate the archaeological record for this period it is also important to keep other social, political, and religious factors in mind when studying middle-Saxon trade patterns as indicated by the distribution pattern of various artefacts. Cutting across the straight-forward notion of one sceatta mint and series in each of the middle-Saxon kingdoms, which is usually assumed to have been based at the main wic or emporia, is the complica­ tion of the eclectic nature of middle-Saxon coinage (Metcalf 1994, 502). The sceatta series in general is a complex subject, which in part may be explained by viewing these coin issues as deriving from a whole series of small mints which include some of the middle-Saxon monastic sites, such as Ely, and possibly some of the minor, rural emporia. Until more of these possible mints are identified the definition of hinterlands around the main emporia will be fraught with difficulty but it will be an essential step in the understanding of contemporary economic activity as compet­ ing commercial centres must have distorted the trade patterns through political and social obligations. In East Anglia, for example, it is noteworthy that the major middleSaxon site at Brandon has a high percentage of series Q sceattas amongst its coin finds (Metcalf 1994,483) and was also a major estate belonging to Ely at the time of the Domesday Book (Page 1911,518). While this recorded Ely/Brandon connection is of eleventh-century date it is likely that some stability in land tenure can be assumed and projected back to the middleSaxon period. If this assumption is allowed then an argument can be made for sceatta series circulating around estates directly connected to major monastic, royal, or aristocratic centres which may have operated as mints; thus further complicating the definition of hinterlands in terms of simple geographical proximity to a point of production.

Newman

C o n c l u s io n

In summary it is dear that the definition of a hinterland around any of the main emporia of middle-Saxon England should be undertaken with caution and an awareness of the limitations inherent in the archaeological material should be observed. These major sites will tend to dominate the literature but care should be taken to review the evidence in the context of a complex contemporary sodety which indudes competing and com­ plementary economic, political, and social forces. As already noted for Ipswich and East Anglia a strong case can be made for a series Q sceatta mint in the west of the kingdom. Additionally, the distribution pattern for Ipswich Ware pottery across East Anglia is far from even and would appear to be influenced by archaeologically invisible social or economic factors. In the same light die distribution of Ipswich Ware into the other kingdoms of middle-Saxon England should not be taken as an indicator of straightforward economic contact into a larger hinterland. Here again complicating factors of social or political obligation and contact may well be in force and distorting the simple distribution map. Closer to Ipswich the productive middle-Saxon site at Barham should again be noted. The large coin and artefact assemblage from this site in­ dicates an important role in at least the local economy as a rural emporium which was active close to Ipswich. Each site apparently oper­ ating within the hinterland of the other, indicating how complex the middle-Saxon economic situation was with perhaps different but com­ plementary roles for each site. That Barham was a major ecclesiastical estate belonging to Ely in the late-Saxon period may also be of some re­ levance as these indicators often echo a major social or economic role from the seventh- to ninth-century period. To push this point for over­ lapping and complex patterns of hinterlands around the main emporia still further mention should also be made of Coddenham, another site in the Gipping valley near Ipswich (Fig. 1) which has produced a large assemblage of metal-detected finds. This assemblage includes three Merovingian tremisses, twelve English thrymsas, and some fifty primary sceattas in addition to a large group of seventh- and early eighth-century artefacts (Martin et al. 1989, 59). It is an exceptional assemblage and one which reinforces the view that economic activity in the Ipswich region in the middle-Saxon period was extremely complex with a range of sites ful­ filling various and perhaps complementary roles. Finally, it should be stressed again that while various hinterlands for Ipswich can be defined depending on the criteria and archaeological [45]

WlCS, TRADE, AND THE HINTERLANDS

markers used, increased knowledge about the region makes the picture ever more complex. The large emporia were the product and probably the motor behind much of the dynamic growth seen in middle-Saxon England. However, their interaction with other sites in each region or kingdom was complex and straightforward economic or geographical constraints and links were almost certainly cut across by social and other obligations, services, and dues. They were the product of a complex age and should be studied in this light. ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The author of this paper would like to thank Dr D. M. Metcalf for his general encouragement over coin studies, David Nuttall for drawing the figures, Steve Doolan for help in finding references, and Claire Jacobs for typing the paper. B iblio g r a ph y Archibald, M. M. 1991. Hie developing state, coins. In L. Webster and J. Backhouse (eds) The Making of England, 62-67. London: The Trustees of the British Museum. Bassett, S. 1989. In search of the origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms. In S. Bassett (ed.) The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 3-27. London: Leicester University Press. Blair, J. 1992. Anglo-Saxon minsters: a topographical review. In J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds) Pastoral Care before the Parish, 226-266. London: Leices­ ter University Press. Blinkhom, P. 1994. The Ipswich Ware Project Pilot Study. Northampton: Northamptonshire County Council. Courts, C. M. 1991. Pottery and the Emporia. Unpublished PhD thesis. Uni­ versity of Sheffield. Hodges, R. 1982. Dark Age Economics. London: Duckworth. Hurst, J. G. 1959. Middle Saxon pottery. In G. C. Dunning et al„ AngloSaxon Pottery: A Symposium. Medieval Archaeology 3 ,1 -7 8 . Martin, E., Plouviez, J. & Ross, H. 1981. Barham finds summary. In Archae­ ology in Suffolk. Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 35, part 1. Martin E., Plouviez, J. & Feldman, H. 1987. South Elmham St M argaret summary. In Archaeology in Suffolk. Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archaeology and History 36, part 3.

[46]

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Martin, E., Pendleton, C. & Plouviez, J. 1989. Coddenham finds summary. In Archaeology in Suffolk. Proceedings of the Suffolk Institute of Archae­ ology and History 37, part 1. Metcalf, D. M. 1984. M onetary circulation in southern England in the first half of the eighth century. In D. Hill and D. M. Metcalf (eds) Sceattas in England and on the Continent, 27-69. British Archaeological Reports 128. Metcalf, D. M. 1994. Thrymsas and Sceattas in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, vol. 3. London: Royal Numismatic Society and Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. Newman, J. 1989. East Anglian kingdom survey - final interim report on the South East Suffolk Pilot Field Survey. In M. O. H. Carver (ed.) Bul­ letin of the Sutton Hoo Research Committee 6,1 7 -2 0 . Page, W. (ed.) 1911. A History of Suffolk - vol. 1. London: Victoria County History. Stephen, L. (ed.) 1889. Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 18. London. Wade, K. 1988. Ipswich. In R. Hodges and B. Hobley (eds) The Rebirth of Towns in the West AD 700-2050, 93-100. London: Council for British Archaeology Research Report 68. W ade, K. 1993. The urbanisation of East Anglia: the Ipswich perspective. In J. Gardiner (ed.) Flatlands and Wetlands: Current Themes in East Anglian Archaeology, 144-151. East Anglian Archaeology 50 (Scole Archaeolo­ gical Committee).

[47]

Chapter F

ive

H a m w ic in its context

Alan Morton ISÆid-Saxon Southampton’s context is usually taken to be the king­ dom of Wessex, which it served as a principal port of entry, and much of north-western Europe, with which it was in trading contact. The true context will have been more modest It misrepresents the evidence to in­ terpret mid-Saxon Southampton simply as an early type of medieval trading town. The misrepresentation is embodied in Hamwic, the name most archae­ ologists give to the settlement. Although Hamwic was a name used by Saxon contemporaries when talking about one aspect of the settlement, they probably would have tended to call the place Hamtun. However, we have come to call the place Hamwic, and there is little chance of adopting another name. We therefore have modem Hamwic and Dark-Age Hamwic, which are not the same. This is more than the question of getting a name right. The name carries strong implications about the settlement's basic function and therefore constrains the way the place is looked at. We have come to accept without a murmur the proposition that the suffix -wic in Hamwic narrowly implies a trading settlement. In consequence, the trading aspect of the settlement is unduly emphasised every time an archaeologist calls it Hamwic.

M orton

Archaeological excavations in Hamwic (in the modem sense of the word) began fifty years ago and have amassed a considerable body of evidence, and are an obvious source of information for students of preViking Europe, but if the evidence is used incautiously it conjures up only a Dark-Age theme town. Local factors cannot be ignored for too long. Groups of places were in regular contact with each other, but less regularly with outsiders, and, with movement hampered, there was plenty of opportunity for separate development Some of these groups are perhaps distinguishable by the different words used to describe them. E m po riu m

o r emporium6 !

However many descriptive terms were applied to a settlement by differ­ ent people {portus and vicus are common designations of a trading set­ tlement in continental texts), relatively few places such as London, Quentovic, and Dorestad were also called emporia in the eighth or ninth century (Fig. 1; see also the appendix). There is no ambiguity about this. Prudentius of Troyes, in The Annals o f St Bertin, described Quentovic and Dorestad as emporia but called Rouen an urbs (see the appendix and Dehaisnes 1871,77). Similarly, Einhard, in The Annals o f Fulda, had no dif­ ficulty distinguishing the civitas of Antwerp from the emporium of Witla, both of which were raided by the Danes in the same year (Pertz 1891,27). Words that carry different implications about the status of a place may also distinguish the level of trade carried on there. Something of the importance of the emporia in the seventh to ninth centuries is indicated by the comparatively many references to them in laws, saints' lives, chronicle entries, and so on. The zone occupied by most of the emporia was a relatively tight one where crossings would be shorter and economic development was possibly greater (Fig. 1 shows some of these places). Another hint at the importance of emporia relative to certain other settlements is found in the Edict o f Pitres (864), where it is stated that the mint at Rouen is, and anciently has been, subordinate to that at Quentovic (Boretius and Krause 1847,315). Hamwic is mentioned in only one text as a place of trade, in the Hoedporicon, where Hugeburc calls it a mercimonium. The same text says that there was a mercimonia at or near to the urbs, Rouen (see the appendix). We should pause to consider this word, mercimonium. Its meaning here, a place connected with merchandise, is a slightly peculiar usage, but ap­ pears three times in two related texts and clearly was intended. Since the word emporium was current and available we might assume that the [49]

Hamwic in its context

Fig. 1. Long-distance contacts. Places referred to as emporia are shown as a solid dot. The broken line marks Quentouic's English contacts according to documentary sources.

[50]

M orton

author deliberately avoided the use of that word because it did not ex­ press her meaning. This enhances the possibility that places like Hamwic and Rouen, which are never called emporia in contemporary texts, were a different kind of place connected with the movement of goods. Hugeburc wrote a second, related text, The Life o f Wynnebald, in which she defines a mercimonium as a loca venalia, a place where goods were sold (Holder-Egger 1887a, 107). This definition implies an extensive regulation of selling beyond the requirement in Ine's late-seventh-century laws for buying in front of witnesses when up country (Attenborough 1922,44). It suggests that mercimonium in this text means something like port did in the early-tenth-century laws of Edward and Athelstan: a town where buying (or trading - the key word is ceaping, which might be translated either way, depending on the context) could lawfully take place, and where, according to Athelstan, one was permitted to mint coins (ibid., 114 and 124). Hamwic, as the minting place of several types of series H sceat, appears on that count to have been a port (Metcalf 1988:27-31). Although it derives from merx, Latin for goods or merchandise, the word mercimonium still gives no unambiguous clue to the scale or nature of trading being carried on. A similar case is that of mercator, also derived from merx, and usually glossed as 'merchant'. That translation will often be correct, but Grierson (1959, 125-8) showed that the word might be applied in the Dark Ages to no one grander than a chapman carrying his pack of goods around a small circuit of fairs. Mercimonium might easily describe places where various scales of trade occurred, and there is prob­ ably an example of this in Southampton Water (Fig. 2). The Hodoeporicon tells how Willibald travelled to Rome and beyond, sailing in 721 from Hamblemouth, near the mercimonium called Hamwic, and landing near Rouen (Holder-Egger 1887a, 91). Willibald was based at the monastery at Waltham, and Hamblemouth would have been at least as easy to get to as Hamwic was. Even so, he would not have gone there except in the reasonable expectation of a boat, and boats must have called in regularly enough at Hamblemouth, which in fact may have been a small outport for the monastery. According to the Life o f Wynnebald, Wynnebald accompanied his brother Willibald on the journey, and the place the travellers left from was an anonymous mercimonium, where they made enquiries among the sailors (ibid., 107; and the appendix). Reading the two texts together it is likely, then, that Hamblemouth was a merci­ monium of some sort early in the eighth century (see Morton 1992,59-62). Researchers seeking to find the minting site of type 48 sceattas might [511

Hamwic in its context

Fig. 2. Southern Hampshire and the Isle of Wight.

[52],

M orton

want to consider Hamblemouth as a likely place; they appear to have been minted early in the eighth century, near Southampton, but at a site not yet investigated (Metcalf 1988, 28). The possibility that there were small outports or trading places situated near the junction of a river and Southampton Water calls into question the usual picture of a solitary Hamwic always dominating traffic in the area. With regard to crossing points alongside Southampton Water, there are three examples from the early eighth century of where a traveller might or might not have expected to travel to. Willibald and Wynnebald have already been mentioned. They sailed to the Seine in 721; and in this case we should note that routes between what is now Brittany and Normandy and what is now the central southern coast of England date back to the late Iron Age at the very latest. The Channel crossings are of long stand­ ing and continue up to the present day. Where one crossed to and from would have been roughly the same in the Dark Ages as in earlier and later periods. The other two references, from The Life o f Boniface, show that direct contact between Hamwic and a number of important towns to the east was probably at best irregular. Shortly after 715, Boniface had to travel once to Quentovic and once to Dorestad (Pertz 1829, 338-40). In both cases, although his monastery was at Nursling, he travelled overland to London and took ship there. The Life makes it clear that the overland journeys were long and difficult. Why should he undertake them? Boni­ face probably had no real choice. At that time he could reasonably expect to get a boat in Southampton Water to the Seine, but he could not reason­ ably expect to get a boat there to Quentovic or Dorestad, so London had to be the departure port. Given the commonplace observation that travelling indirectly by sea often proves to be much quicker and easier than travelling by land, it is equally remarkable that Boniface could not reasonably expect to sail from Southampton Water to the Thames in the early eighth century, and instead had to put up with gruelling overland journeys. Quentovic's English contacts, according to the documentary evidence, paint a similar but particularly different picture (they are mapped on Fig. 1). Little heed might be paid to the contact westwards with Winchester. It was comparatively late, about 900, and it was an unusual event, the translation of relics from St Josse, near Quentovic, to Winchester (Grierson 1941, 78). The other three contacts all occurred at the end of the seventh century or the beginning of the eighth (much closer in time to the Willibald references) and were concerned with the more common busi­ [53]

Hamwic in it s context

ness of travel. They point to Quentovic's importance as a place of contact with eastern England. The last of these contacts was Boniface's journey from London to Quentovic in 717. The earliest occured in 668-9, during the year-long journey that Archbishop Theodore took from Rome to Canterbury (Bede IV. 1; Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 330-2). He stopped at Quentovic before crossing to England. In 678 Bishop Wilfrid was driven out of his Northumbrian see and em­ barked on a complicated set of travels. His opponents assumed that he was going straight to Rome to complain to the pope, so they sent people ahead to intercept him at Quentovic, which was known to be on the most direct route to Rome (Colgrave 1927, 50). It has been claimed that this episode demonstrates that Quentovic was the usual port to use in traffic between England and Rome (Dhondt 1962,198). Another, less generous, interpretation would be that people in the east of England naturally saw Quentovic in those terms but, equally naturally, southerners like Willibald and Wynnebald did not do so. it is not part of the argument that contact between distant places such as Quentovic and Hamwic was an impossibility, due to some failure in nautical technology. The boats that took Boniface and Willibald across the Channel were sailed, not rowed. However, it is clear that, at least around 700, a traveller might reasonably expect to find a boat sailing more or less directly only to a limited set of destinations. Related archaeological evidence from Hamwic may be the frequency with which different continental pottery types have been recovered there. As Timby indicates (1988, 124), only fourteen contexts in Hamwic have been found to contain Beauvais Ware. Even allowing for the likelihood that the introduction of this pottery coincided with a period when Hamwic was entering a decline, the rarity of the finds must be an argu­ ment against regular links between Hamwic and the Beauvaisis. Other continental pottery is more common. Timby lists 207 contexts that con­ tain her fabric 127 and describes it as 'well represented on Hamwic sites' (ibid., 91 and microfiche). If this pottery originated in the Seine valley, possibly near Rouen (Hodges 1991), its more widespread distribution in Hamwic might be seen as roughly supportive of the arguments derived from the documentary evidence. With few direct points of contact, there must have been very many stages in the transportation of goods. For instance, it is likely that at least four stages are implied in the route taken by the boat that carried Willi­ bald across the Channel: Hamwic, Hamblemouth, an unnamed site near Rouen, then Rouen. It is also possible that further stages down the Seine [54]

M orton

(perhaps as far as Paris and the St Denys Fair) would have been recorded for our benefit if Willibald had not left the boat at the first opportunity. Other texts point to goods being moved around by stages. For example, in 790, when Alcuin was in Northumbria on a diplomatic mis­ sion, he wrote to Joseph, known as his disciple, who had stayed behind on the continent. His letter states that wine could not be obtained and bitter beer (celia acerba) had to be drunk. Winter, who was Charlemagne's doctor, had promised him two carrata of the finest, clear wine (a carratum was a unit of measurement probably equivalent to a small waggon-load). Alcuin had asked Winter to deliver the wine to Joseph. If Joseph had the wine, and if it was the finest, he was to give it to Rufus, so that Rufus could arrange its delivery; half to Alcuin and half to Brorda, an English noble (Dümmler 1895, 33-4). One may presume that other details in this series of little journeys have been either unstated or unspecified (had the wine reached Winter from somewhere like Charlemagne's estates; by how many stages did Rufus get the wine to Northumbria?). T rad e and th e

sh ir e

Although they must have made a substantial cargo, evidently the two carrata were not trade goods. On the other hand, they will have been moved in a trader's boat, even if Rufus was tied to die service of the church. The arrangement therefore indicates the likely presence of middlemen while at the same time pointing to the existence of non-trade goods. A similar interpretation has been made of some of the finds recovered from excavations in Hamwic. Referring to the continental pottery found there, Hodges (1982, 57-8) saw that it was being brought into the settle­ ment by traders for their own daily use, not for sale. This is so clearly the case that the high proportions of continental pottery excavated within a zone back from the river are the best evidence we possess for a traders' enclave in Hamwic (Morton 1992,67-8). In a modem synthesis there is never any difficulty in acknowledging the possibility that goods were moved around in smaller quantities than is often supposed, across smaller distances, and not necessarily for the purposes of trade. The difficulty, where it exists, seems to be an un­ willingness to interpret much of the archaeological evidence in those terms. The traders' enclave illustrates this point. As well as the pottery, some other objects found there can be interpreted as goods that a small group of people with foreign tastes had probably brought into the settle[55]

Hamwic in rrs context

ment for their own use. An example is the scapula of a rabbit that must be seen as the remains of a cross-Channel snack rather than evidence of rabbit breeding in pre-Conquest England (Bourdillon 1983, 64). Com­ menting on the evidence for trade, previous researchers have emphasised its importance, but they have not acknowledged quite how small scale it is. By comparison, die evidence in later medieval Southampton consists of far more extensive physical remains in the mercantile quarter: sub­ stantial buildings and wealthy people's rubbish for instance (Platt 1973, 17-191). The implication is an obvious one. The name of the settlement probably holds a clue to what in general was going on. Hamtun, which has survived up to the present day in the name of Southampton, may have been the most commonly used name of the place we call Hamwic. Rumble (1980,12) points out that the word can denote the existence of an administrative centre. He adds that Hamtun names the estate as well as the settlement within it; we might then say that it names the vill. Supporting evidence comes from a charter signed in 840 in vilia regali quae appellatur Hamptone. The charter survives as a fourteenth-century copy, which explains the late spelling of the name, but is held to be probably genuine (Birch 1885, 431; Sawyer 1968, 288). The defining phrase is villa regalis, the implication of which 'is no more than that Southampton as a whole was a royal vill' (Rumble 1980,19). This is not to say that the mid-Saxon estate did not contain or originate as a villa regalis, in the meaning that modem archaeologists would give to the phrase, only that the charter cannot be cited as evidence of a palace. Nor are there any readily identifiable archaeological remains. That much is predictable perhaps: if Hamtun had included something like the Cheddar palace complex, the remains would now be very difficult to distinguish from those in the adjacent mid-Saxon town. One possible site would be the south-western comer, where certain anomalies probably should be attributed to a monasterium. Another possible site would be the north-western comer. Anomalies in the evidence there point to an ori­ ginal focus of Hamwic well inland from the river's edge, where a prime consideration was exploitation of the soil rather than a dedication to the exchange of goods. Early cemeteries on the periphery of this zone had been established in open land that was built over later in the century. In either case, it is likely that trade was attracted to the small, original settlement, which then acquired new functions and was stimulated into expansion (Morton 1992, 28-66). We could reinterpret the developed set­ tlement as somewhere that brought in a steady-enough income though never the vast amounts of wealth that could be acquired from the land. [56]

M orton

The animal-bone assemblage shows that, as a general rule, the meat consumed by the inhabitants came from the older and tougher animals at the end of their working life. This strongly suggests that the town was being deliberately provisioned (Bourdillon 1983,179). It can be assumed that the king was using the surplus from nearby estates to feed this specialised vill. A similar pattern of control is seen in the population itself. Hamwic will have required periodic influxes of people to sustain its size or to grow (Morton 1992, 69, 75) and this was perhaps effected by moving people from the rural estates into the settlement. A similar undertaking is mentioned by Bede (iv, 16; Colgrave and Mynors 1969, 382), when he describes King Cadwalla's annexation of the Isle of Wight and subsequent attempt to repopulate the island with his subjects. Whether or not he succeeded (Bede does not tell us), the point to be made is that a king of Wessex late in the seventh century could seriously con­ template furthering his policies by shifting subjects from one place to another. It is clear that we may be looking at a level and type of economic activ­ ity that allows considerable scope for other functions than trading and the production of goods for trade. It will be shown that, in the middle of the eighth century at least, basic elements of Wessex, including the place sometimes seen as its chief port, might be detached and operate separ­ ately, and this strongly implies a lesser context for Hamwic than the entirety of Wessex. Such an interpretation would be more in keeping with the revised view of Hamwic's status. The smallest contextual unit is Hamwic and its surrounding fields, in total the villa regalis called Hamtun. The vilTs boundaries are not known, but we might suppose that it was at least as large as the liberties of later medieval Southampton, which covered some 900 ha, a little over three square miles. If it included the late Saxon estates that may have been carved out of the vill in the tenth century, it would have been roughly seven times as large as this. The viability of specialised functions within a small unit is suggested by the tight distribution of Series H sceattas, espe­ cially type 49s, which are the most commonly found of the coins minted in Hamwic. More than 90 per cent of those whose place of discovery is known were found inside Southampton (Metcalf 1988,41-7). It also appears that a larger area was administered from the vill. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle tells of King Sigeberht, who in 757 was deprived of his kingdom 'except for Hamtun-shire' (Ibuton Hamtunscire) (Bately 1986, 36). Although in general such references can most safely be dated only to the late ninth or early tenth century, when earlier entries to the chronicle [57]

H am w ic IN rrs CONTEXT

were first pulled together in their present form, and when copies were made, there are special reasons for supposing that the wording of this particular entry had largely taken shape in the eighth century (Morton 1992, 26-7). The true date of the text has a direct bearing on our under­ standing of what Sigeberht was left with. Whenever we meet Hamtunscir in ninth-century or later texts, it is clear that something like the size of modem Hampshire is meant. In the middle of the eighth century, how­ ever, it is not certain whether a smaller territory is being described; somewhere that might be directly controlled from Hamtun. This ambiguity was already present in the West Saxon laws of King Ine, probably compiled around 695 (Attenborough 1922, 38-48). On the one hand, in law 36(i), Ine speaks of an ealdorman forfeiting his 'shire', which reads very much as if the later system was at least coming into existence. On the other hand, in law 39, sanctions are prescribed in case someone should go away without permission from his lord or steal into another 'shire' (oððe on oðre scire hine bestele), which does not make a lot of sense unless smaller districts were also known as shires; and law 8 deals with the demanding of justice in the presence of any 'shire-man' (beforan hwelcum scirman) or other judge, when 'shire-man' seems to be a curi­ ously unspecific term unless it was the case that 'ealdorman' was not inevitably meant because shires might be variously defined. We are under no overwhelming compulsion to assume that Sigeberht was left with the entirety of Hampshire. Yet the territory will have been larger than the royal vill - otherwise it would have been called Hamtun in the chronicle, not Hamtunscir. One possibility is that it was roughly equi­ valent in size to the late-Saxon Mansbridge hundred, which was confined to land below Hampshire's chalk downs, and which Hase (1975,124-80) suggested was similar to Southampton's original minster parish. Argu­ ments have been put forward elsewhere for supposing that the limits of Hamwic's territory might have extended no farther than ten kilometres from the settlement, this being the largest unit that could be easily administered (Morton 1992, 64; 69); and it is noteworthy therefore that the land boundary of the hundred describes a rough semicircle of some eight to nine kilometres in radius about Southampton (Fig. 2). Supposing the 'shire' and the hundred to have been about equal in extent, Hamtun­ scir then covered some 130 square kilometres or 50 square miles. Such an arrangement could be seen as a development of the seventh and earlier centuries. Yorke (1989) draws the evidence together for a Jutish settlement of both the Isle of Wight and die southern part of Hampshire, a territory stretching below the chalk downs from the west [58]

M orton

side of the New Forest to the east side of Portsmouth. She argues that the mainland Jutish province 'preserved its political distinctiveness' even after it came under West Saxon control late in the seventh century. The existence of smaller groupings within that province is shown, for instance, by reference to the Meonware, whose western boundary she tentatively places on the River Hamble. For much of Hamwic's existence, its usual context should be sought in this modest little area: the coastal plain of southern Hampshire, which was separated into several districts, many with their own outport. Its growth must therefore be seen as a particular development out of this generalised pattern. A c k n o w led g em en t

Nick Instone for drawing the figures. APPENDIX: SOME REFERENCES TO THE MERCIMONIA AND EMPORIA SHOWN ON FIGURE 1

Dorestad. In The Annals o f St Bertin, regular reference is made to the ninthcentury Danish destructive raids on 'the emporium called Dorestad' (for instance, in 847, emporium quod Dorestadum dicitur) (Dehaisnes 1871,67). Hamblemouth and Hamwic. In the Hodoeporicon, the departure place Willibald and companions arrive at is 'the place anciently known as Hamblemouth, next to the mercimonium called Hamwic' (ad loca venerunt destinata que prisco dicitur vocabulo Hamel-ea-mutha, iuxta illa [sic] merci­ monio que dicitur Ham-wih). In The Life o f Wynnebald, Willibald's brother and companions 'come to the place of selling which is a mercimonium' (ad loca venerunt venalia, quod est mercimonium) (Holder-Egger 1887a, 91 and 107). Note the similarities of phrasing in the two texts. London. Bede (ii, 3; Colgrave and Mynors 1969,142) writes of the province of the East Saxons, 'whose chief city is the civitas London, set on the bank of the aforesaid river, an emporium for many people coming by land and sea' (quorum metropolis Lundonia ciuitas est, super ripam praefati fluminis posita et ipsa multorum emporium populorum terra marique uenientium). Quentovic. In The Miracles o f Saint Wandrille (Holder-Egger 1887b, 408), reference is made to the translation of relics 'to the church of St Peter which is close to the emporium of Quentovic' (ad ecclesiam sancti Petri quae [59]

H a MWIC IN ITS CONTEXT

vicina est emporio Quentovico). Refer also to Dhondt (1962, 204, n. 64) who finds four references in that text to Quentovic the emporium. In The Annals o f St Bertin, the raid of 842 on 'the emporium called Quentovic' (in emporio quod Quantovicus dicitur) is described (Dehaisnes 1871,52). Rouen. In the Hodoeporicon, Willibald and companions, having crossed the Channel, pitch their tents on a bank of the Seine 'next to the urbs called Rouen. A mercimonia was there' (iuxta urbe que vocatur Rotum. Ibi fu it mer­ cimonia) (Holder-Egger 1887a, 91). Note the similarity of phrasing to the Hamwic reference; also that it is not entirely clear from the text whether the trading place was at or next to Rouen.

B ib l io g r a p h y Attenborough, F. L. (ed.) 1922. The Laws of the Earliest English Kings. Cam­ bridge: Cambridge University Press. Bateley, J. M. (ed.) 1986. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle: a collaborative edition (volume 3, MS A). Cambridge: D. S. Brewer. Birch, W . de G. (ed.) 1885. Cartularium Saxonicum: a collection of charters relating to Anglo-Saxon history. London: Clark. Boretius, A. and Krause, V. (eds) 1847. Capitularia Regum Francorum. Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, leges II ii. Bourdillon, J. 1983. Animals in an Urban Environment: with special refer­ ence to the faunal remains from Saxon Southampton. M. Phil, disserta­ tion. Department of Archaeology, University of Southampton, Southampton. Bourdillon, J. 1994 Animal bones. In M. Gamer, Middle Saxon evidence at Cook Street, Southampton (SOU 254). Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society 4 9,116-27. Colgrave, B. (ed.) 1927. Vita S. WHfridi. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. A. B. (eds) 1969. Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Dehaisnes, C. (ed.) 1871. Les Annales de Saint-Bertin et de Saint-Vaast: suivies de fragments d'une chronique inédite. Paris: libraire de la Société de l'Histoire de France. Dhondt, J. 1962. Les problèmes de Quentovic. In Studi in Onore di Armintore Fanfani, 183-248. Milan.

[6 0 ]

M orton

Dümmler, E. (ed.) 1895. Epistolae Karolini Aevi, K Berlin: Monumenta Ger­ maniae Historica/ epistolae IV. Gamer, M. 1994. Middle Saxon evidence at Cook Street, Southampton (SOU 254). Proceedings of the Hampshire Field Club and Archaeological Society 49,77-127. Gamer, M. 1997. Further middle Saxon evidence at Cook Street, Southampton (SOU 567). Hampshire Studies, 52 ,7 7 -8 7 . Grierson, P. 1941. The relations between England and Flanders before the Norman Conquest Transactions of die Royal Historical Society (Series 4) 23,71-113. Grierson, P. 1959. Commerce in the Dark Ages: a critique of the evidence. Transactions of the Royal Historical Society (Series 5) 9 ,123-40. Hase, P. 1975. The Development of the Parish in Hampshire, Particularly in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries. Ph.D. dissertation. Cambrige Uni­ versity, Cambridge. Hodges, R. 1982. Dark Age Economics: the origins of trade, AD 600-1000. London: Duckworth. Hodges, R. 1991. The 8th-century pottery industry at La Londe, near Rouen, and its implications for cross-Channel trade with Hamwic, Saxon Southampton. Antiquity 65,882-7. Holder-Egger, O. (ed.) 1887a. Vita Willibaldi et Wynnebaldi Auctore Sancti­ moniali Heidenheimensi. Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, scriptores XV i, 80-117. Holder-Egger, O. (ed.) 1887b. Ex Miraculis S. WandregisilL Hanover: Monu­ menta Germaniae Historica, scriptores XV i, 406-9. Metcalf, D. M. 1988. The coins. In P. Andrews (ed.) The Coins and Pottery from Hamwic, 17-59. Southampton: Southampton City Council. M orton, A. D. 1992. Excavations at Hamwic, volume one, excavations 1946-83, excluding Six Dials and Melbourne Street London: CBA Research Report 84. Pertz, G. H. (ed.) 1829. Vita S. Bonafatii Archiepiscopi Auctore Wïllïbaldo Pres­ bytero. Hanover: Monumenta Germaniae Historica, scriptores TL, 331-53. Pertz, G. H. (ed.) 1891. Annales Fuldenses: sive annales regni Francorum orien­ talis. Hanover: Scriptores Rerum Germanicarum in Usum Scholarum. Platt, C. 1973. Medieval Southampton: the port and trading community, A. D. 1000-1600. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul. Rumble, A. 1980. HAMTVN alias HAMWIC (Saxon Southampton): the place-name traditions and their significance. In P. E. Holdsworth (ed.) Excavations at Melbourne Street, Southampton, 1971-76, 7-20. London: CBA Research Report 33.

[61]

H amwic IN rrs CONTEXT

Sawyer, P. H. 1968. Anglo-Saxon Charters. London: Royal Historical Society. Timby, J. 1988. The middle Saxon pottery. In P. Andrews (ed.) The Coins and Pottery from Hamwic, 73-124. Southampton: Southampton City Council. Yorke, B. 1989. The Jutes of Hampshire and W ight and the origins of W essex. In S. Bassett (ed.) The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms, 84-96. London Leicester University Press.

[62]

C

hapter

S

ix

T h e Russes, the Byzantines, and miàâle-Saxon emporia

Alex Woolf

T h e R u sses

and t h e

B y z a n t in e s

T h e in ten tion o f th is p a p e r is very simple. I wish to present the reader with two passages from The Tale o f Bygone Years [a.k.a. The Russian Primary Chronicle] (Cross 1930). This is a twelfth-century historical tract, emanating from Kiev, which may help us to visualise the ways in which trade and industry could have been organised in the emporia of the North Sea basin in the long eighth century (c. 675-825), the period during which they were at their prime. Following the reproduction of the trans­ lated passages, I will discuss those points which seem most relevant to the concerns of the present volume. The passages quoted here purport to be the texts of the two peace treaties agreed between the Rus and the Greeks in 907 and 945 respect­ ively. Whilst the texts of these agreements come to us within a composi­ tion of the early twelfth century the appearance of Scandinavian names amongst the Rus witnesses has suggested to most scholars that some

T he R usses ,

th e B yzantines , and middle-S axon em poria

kind of original source lies behind them, for it is the usual practice of the chronicler to slavidse all personal names (e.g. Helgi > Oleg; etc.). Since we are using this text more in the manner of an ethnographic analogy than as a source for actual tenth-century events its absolute accuracy is less important than the fact that its author clearly believed it to present a plausible description of commercial relations. So, without further ado, let us proceed to the texts: [AD] 907 The Russes proposed the following terms: The Russes who come hither [to Constantinople] shall receive as much grain as they require. Whosoever come as merchants shall receive supplies for six months, including bread, wine, meat, fish, and fruit. Baths shall be prepared for them in any volume they require. When the Russes return homeward, they shall receive from your Emperor food, anchors, cordage, and sails, and whatever else is needful for the journey. The Greeks accepted these stipulations, and the Emperor and all the courtiers declared: if Russes come hither without merchandise, they shall receive no provisions. Your prince shall personally lay injunction upon such Russes as jour­ ney hither that they shall do no violence in the towns and throughout our territory. Such Russes as arrive here shall dwell in the Saint Mamas quarter. Our government will send officers to record their name, and they shall receive their monthly allowance, first the natives of Kiev, then those of Chernigov, Pereyaslavl, and the other cities. They shall not enter the city save through one gate, unarmed and fifty at a time, escorted by sol­ diers of the Emperor. They may purchase wares according to their requirements and tax free. [AD] 945 Romanus, Constantine and Stephen sent envoys to Igor to renew the previous treaty, and Igor discussed the matter with them. Igor sent his own envoys to Romanus, and the Emperor called to­ gether his own boyars and his nobles. The Russian envoys were in­ troduced and bidden to speak, and it was commanded that the re­ marks of both parties should be inscribed upon parchment, like the previous agreement existing under Romanus, Constantine, and Stephen, the most Christian princes .... The Greeks stipulated: the [64]

W o o lf

Great Prince of the Rus and his boyars shall send to Greece to die Greek Emperors as many ships as they desire with their agents and merchants, according to the prevailing usage. The agents have hitherto carried gold seals, and the merchants silver ones. But your Prince has now made known that he will forward a cer­ tificate to our government, and any agents or merchants thus sent by the Russians shall be provided with such a certificate to the effect that a given number of ships has been dispatched. By this means we shall be assured that they come with peaceful intent. But if such persons come uncertificated and are surrendered to us, we shall detain and hold diem until we notify your Prince. If they do not surrender, but offer resistance, they shall be killed, and the indemnity for their death shall not be exacted by your Prince. If, however, they flee to Rus, we shall so inform your Prince, and he shall deal with them as he sees fit. If Russes come without merchandise, they shall not be entitled to receive monthly allowances. Your Prince shall moreover pro­ hibit his agents and such other Russes as come hither from the commission of violence in our villages and territory. Such Russes as come hither shall dwell by Saint Mamass Church. Our author­ ities shall note their names, and they shall receive their monthly allowance, h e agents h e amount proper to h e ir position, and h e merchants h e usual amount: first h ose from h e city of Kiev, h en h ose from Chernigov and Pereyaslavl. They shall enter h e city through one gate in groups of fifty without weapons, and shall dispose of h e ir merchandise as h ey require, after which they shall depart. An officer of our government shall guard hem , in order that, if any Rus or Greek does wrong, he may redress it. When h e Russes enter h e city, h ey shall not have h e right to buy silk above fifty bezants. Whoever purchases such silks shall exhibit hem to an Imperial officer, who will stamp and return hem . When h e Russes depart hence, h ey shall receive from us as many provisions as h ey require for h e journey, and what h e y need for h e ir ships (as has been previously determined), arid h ey shall return home in safety. They shall not have h e privilege of wintering in h e Saint Mamas quarter. If any slave runs away from Rus and flees into h e territory of our Empire, or escapes from h e Saint Mamas quarter, he shall be apprehended if he be in Greek territory. If he is not found, h e Christian Russes shall so swear according to h e ir faith, and h e [65]

T h e R usses , th e B yzantines , and middle-S axon emporia

non-Christians after their custom, and they shall then receive from us their due, two pieces of silk per slave, according to previ­ ous stipulations. If, among the people of our Empire, whether from our city or elsewhere, any slave of ours escapes among you and takes anything with him, the Russes shall send him back again. If what he has appropriated is intact the finder shall receive two bezants from its value. If any Rus attempts to commit theft upon subjects of our Empire, he who so acts shall be severely punished, and he shall pay double the value of what he has stolen. If a Greek so trans­ gresses against a Rus, he shall receive the same punishment that the latter would for a like offence. If a Rus commits a theft upon a Greek, or a Greek upon a Rus, he must return not only the stolen, article but also its value. If the stolen article is found to have been sold he shall return double the price, and also shall be punished both by Greek law and custom and by the law of the Russes. If the Russes bring in young men or grown girls who have been taken as prisoners from our dominions, the Greeks shall pay a ransom of ten bezants each and recover the captives. If the latter are of middle age, the Greeks shall recover them on payment of eight bezants each. But in the case that the captives are old per­ sons or young children, the ransom shall be five bezants. If any of the Russes are found labouring as slaves in Greece, providing they are prisoners of war, the Russes shall ransom them for ten bezants each. But if a Greek has actually purchased any such prisoner, and so declares under oath, he shall receive in return the full purchase price paid for the prisoner. [The remainder of the treaty deals with more wide ranging political issues such as sup­ plying mercenaries and the presence of Rus ships at other ports in the empire, etc.] These passages quoted above may well be the most explicit narrative describing the relationship between a political regime and long-distance commerce surviving from early medieval Europe. The first passage, the treaty of 907, neatly summarises the mechanisms through which ex­ change operated whilst the second treaty fills out the minutiae of the arrangements. What is most immediately apparent is that the Byzantine government undertook to feed and house the foreign merchants for up to six months at a time and to supply them with whatever they required to make their ships seaworthy for the return journey. It is also made clear [6 6 ]

W oolf

that any trade that the Russes carried out was tariff free. An obvious question immediately springs to mind; whilst the benefits to the Russes are self evident, what did the Greek government get out of the relationship? The only plausible answer is that the government was taxing the consumer rather than the supplier. In other words, the em­ perors were more concerned with controlling the domestic market than the foreign market. The benefit gained from offering such generous free board and lodging to the Russes lay in the likelihood that it would dissuade them from engaging in free trade. In Iceland where, before the rise of large-scale chiefdoms in the Sturlung Age, no such incentives were provided, over­ seas merchants would make landfall almost by chance and seek out the nearest chieftain or rich farmer to put them up. Subsequently operating their stall from their hosts farm and perhaps accompanying him to the thing. Any more directed venture would have to rely upon previously established social relations of a private nature (Byock 1988, 95-98; Durrenberger 1992, 65-74; Miller 1990,77-110). Such a combination of oppor­ tunism and social networking would have contributed to the economic flux characteristic of non-state societies in which the absence of effective attempts to monopolise external sources of power make the establish­ ment of stable political hegemony significantly less easy. N o r t h Se a

e m p o r ia

By contrast, regimes such as that operating from tenth-century Con­ stantinople were able to go a long way towards securing their status in relation to domestic rivals by creating monopolies over external exchange through controlling public access to such emporia for foreign traffic as it wished to establish. The main intention of the present essay is to show that this is the most likely explanation for the growth of emporia in the North Sea basin in the seventh and eighth centuries. Richard Hodges understood this when he wrote (1989, 70): Commerce is therefore controlled on boundaries, where it is easier to prevent lower ranking groups from colluding with for­ eign merchants. Since this collusion destabilises an established hierarchy, there is always the threat that lower ranking groups may establish a new one. He (ibid.) probably goes too far, however, when he ascribes proto-indus­ trial status to the North Sea emporia: [67]

T he R usses , th e B yzantines, and middle-S axo n em poria

The hierarchy must regulate not only trade with foreign mer­ chants, but also the production of those goods that attracted the foreign trade in the first place. Control of production normally proves a critical factor if for some reason foreign trade declines, as native craft products may come to be circulated instead. Such a model, presenting the emporia as industrial centres attracting foreign merchants, conjures up images more appropriate to nineteenthcentury Birmingham than to pre-viking England or Frankia, which even by the least cautious of estimates of the significance of industrial produc­ tion could hardly be categorised as consumer societies. Production on what was perhaps a considerable scale did take place within emporia but even if this does ultimately prove to be significantly greater, house plot for house plot, than on contemporary rural sites I would argue, in the light of the Rus-Byzantine arrangements, that this production is ancillary to the needs of the merchants rather than a pri­ mary attractor. It is, after all, implicit in Hodges's anthropological model that there is something that the country produces which attracts mer­ chants in the first place. The function of the emporium was not to attract merchants to the country but to concentrate those who came on one par­ ticular piece of the shoreline. A site which proved effective in this role might well then attract merchants from further afield. The concessions made to the Russes of boat-repairing facilities, food, and baths will doubtless have given the Saint Mamas district of Con­ stantinople a semi-industrial appearance and we can also imagine a vari­ ety of other ancillary craft activities such as the repackaging of ship-borne cargo for overland travel and vice versa. Similar facilities may well have been provided by Frankish and Anglo-Saxon kings. When we consider that much of the North Sea and Charnel trade was carried out by Frisians, who despite engaging in their adventures in timber-built ships and living in timber-built houses came from a country almost completely devoid of wood, such likelihood becomes near certainty. It seems most likely that few if any Frisian vessels can have been built in the homeland and the most likely location for such industry is in the emporia of Frankia and England. Indeed the search for timber may well have been one of the prime objectives in Frisian commercial activity (cf. TeBrake 1978). It should also be noted that if foreign merchants were living for extended periods at emporia then a number of domestic subsistence crafts may well be expected to be evidenced, as indeed they are. We shall return to foreign merchants shortly, but in the meantime we [68]

W o o lf

should briefly consider the domestic sector. Under the stipulations of Constantine, Stephen, and Romanus die Russes were registered with an imperial officer (we can see here the analogue of the Anglo-Saxon portgerefa and recall the unfortunate officer of Portland: Annals o f Saint Neots s.a. 802; Dumville and Lapidge 1984, 39), and led into the dty to trade. Urbanism having failed in the North Sea basin, if it ever flourished, the analogue here requires a reversal of roles. The enclosed or delineated settlement was primarily the focus for foreign merchants and the domes­ tic traders, for it would be anachronistic to categorise them as consumers, travelled to it In all likelihood this was probably at least partly true in the case of Constantinople and the Russes, customers were probably drawn from all parts of the empire and not solely from the city. For Anglo-Saxon England the nature of such concessions to domestic participants in the emporia circuit have been examined by Susan Kelly (1992). Kelly draws our attention to the existence of ten documents dating from our period recording the remission of tolls on ships owned by eccle­ siastical institutions; five from Minster-in-Thanet, two from Saint Pauls, and one each from Worcester, Rochester, and Reculver. Six of these docu­ ments record the remission of tolls due at London, two were those due at Fordwich, Kent (one of these also includes Sarre), and two, apparently offered exemption throughout the Mercian realm. All originate in the eighth century but at least one was confirmed by King Beorhtwulf in the mid-ninth century and since none of our extant texts is an original it is likely that the others had continued validity. Toll exemptions of this type are problematic as evidence. In the first in­ stance the survival of such evidence is heavily dependent upon the sub­ sequent history of the institutions involved. The bishopric at Worcester seems, at first sight, to have been remarkably favoured in the concessions granted it in London (ninth-century grants of commercial plots also sur­ vive (Kelly 1992,12)). However, this has to be séen in the context of the remarkable survival of Anglo-Saxon material in the Worcester archive. A happy chance resulting from diligent later medieval archivists and the absence of fire and other disasters that often befell such libraries. Who can say how many other dioceses may have originally shared such privil­ eges? Secondly, what survives in the records are the records of exemp­ tions. It is natural to assume that most ships sailing, or mule trains travel­ ling, to middle-Saxon emporia were not exempt from tolls, but there is no mechanism for computing their number from our knowledge of the exempt. Equally, the status of domestic traders is also unclear. The documents [69]

T he R usses , th e B yzantines, and middle-S axon em poria

which survive record remissions granted to ecclesiastical institutions but we cannot tell if this is because minsters were the major players in the game or whether it is simply because secular archives do not survive. The dating of the rise of emporia in England, in the course of the seventh century, might suggest that the growth of minster land holdings was a significant factor. However, the existence of Ribe, from at least 710 (Clarke and Ambrosiani 1995, 52-4), would seem to give the lie to this interpretation, and the development of a similar class of trading settle­ ments in the Baltic in the ninth century implies that Christianity was not a pre-requisite. The implication of these various strands of evidence is that both eccle­ siastical institutions and secular magnates were engaged in commercial activities at the emporia and that, usually, they paid some kind of tolls to the king's agents. What is interesting for the argument here is that no ecclesiastical archive from either Frankia or England retains documents granting toll remission at foreign ports. Cross-Channel trade was import­ ant, we have ample evidence for it both archaeologically and historically, yet none of the great Frankish monasteries seems to have received remis­ sion of tolls from London, Hamwic, or any of the other centres, and no English archive contains evidence for exemptions being held from tolls at Dorestad, Quentovic, or one of the other Frankish emporia. Close relationships of a variety of kinds certainly existed between early medieval kings and foreign monasteries and there seems to be no reason why such exemptions might not occasionally have been granted. One possible explanation for their absence may be that, like the Russes in Byzantium, foreign merchants were not required to pay tolls in the first place. If the emporia were primarily mechanisms which allowed kings to increase levels of social control then their main concern with foreigners, whom they could never hope to fully control, would be to attract them to these centres and to allow the king to create a monopoly of access to lux­ ury items. T h e F r is ia n s

as

R u sses?

To summarise then, domestic access to the emporia was tightly con­ trolled by the king. Institutions or individuals(?) sent ships or, one pre­ sumes, terrestrial expeditions and usually paid a toll, although this might be waived. It was also possible for such institutions to own or lease plots within the emporia. The implication here is that domestic traders active at emporia were the agents of institutions located at some distance away. [703

W oo lf

It is notable in the case of the London grants discussed above that none of the recipient churches were in the immediate environs of London itself. What then of the transmarine merchants? A great many of the references to merchants from overseas in seventhand eighth-century emporia, whether in England or the Frankish lands, describe them as Frisians. The only definite evidence we have for the Frisians, the major group involved in transmarine carriage, being charged tolls by the Franks or English comes from the middle years of the reign of Louis the Pious. In 829 Louis granted the Bishop of Worms the right to keep the tolls charged on negotiatores, artifices, et Frisiones in his city (Lebecq 1983, 422). The distinction made between these three categories, and particularly the inclusion of artifices (craftsmen), clearly indicates that three different kinds of taxation were intended here, and that Frisiones were distinguished from domestic negotiatores. Besides which, Worms was no emporium. But who were the Frisians? Lebecq has rehearsed the arguments for and against the proposition that the term Frisian applied to merchants and sailors truly indicates that the men in question were natives of Fries­ land (1983, 131-4). On balance, he argues that, even if the term later became used in a wider sense, its adoption indicates that at one period the real Frisians of Frisia must have taken a lead in maritime commerce. The traditional view of this lead has been that it reflects a natural apti­ tude for seafaring and mercantilism developed by people living amongst the islands and river mouths of the Rhine/Elbe outwash zone. The Frisians were a seafaring nation and, in view of the scarcity of domestic resources, they were inclined to go elsewhere to seek out a living. In the light of the treaty between the Russes and the Byzantines, however, I would suggest that we try to rethink this interpretation. It is quite clear from the agreement between the Greeks and the Russes that whilst Rus merchants were to be treated as individuals responsible for their own wrong doings and general behaviour a political element was not absent from the equation. This is further highlighted if we recall the context of these agreements on trading rights. In each case they fol­ low Rus military attacks on Constantinople led, if we sure to believe the Tale o f Bygone Years, by the political leaders of the Varangian states them­ selves. Indeed, within the treaty explicitly political arrangements, such as the extradition of wrong-doers, are included: arrangements which could only come in to practice if the treaty were envisaged as one between two governments. What we must ask ourselves is whether the Frisian trade also had an [71]

T he R usses ,

th e B yzantines , and meddle-S axon emporia

explicit political nature. In this context it is probably not unreasonable to point out that the first year in which we have evidence of a Frisian mer­ chant, 679 (Bede iv, 22; Colgrave and Mynors 1969,404-405), is also the year in which we first have evidence of a king in Frisia, Aldgisl, with whom Bishop Wilfrid over-wintered on his way to Rome (Levison 1946, 51). Apart from a small issue of apparently sixth-century coins by some­ one named Audulf (Grierson and Blackburn 1986,137) there is no dear evidence for anything approaching centralised government amongst the Frisians prior to die time of Aldgisl. An examination of die exact chronology of the early development of Dorestad sheds some light on the relationship between die rise of kingship in Friesland and the emporia. The earliest evidence for the existence of both Dorestad and Quentovic in the early Middle Ages comes from die coinage. At both sites the first half of the sixth century saw the minting of gold trientes (Wood 1994, 293-303), the type of coin familiar to British archaeologists from the Sutton Hoo purse (Brown 1981). Quentovic has not yet received significant archaeological attention but at Dorestad it is dear that this issue, minted by someone named Madelinus, had come to an end by about 650 before any of the diagnostic features of the em­ porium had emerged (Wood 1994). Indeed, it seems likely that the trientes were minted, like other Merovingian issues of die same type, at a comital centre rather than at a specialist entrepot. After 650 a new kind of coin appears in the region of Dorestad minted on the model of Madelinus's trientes but minted in silver rather than gold. These are very early and possibly die very first sceatta, the kind of coin which seems to be universally associated with the emporia of the long eighth century (Grierson and Blackburn 1986,151). These coins appear to be the products of a mint controlled by Frieslanders perhaps at, or merely close to, Dorestad. They appear at about the same time as our first Frisian king and just as our emporia begin to develop distinctive diagnostic fea­ tures in the archaeological record. Drawing on the analogy of Rus trade with Byzantium I would there­ fore like to raise three hypotheses: 1.

2. [72]

Centres such as Quentovic, Dorestad, and Ipswich (and perhaps other sites), which have dear indicators of pre- or early emporium phases, started out as centres of royal control of cross-frontier or transmarine trade. This trade stimulated internal competition amongst Frisian big men and this competition developed an external facet as individual Fries-

W oo lf

3.

landers sought preferential access to foreign entrepots. Ultimately die most successful of these Frieslanders, by gaining direct control of Dorestad and, perhaps, strong influence in other emporia, established a paramount chieftainship which historical sources bear witness to in the form of the kingship, and ducatus, of Aldgisl, Radbod, and Bubo.

C o n c l u s io n

In a short essay of this nature I cannot hope to present a conclusive case for this scenario, though it has much in common with prehistorians' ideas about core and periphery (cf. Frankenstein and Rowlands 1978). Where this hypothesis differs from more typical core-periphery models is in its ascription of a higher degree of agency to those on the periphery. To the extent that, in the course of the two hundred years following Madelinus's departure from the Frankish comital centre of Dorestad, the peripheral region of Friesland became, in effect, the core of a new intra-regional system: a system which stretched across England, northern and eastern Frankia, and up into western Jutland. In this wider context it is probably wise to note that the emporia net­ work, stretching from Ribe to Quentovic on the continent and from Hamwic to Eoforwic in Britain, seems confined to those territories which spoke languages which would have been mutually intelligible to the Frisians. Quentovic's location near the mouth of the Canche places it pre­ cisely on the river which is most frequently cited as the boundary between the Old West Flemish and Romance language areas. Similarly, Ribe appears to be located near the point where North Germanic and West Germanic meet. While in Britain emporia seem, so far, to have been confined to the areas where the population had an Old English speaking majority during the eighth century. Within the Merovingian realms -such an ethno-linguistic division makes no sense in the light of our understanding of governmental prac­ tice. The documentary sources make it well nigh impossible for us to see any clear distinction between Franks and Gallo-Romans by the seventh century, although a linguistic division did exist (Geary 1983). The im­ position of this ethno-linguistic boundary to the emporia network would seem to be an imposition by an outside force, quite possibly the less politically sophisticated Frisians to whom the socially imbedded world of ethno-linguistic commonality would have been a natural habitat. It would be wrong to take this argument too far and to portray the [73]

T h e R usses ,

th e B yzantines , and middle-S axon em poria

Frisians as the dominant partners in the North Sea traffic, but we must recognise that a complex series of responses to needs arising in different parts of the North Sea and Channel littoral will have led to a complex series of solutions. Amongst these political force, and even warfare, such as that experienced around Dorestad throughout this period, will have played an important part. The naval attacks carried out by the Russes on Byzantium in the tendu century were not disruptive to trade systems and networks but were an essential part of the negotiations that went into establishing and maintaining such factors. War and trade are not simply socially imbedded they are the stuff of society itself (cf. Samson 1991), particularly in early medieval Europe. To understand the exchange systems operating in this period we need to pay much more attention to the archaeology of the Frisian interior and to attempt to identify the material correlates of state formation evident in the numismatics and the documentary sources. Only then will we really understand what is going on in middle-Saxon England. B ib l io g r a p h y Brown, D. 1981. The dating of the Sutton Hoo coins. In S. Chadwick Hawkes, J. Campbell, and D. Brown (eds) Anglo-Saxon Studies in Archaeology and History 2 ,7 1 -8 6 . Oxford: Oxford University Committee of Archaeology. Byock, J. L. 1988. Medieval Iceland: Society; Sagas and Power. Berkeley: Uni­ versity of California Press. Clarke, H. and Ambrosiani, B. 1995. Towns in the Viking Age. London: Leicester University Press. Colgrave, B. and Mynors, R. B. A. (eds) 1969. Bedes Ecclesiastical History of the English People. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Cross, S. H. (tr.) 1930. The Russian Primary Chronicle. Harvard Studies and Notes in Philology and Literature 12,136-309. Dumville, D. N. and Lapidge, M. (eds) 1984. Annals of Saint Neots with Vita Prima Sancti Neoti. Woodbridge: Boydell. Durrenberger, E. P. 1992. The Dynamics of Medieval Iceland: Political Economy and Literature. Iowa City: University of Iowa Press. Frankenstein, S. & Rowlands, M. J. 1978. The internal structure and regional context of early Iron Age society in south-western Germany. Bulletin of the Institute ofArchaeology 15,73-112. Geary, P. 1983. Ethnic identity as a situational construct in the early Middle Ages. Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien 113. [74]

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Grierson, P. and Blackburn, M. 1986. Medieval European Coinage 1: The Early Middle Ages (5th-10th Centuries). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Hodges, R. 1989. The Anglo-Saxon Achievement. London: Duckworth. Kelly, S. 1992. Trading privileges from eighth-century England. Early Medi­ eval Europe 1(1), 3-29. Lebecq, S. 1983. Marchands et Navigateurs Frisons du Haut Moyen Age. Lille. Levison, W. 1946. England and the Continent in the Eighth Century. Oxford: Clarendon. Miller, W. 1 .1990. Bloodtaking and Peacemaking: Feud, Law and Society in Saga Iceland. Chicago: Chicago University Press. Samson, R. 1991. Fighting with silver: rethinking trading, raiding and hoarding. In R. Samson (ed.) Social Approaches to Viking Studies, 123134. Glasgow: Cruithne Press. TeBrake, W. H. 1978. Ecology and economy in early medieval Frisia. Viator 9 ,1-29. Wood, L 1994. The Merovingian Kingdoms 450-751. London: Longman.

[75]

C

hapter

S

even

I llusory emporia and mad economic theories

Ross Samson

'Dorestad was called the greatest town west of Constantinople/ T h is o u tla n d is h c la im , documented by Verwers (1988, 55), echoes Richard Hodges (1982), who explicitly denigrated the size of Trier and Tours in comparison with Anglo-Saxon emporia, such as Hamwic (Southampton). These civitates or urbes, as contemporaries would have called them were, supposedly, like Kildare and Qonmacnoise in Ireland, sites of many churches but no real economic activity. But how did archaeologists get to the point of suggesting that these tiny coastal trad­ ing ports were larger than the descendants of ancient cities of the Roman empire (and two of the most enormous at that!) wherein lay the major ecclesiastical and political powers of western Dark-Age society? It is hard to know how to answer the question generously, for the historical sources that Henri Pirenne used to document what he thought was considerable long-distance trade in the centuries after the fall of Rome (and thus a hero of the emporia partisans) mention, above all, classical ports such as Mar-

Samson

seilles and Bordeaux. Dark-Age witnesses such as Bede and Gregory of Tours were explicit: London and Lyons, these were two of the extraord­ inarily populous urban centres of their worlds, not Sandwich and Quentovic. Much nonsense has been spouted in relation to emporia and increas­ ingly the literature is filling with contradictory assumptions and irrecon­ cilable interpretations. The reasons for this lie primarily with the variety of definitions of emporia, the fact that many rest heavily on ill-conceived theoretical notions about Dark-Age economics, and the probability that emporia are a figment of our scholarly imagination. I doubt many will endorse my radical claim that there was no such thing as middle-Saxon emporia as conceived by archaeologists. But if we stop to ask ourselves just what do we think we are talking about when we speak of emporia and wics, it will become clearer that there are huge and perhaps unsuspected problems. When each of the contributors to this book writes the word 'emporia', he has in his mind an abstract image of some model emporium that basic­ ally derives from one of three sources. The least influential of these is the vocabulary and mentalities of the ancient Saxons themselves. There is far more enthusiasm for emporia from archaeologists than from historians, with the result that the textual sources have not been made to yield thenfull potential and some of the snippets of Dark-Age documents cited by archaeologists reveal only a partial grasp of their meaning. Increasingly influential is the second source, archaeological data. On the continent there is Dorestad and Haithabu, in England the holy of holies is Hamwic (indeed, so holy is the site that it is almost exclusively referred to by its Anglo-Saxon name rather than plain Southampton). According to the holy archaeological canon there are maybe a dozen sainted 'genuine' sites with undisputed designation as emporia, including Hamwic, Sandwich, Ipswich, Quentovic, York, and London. What is uncovered at these sites become the hard facts that help shape and, increasingly, reshape the imagined model emporium that exists in the minds of scholars. And the third and perhaps most influential source from which that model is con­ structed are the theoretical notions one entertains concerning early medieval economics, politics, and social organisation. This means that one's understanding or conception of emporia is primarily based on how one imagines Dark-Age trade to have been practised. And yet, the most common model, a version represented by Richard Hodges in 1982, is in­ creasingly at odds with the facts of excavation, field survey, and finds studies. [77]

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W hat is an emporium ? It seems odd that so much ink has been wasted by scholars in defining towns (especially since we all have an intuitive concept of 'a city' which no amount of intellectualising is likely to dislodge; and especially when Guy Halsali's minimal and workable definition has long awaited expres­ sion: that is, towns are big settlements inhabited by lots of people). No one seems to wish to explain in detail what they mean by emporium (although most of us probably have no preconceptions; except, perhaps, as a Victorian shop name such as Trilby's Hat Emporium). By common usage one can extrapolate that emporia are thought of as Dark-Age settlements which centred around their most important and characteristic activity - trading (the seventh, eighth, and ninth centuries are seen as their heyday and their locations are mostly on the North Sea coastline). That trading is a crucial defining trait is not surprising for the Latin emporium was a straight loan-word from the Greek emporion, meaning trading place. A place where an emporos, a trader, might go to trade. Richard Hodges suggested distinguishing between emporia types A and B, corresponding to temporary or seasonal market places, such as fairs, and permanent settlements. Both are effectively discrete sites, whether merchandise depots, car-boot sale-lots, or retail parks dedicated to trade. However, once archaeologists had a new category in their vocabulary, they simply had to put it to use. The suggestion that emporia existed at York and London confused the picture enormously, although no one seems to have taken much notice. Traditionally, one might expect York and London to be simply considered cities or big towns. We must question how odd it is that there should be a market-place in a town, es­ pecially a big town. Not at all odd as far as I can see. Indeed, I had rather assumed that Dark-Age towns should have had market places and been the setting for fairs. Thronged towns and 'squares' in sixth-century Gallic towns are the setting for many of Gregory of Tours anecdotes in The History o f the Franks. First, the negutiatur Christopher bought wine in Orléans, having heard that it was cheap, with the intention of selling it for a profit in Tours (VU. 46; Thorpe 1974, 427-8). Second, the hapless Count Leudast was caught by Queen Fredegund's men when he was browsing through the luxuries (species), perhaps jewellery, within the walls of Paris at the domus negutiantum (VI. 32; Thorpe 1974, 361-3). When Bede called London a huge emporium (and this was as a qualification to his first [78 ]

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designation civitas) he did not mean it in the sense of an archaeological type B settlement, or that a separate Dorestad-like gateway port existed near the old, empty shell of a Roman town inhabited only by the bishop and his cronies. He meant it metaphorically in a patently obvious way, in the way we might say that New York is just one monstrous shopping mall. London was a 'market-place' for the people of many nations. As John Newman points out in this volume, we can be blinded by the amount of archaeological investigation at sites we call emporia. They have been the flavour of the month since I started my doctoral research two hundred months ago. One consequence is that archaeologists have increasingly called anything an emporium (because emporia are per­ ceived as Good Things) so long as it yields some exotic imports. Thus Newman mentions Barham, Tilbury, and Royston as rural emporia on the explicit basis of being 'artefact-rich', while admitting that such rural sites 'may not spring to mind in a study of middle-Saxon emporia'. Per­ haps they do not spring to mind because they are inappropriately likened to Ipswich and simply demonstrate that middle-Saxon trade occurred not only in the largest urban centres and in special coastal ports, but also at monasteries, royal villas, small villages, and traditional rural assembly sites, such as army mustering points and shire courts. In short, we are in danger of calling anything and everything emporia and then standing back amazed at their diversity. So, what is an emporium? The obvious start is to follow the language and categories of the long-dead people we study. What, for instance, were Bede's names for places (Campbell 1979)? What were Saxon syno­ nyms for markets, trading-places, fairs, merchants' quarters, harbours, docks, buying, selling, and shops? This could give us insights into the mentality of a society, allowing us to see what was thought important, what unimportant, what characteristic, what unusual, and what was too common to call for comment. Some archaeologists might be disconcerted to learn how rare the word emporium was in early medieval texts, and that there was no Old English equivalent to our archaeological term meaning special settlement. At best, a case can be made for the adoption of a Latin word, vicus, as a special suffix to place-names; but even this has been all too wildly exaggerated as evidence for 'emporia'. Vicus, after all, was just the term for 'village' in late, vulgate Latin (as spoken across the Channel), and -wic continued as a name ending in English for many cen­ turies if not up to the present day. Balliwic is just the most common and specialised of later forms that clearly had nothing to do with what medi­ eval archaeologists call emporia. Berwick comes from here, barley, and [79]

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m e. thus, something like 'barley farm'. Even the holy of holies, Hamwic, was more commonly called Hamtun and glossed as a villa. Alan Morton (this volume) draws our attention to the fact that we have no texts calling Hamwic an emporium, but one reference to it as a mercimonium. And when emporia is used by continental annals for odd little coastal places, like Quentovic or Witla, they use urbs or dvitas for the bigger and more important Rouen and Antwerp. A good case could be made for the Anglo-Saxons not having any spe­ cial concept of word for type B emporia: port, yes; market, yes; town, yes; gateway trading community, no. The Franks certainly had no word or concept for Hodges's emporia. But the second approach to definitions is for scholars simply to create them. The categories are not right or wrong (debating the correctness of definitions is a telltale sign of weak intellect) but are tools for and, yes, sometimes straitjackets to historical analysis. If we wish to invent emporia as a type of settlement, there is nothing wrong with that. Thus emporia could be periodic fairs or market towns or sub­ urban settlements of merchant sailors. At a push we could call these emporia A, B, and C although that invites confusion by assuming natural relationships of either a chronological or a hierarchical nature. This leads to all sorts of stupidity, and we can end up labelling both the largest city in Anglo-Saxon England and one of its tiniest rural hamlets as emporia. Worse follows when we delude ourselves into thinking that the concept of emporia has an external reality which we can debate. Archaeologists, being archaeologists, do what archaeologists do: they define type sites along morphological grounds and compile gazetteers. A growing list of sites now comprises the archaeological canon of what are thought to be genuine emporia (for example: Hamwic, Ipswich, Dorestad, Haithabu, Quentovic, Kaupang, . . . a d infinitum). To this end, emporia have indeed gained an external reality. Anything excavated from Ipswich, Southampton, or Haithabu is now taken as evidence of what really happened at emporia rather than what really happened at ports, small towns, or royal manors. Finally, as the archaeological work undertaken at these sites matures, the emphasis on exotic imports has waned. Many of the chapters in this book reflect the growing interest in the manufacturing activities documented by archaeology. There seems to be a degree of surprise at the level of industrial activity at emporia, which is understandable given that archaeologists have long been thinking of emporia as trading ports. But it is somewhat unnerving that Hodges (1996) now argues that emporia were the birthplace of European com­ mercial industrialisation. [80]

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Even granted that the craft production at emporia was on a greater scale than that of idle sailors kept busy in slack periods with a bit of whittling (although David Hinton's paper in this volume suggests that the metal-working at Hamwic was small scale and mediocre), there are huge obstacles to Hodges's dizzying claim that type B emporia were, in a manner that was utterly alien to the whole of Dark-Age Europe, purpose­ ful aggregations of people for commercial economic purposes, where 'collective workshops' served to meet regional demands. The novelty of the 'productive' roles of type B emporia is a hard logic to swallow, given that the earlier type A emporia were supposedly purely dedicated to trade. Objects for that trade still had to be produced somewhere: olive oil was not pressed in Quentovic; pelts were not trapped, collected, and cured in Hamwic; Ipswich did not raise or cap­ ture the slaves it traded; and Rhenish lava was not quarried in Dorestad. Logic alone dictates that the earliest emporia were trading objects that had already been manufactured elsewhere at other sites of production, and the evidence for that production is abundant. Most particularly we know that expensive luxury objects such as fine metalwork and illu­ minated manuscripts were made at elite centres. Books were obviously made at monasteries, and archaeology has long demonstrated that lordly strongholds from Dunadd in Argyll to the Runder Berg in Wurtemberg were where some of the silver and gold jewellery of the early Middle Ages was made. Indeed, we know there were dose connections between the secular and religious elite and their craftsmen, for manuscript illum­ inators and stone carvers both made reference to jewellery in their art. Secular lords, like the Pictish King Necthan, sought stone masons from the abbots of a great monastery. One must suppose that the most accom­ plished carpenters were similarly kept busy building kings' thrones and bishops' cathedra. It is quite likely that the new emphasis on industrial production in what are termed emporia by archaeologists will lead to the collapse of the term as a useful one in historical analysis, for in the scholarly literature Ipswich and Hamwic are increasingly coming to resemble early medieval cities. Deposits dating to the fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries in Köln at, of all places, the andent market-place, reveal evidence of 'very intensive' production activities. Evidence has been found for the manufacturing of glass, ceramics, and metal; it is evidence for what has been termed as 'dangerous levels of pollution' (Schütte 1995,165). In the case of Ipswich, John Newman reveals that it not only produced and traded far and wide that most famous middle-Saxon product [811

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Ipswich Ware, but that it traded the pottery in far greater quantities than any imported continental ceramics, ht what way does this make Ipswich different from an early medieval urban centre? Why class it as an unusual trading entrepot? The reticence towards any amalgamation of towns and emporia in our scholarly analyses is demonstrated by Woolf's insistence in this book that 'Worms was no emporium', although he had just demonstrated that Louis the Pious had granted the bishop of Worms the right to keep tolls levied on negotiatores. Why not accept the obvious? Traders traded all over the place and most particularly in cities. Ross Balzarretti (1996) demonstrates that the Capitulary of Comacchio (AD 715-30) details tolls and trading customs along the Po valley at Comacchio, Mantua, Brescia, Cremona, Parma, Bergamo, Piacenzo, and 'Capo Mindo'. Almost all of the customary dues are described as being at the 'port o f, which might best be translated as 'at the docks o f. For Balzarretti (1996, 224), 'none really resemble traditionally-defined em­ poria'. This is not surprising as most of them were settlements with bish­ oprics, massive monasteries, or a combination of these. Two things are certain about Dark-Age trading however. The first is that religious houses had agents and, often, trading ships; sometimes they possessed freedom from tolls or even the right to collect them; they had plenty of wealth with which to buy up goodies; and they also had plenty of pro­ duce to dispose of. The second is that traders aimed for populous centres where they would either find producers of the goods they wanted, con­ sumers to fleece, or other traders with whom to do business; or, there may found a handy combination of the three available to them. The Lombard sites, like Worms, like York, and most definitely like London and Constantinople, were towns or cities. What archaeologists call em­ poria are mostly just little towns, often excavated extensively because they failed like Haithabu or almost failed like Hamwic and ultimately moved a bit.

Bad and mad Da re -Age economic theories Dark-Age Economics has had many detractors, though even most of them will agree that the book has been 'influential'; but the book and the work of Hodges has never been critiqued well. Sadly, when the book first appeared its most famous review concentrated on Hodges's 'jargon', and the unpleasant novelty of a historian having to read matters sociological and anthropological. Paradoxically, it was precisely the anthropological content that most appealed to young scholars and held the greatest 1* 2]

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promise of new ways of understanding early medieval business. Yet, not only was this precisely the stuff hated by conservative and traditional historical scholars, it also camouflaged the real essence of Hodges's thought His subsequent outpourings make it dear that Hodges believes strongly in capitalism, that even in die darkest of the Dark Ages the mar­ ket-place was of paramount economic importance, and that history turns on die wishes of big men. If Hodges were to be believed then, at the dawning of the ninth cen­ tury, everything done and thought in the whole of western Europe and perhaps beyond was at the behest of, or in accordance with the ideas of, Charlemagne. Everything from Carolingian church architecture and reli­ gious art to the siting of trade ports and forms of burial rites are attributed to Charlemagne's imperial ideology (Samson 1994a). Hodges combines the traditional historian's obsession with kings and their pol­ icies (rather than with social history) with the Hodderite archaeologist's obsession with ideology and intellectual 'meaning' (rather than social structures) in order to conclude, for instance, that Roman cities were the result of the emperor's need for information flow (or, in ordinary lan­ guage, for bureaucracy and propaganda). Hodges (1988) even goes so far as to portray this as Moses Finley's (1973) theory in The Ancient Economy, This so utterly misrepresents Finley's ideas on the 'consumer city7 that as an undergraduate essay the article should have received a failing mark (Samson 1994b). The two strands of Hodges's work are almost completely irreconcil­ able. On the one hand, money and selling make the world go round, and on the other, kings and their lies about how the world should be ordered determine what happened in history. Thus, while I have taken Hodges's (1996) strange description of commercial manufacture in emporia being conducted in 'collective workshops' to refer to some fledgling capitalist version of industrial and commercial production, there are also constant references to conscious 'urban planning' and 'ideology7 and to 'organisa­ tion', with implied or postulated royal control (Yeavering and Old Wind­ sor and the Danish king, Ongendus, are all mentioned). Also, there is Hodges's drawing of monastic parallels to consider: where the 'control of the production of socially-important classes of commodities' was 'funda­ mental' to the ruling elite (Hodges 1996,298). Ironically, the only real anthropological element contained within Dark-Age Economics was the idea of gateway communities, dangerous liminal places situated on boundaries. This desperately tries to hold together the two extremes of Hodges's ideas that money and markets are [83]

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the only 'real' economic activities and that they are controlled by kings, who operate from ideological concerns and a desire for power. The irony is a bitter one for me, for I find this liminal 'gateway7 idea quite unbeliev­ able. If we want to know why kings had any interest in controlling the movements of traders, we need only read W oolfs contribution here: tolls, but not trade (for it could easily be demonstrated that from antiquity until this century the powerful, the elite, have despised commerce). The wealth of anthropological ideas on the nature of exchange seem to have failed to penetrate into Anglo-Saxon archaeology. In 19911 outlined some anthropological basics for Viking economies, and I have not been alone in my enthusiasm for 'Stone-Age economics' (see, for instance, Miller 1986; Durrenberger 1982; Hill 1982; Vestergaard 1991). However, there is no evidence that archaeologists studying the Anglo-Saxons have adopted ideas regarding the issues of reciprocity and violence within non­ capitalist trade. Nothing reveals more amply how mad and bad the economic theories held by early medieval archaeologists are than the idea that the standard North Sea coastal emporia, such as Quentovic or Dorestad, might have been larger than the descendants of Roman cities, such as Paris or Köln, or that such cities, where bishoprics were established, were uninhabited. When new bishoprics were proposed, the papal message was clear: only proper cities lent proper dignity to a bishopric, sparsely populated vil­ lages were demeaning to episcopal honour. Pope Zacharias said as much to the missionary Boniface, who assured the pope that his three choices for new bishops' seats in Germany were worthy. The same standards also applied within Gaul and Gregory of Tours was a partisan of Dijon's bid for a bishopric, singing its praises by mentioning its city walls, towers, and gates, and its fruitful hinterland and spectacular wine. One must suppose that it was understood that there were many inhabitants, and that Gregory would have thought it foolish if, after describing Dijon's beauty, prosperity, and amenities, he added, 'oh yes, and a whole bunch of people live there too.' None of the small, early-medieval coastal emporia achieved episcopal status (I steadfastly insist that London and York were dvitates not trading settlements). A few did many centuries later when they had finally grown into proper, city-type sizes; however, during the middle-Saxon period emporia were no more than bustling little hamlets. Compared to Pavia and Seville, the emporia of the North Sea coastline were wretched little backwaters. Haithabu and Kaupang were the 1849 Californian goldrush boom 'towns' of their day; while Rome and Milan were the New [84]

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Yorks and Bostons of the same period. The comparison is an important one, for the importance and relevance of emporia accorded to Dark-Age European geography and economics must be inflated if the sites of old former Roman urban centres, where royal palaces, cathedrals, and the richest monasteries were primarily to be found in the seventh to ninth centuries, are to be disregarded as empty shells. And Hodges (1996, 299) still clings to the idea that while the 'seats of power and authority re­ mained at places with Roman antecedents', such as Köln and York, 'kings and bishops inhabited small parts of otherwise derelict Roman towns/ The farcical image of an empty town inhabited only by king and bishop and a handful of their servants derives in part from the paucity of archaeological evidence for intensive Dark-Age occupation. I have argued that if we are better able to read the 'negative' archaeological evidence it is possible to see Dark-Age Gallic cities in the sixth century as fairly populous (Samson 1994b). For instance, stray finds (surely from RdhengrSber inhumation burials) may concentrate outside the old Roman city walls, as they do at Trier, precisely because the centre of town was inhabited and the old extra-mural cemeteries were still in use. Moreover, the textual sources are full of anecdotal evidence for populous towns, although this is evidence which is almost utterly ignored by archaeologists. Hodges (1996, 297) notes the archaeological evidence for keys and locks at Hamwic, which seems to him 'to illustrate the inception of a non-tribal ethos of privacy', a feature of his type B emporia that was supposedly 'alien to much of later seventh- and early eighth-century Latin Christendom' (ibid., p. 299). Yet, I (1992) had already drawn atten­ tion to how commonly, in an assortment of anecdotes, Gregory of Tours made reference to locked doors in town houses (and in rural villas) in Gaul in the sixth century. Moreover, it is clear that there were locked internal doors as well as external ones. It is not simply meagre evidence or its interpretation that has produced the image of the lonely king and bishop huddled together in their daisyand-grass-overgrown ghost towns, it is also the result of an implicit and anachronistic economic philosophy held by archaeologists. In a nutshell the reasoning goes like this: only 'real' economic activity can sustain urban centres, and only production and trade count as 'real' economies. Moreover, the more capitalist the production or trade the more real and the more conducive to growth; and no one was more capitalistic than a merchant. The market, therefore, becomes the focal point and the sign of 'real' economic activity, and the imagined emporia were nothing if not markets, thronged with merchants. [85]

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Feudal exploitative relations, on the other hand, are not seen as pro­ gressive. They are seen as incapable of sustaining growth. Consumption is seen as almost counter-productive, an economic weakness. Hodges (1996,300) claims that 'it was in Late Antiquity, for a short spell only, that the productive town as opposed to the early Roman consumer city was created.' And this 'productive' town was supposedly the prototype of emporia. The consumer city is seen as ephemeral, somehow unreal, in­ habited by the effete and useless. But, given that the ancient 'consumer' city of Moses Finley was based primarily on the rents and labour of an exploited peasantry, far from being unstable because it was not econom­ ically productive, the consumer city was stable as long as there were slaves, servile farmers, and tenants. Thus, if there was a major decline in cities in the late fifth, sixth, and seventh centuries it could be interpreted as a widespread breakdown of the intensity of exploitative relations between the landlords and the peasant farmers of late antiquity. Some historians, obsessed with the need to define towns, list 'functions', such as political, military, religious, and judicial against others such as manu­ facturing and trade. The result of this is that many of the active economies of the consumer city are, once again, hidden. The political, military, religious, and judicial institutions of ancient and medieval cities were composed of the societies' elite and maintained by exploitation (forced labour, rents, tithes, taxes, gifts, plunder, and even theft). I (1994b) have tried to show elsewhere that even in the blackest night of the Dark Ages there was plenty of 'fuel' from country estates to keep the flame of Gallic cities burning. When Bishop Bertram of Le Mans died in 632, he left behind a will detailing villas and other real estate that he had inherited, purchased, or been given in his lifetime. A map (fig. 1) of these properties makes it abundantly clear why 'consumer' cities like Le Mans flourished and were populous: rich men, richer religious institutions, and even the odd wealthy woman lived in them. Long ago John Percival (1976) made the point that some of the small late Roman 'cities' that dis­ appeared were precisely those whose bishop abandoned them for a neighbouring town. However, no one was richer than kings, so it is not surprising that their choice of a town as a pseudo-capital ensured its prosperity. Guy Halsall (1996) suggests that Metz was just about washed up when the Neustrian kings gave it a new lease of life around 700. So effective was the royal presence in breathing urban life into a settlement that by the Carolingian period the ex novo foundation of a major royal palace, or a monastery with a propitious future, almost guaranteed the site's rapid [86]

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growth from country house or hermit's hut to city in the course of a few generations. In fact, it may be the veiy regularity of this occurrence that helps to explain why major royal palaces continually fell from favour, and were often left in the hands of a monastery that had been founded near the palace, only to be replaced by a preferred country estate. Hamtun was a royal villa, but it was not a residential one, far less pre­ ferred. That was the privilege of Winchester. If Hamtun/Hamwic acted in some way as a port and market-place for royal Winchester, this sep­ aration could explain why neither were to take off on the roller coaster ride of urban development experienced by the especially favoured rural Frankish royal manors of Thionville, Nijmegen, Frankfurt, Compiègne, and Paderbom, each well placed on huge rivers (such as the Moselle, Rhein, Main, Seine and, the not so big, Lippe)(Samson 1994a). CONCLUSION

Originally, I had planned my contribution to be an application of my beloved anthropological economic theory to Anglo-Saxon emporia. But the task seemed much too great, for I felt there was too much explanation of the anthropological assumptions needed as a prerequisite. It is a sure­ fire sign that someone has no comprehension of Marshall Sahlin's work on pre-capitalist economics when one talks about 'barter' in Anglo-Saxon England. 'Barter' is exactly what people accustomed to capitalist forms of exchange assume must have taken the place of purchase and sale before money. Barter, like purchasing goods with cash, is a 'neutral' exchange, one with no social ties between the participants. This is not how 'primitives' do things. A good case could be made for barter having only really developed as a substitute for cash sales. In other words, barter is probably quite a recent invention (at least in the sense of it playing a role of any significance). Moreover, the minute amount of anthropological economic theory to have trickled into British archaeology, such as 'prestige goods', is itself so grossly distorted as to need complete de­ bunking. Economic anthropology has so much to offer the student of AngloSaxon trade. It fills me with utter dismay that most early medieval archaeologists much prefer to rely on truly awful systems-theories and homespun philosophies on peer polity interaction. Plausible as Hodges's (1988) claim that elites needed to control prestige goods to maintain their position, and therefore placed emporia out of the reach of competitors, might appear, to anyone who reads early medieval histories and annals, [87]

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saints' lives, and legal texts it does not sound likely. Dark-Age kings, counts, and abbots simply did not maintain their positions by having the first choice of brooches for sale or by holding a regional monopoly on ceramic pitchers. If you read some Icelandic sagas, and a few anthropo­ logical articles on exchange, you might well think that heavy regulations and controls on trading are in the interests of peace-keeping. Buying and selling could be classed as 'neutral' exchanges because they were outside normal social relationships and they were based upon each side trying to cheat the other (often in a situation charged with violence). The famous unfortunate reeve of Portsmouth is in my mind here: not there to control the flow of prestige goods (as if the king of Wessex relied on incoming lava querns to maintain his authority), but to ensure that merchandise changed hands peacefully. The irony is that he was probably fully ready for the violence meted out by the Vikings, it was only the scale which took him and the Anglo-Saxons by surprise. Rather than make similar observations on the anthropology of emporia and Anglo-Saxon exchange, which I suspected would simply wash over most archaeologists (but perhaps not historians) as too foreign to what they normally read and write, I have tried to be more iconoclastic, sug­ gesting that emporia did not even exist. Also, rather than make a positive contribution I have attacked what I see, to be blunt, as rank stupidity. Sadly, it seems to me fruitful to point out that the most populous centres of the eighth century were towns and cities (urbes et civitates). These were the sites of royal palaces or major monasteries, the shelter of cathedrals. Traders sought them out because towns had markets and customers. Much of the wealth that was traded was the wealth of the elite, produced on their estates. Much of the wealth that was traded was done through the agents of the elite. Reginboldus, whose agate intaglio depicting a scroll changing hands and a ship at sea (see Fig. 1), was probably a secular merchant or agent working for Remiremont Abbey (for there it was found) (Kombluth 1995). Control over trading was essential if tolls were to be collected, monopolies were to be maintained (a good reason, I (1992) have suggested, for the maintenance of town walls), forms of fair trading standards (weights and measures) were to be enforced, and if violence was to be curbed. If there were such things as emporia, special trading settlements on the borders of kingdoms, far from the main centres of secular and ecclesiastical politics, and if it were true that they were inhabited by commercial merchants engaged in the first proper capitalist trade and industry of Europe, to say this was important to the economies of early medieval Europe is to look at the small shrew-like [88]

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Fig. 1. Carolingian intaglio found at Remiremont (left portion is missing). Reginbold re­ ceives a scroll then sets sail. He may have been a messenger, but the agate (classically thought to have the power to calm water) and papers probably authorised Reginbold to act as an agent of either the abbey or palace (hunting lodge) at Remiremont.

mammals that ran between the legs of dinosaurs and mistakenly say that "these were the truly important creatures of their d a / . Hindsight lets us glimpse the time when their descendants (mammals and capitalists) will rule the earth, but in their time Jurassic mice and Dark-Age businessmen scuttled about unnoticed by the giants of their day. B IB L IO G R A P H Y B a lz a r e tti, R . 1 9 9 6 . C itie s, e m p o r ia a n d m o n a s te r ie s : lo c a l e c o n o m ie s in th e

Towns in Transition: Urban evolution in late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages,

P o v a lle y , c. A D 7 0 0 - 8 7 5 . I n N . C h ris tie a n d S . T . L o s e b y (e d s)

2 1 3 -2 3 4 . A ld e rs h o t: S c h o la r P re s s. C a m p b e l l , J . 1 9 7 9 . B e d e ' s w o r d s f o r p l a c e s . I n P . H . S a w y e r ( e d .)

Words and Graves: early medieval settlement.

Names,

L e e d s: U n iv e rs ity o f L e e d s

P ress. D u r r e n b e r g e r , E . P . 1 9 8 2 . R e c i p r o c i t y in G a u t r e k 's s a g a : a n a n t h r o p o l o g i c a l a n a ly s is .

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