University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education

From Civilisation To Barbarism? Western Britain in the Early

Middle Ages

Tutor: Dr Kirsten Jarrett

Week Seven: Trade and Technology

How might changing exchange networks have affected technologies - and how might this have

affected identities?

• Economic (systems and) exchange: Trade / exchange & distribution of materials & products

• Technological exchange: skills / knowledge transference • Cultural exchange: shared ideas → adoption of styles (visual ‘code’ / ‘message’ embedding beliefs & identities) or / and shared styles → changing ideas or ‘meanings’

How might the following have affected technologies - and

identities?• Withdrawal of the Roman state / military• Restricted trade / exchange with the Continent &

Mediterranean• Transformation of established transportation

systems / network ‘nodes’ (e.g. closure of roads, abandonment of towns)

• Development of localised and regional power &civil war

• Building technologies: stone → timber – changing skills & materials and / or stylistic influence?

• Metalworking technologies: continuity of some styles, particular to needs of Western Britain? Recycling of materials

• Ceramic technologies: contraction of regional industries (changing superstructure – and markets?). Gradual stylistic & technological changes?

• Food / drink technologies: diet (ingredients, cooking techniques & associated material culture) may be closely related to social identities. Late C5 importation: supply drives or responds to particular ‘tastes’?

What might we learn from metalwork?

• Clothing / personal adornment (e.g. brooches, pins, hobnails)

• Building / manufacturing techniques / styles (e.g. nails & tools)

• Warfare / subsistence / leisure (e.g. weapons, knives)

Style(not necessarily or directly) ≠ ‘ethnic’ or cultural identity

Techniques & Composition:

exchange networks & cultural influence

Bowl furnace

Metalworking

Metalworking moulds and crucible, Dinas Powys

Peripatetic?

Copper alloy casting Techniques:

• Lead model• ‘Cere Perdue’

(Lost Wax)

Champlevé:Cells cast or carved in surface ofField and filled with glass paste,

then fired

Millefiori

Enamel

What might we learn from ceramics?

Techniques – comparable to prehistoric:Handmade (coil-built or ‘pinched’), ‘clamp-fired’ (lower temperatures –softer fabrics: less durable)

Composition: ‘tempers’ & ‘inclusions’Mostly local clays (stream-bank / dug)– but some widerdistributions

Finish: e.g. ‘grass marked’

‘Grass-Tempered’ Pottery‘British’: C5-6?Anglo-Saxon: C5+

• Diet and cooking techniques (vessel forms & food / soot residues)

• Leisure & social / political networks / identities (food / drink in creating / maintaining social ties & obligations)

(p. 13 Booklet)

• Building technologies (daub / fired clay: walls & ovens)

C4+ Ceramic stylesC4+: increasingly ‘Roman’ in Cornwall?

Hand-made pottery:C5 ‘devolution’ of

‘Roman’ styles & influence of Germanic??

C4+ (across west)samian seems

to remain ‘fashionable’ –continued high

status associations?

Imported ceramics:Mediterranean

Amphorae:Late C5-6

North African Red Slipped Ware

Biv/LRA 3N Afr.

c. AD 475-550Phocean Red Slipped Ware

Bii / LRA 1 (Syria)

Imported ceramics:Continental

‘D Ware’: C6-7Bordeux

‘E Ware’: C6-7Gaulish / Frankish

(derivee sigiltee pateochretienne – DSPA)

Trade Routes

Mediterranean & East to Western Britain: late C5 – mid C6

East to eastern Britain:Late C6-C7+

Trading sites

Bantham, Devon

Mothecombe, Devon

Bone, antler, and stone