Archaeologist and academic Barry Cunliffe speaks about the complicated history of Europe’s slave and wine trade in the later parts of the 1st millennium BC. Using several artifacts as a guide, Cunliffe discusses topics including historically “primitive and barbarian” parts of Europe, the creation of Roman provinces, how the Roman world progressively imposed upon the Celtic, and what drove the Roman development of areas like the South French market. Recorded April 23, 1985, at The 92nd Street Y, New York.
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The preservation of and increased access to the 92nd Street y Humanities audio archives is generously funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities it’s my pleasure to be here introducing our speaker in the second lecture in this our second year of what we hope will be a very longstanding Cooperative
Venture between the archaeological Institute which last year also got a $500,000 challenge Grant from neh and 92nd Street y our speaker tonight is Dr Barry Kliff and um this is one of the rare opportunities I guess when I’m introducing someone when I can literally say that he needs no introduction
Because we were all here last week to hear what a superb archaeological lecturer he is and what a fine job he can do Illuminating and elucidating the rather complicated history of later first millennium BC Europe um but in fact without requiring an introduction it’s still a pleasure to give Dr k an
Introduction because he is so multifaceted and such an expanded PR practitioner of archaeology he is a major and well-known scholar in the best academic tradition he was educated at St John’s College in Cambridge he’s taught at the University of Bristol at the University of Southampton um and then in
1972 made that hardest of British archaeological transitions for a Cambridge man he moved to Oxford where he assumed the chair of European archaeology and where he teaches today excavations he has directed include the excavations at the Villa Palace at fishborn at the site of bath which we
Heard much about last week and which has been the main focus of his fieldwork since the 1960s and at the Iron Age Hill Fort at Danbury in 1979 Dr Kliff became a fellow of the British Academy in addition to being a traditional scholar Barry Kliff is also a major contributor
To archaeology as an organizer synthesizer and administrator he has made major contributions to archaeology through his osia on Iron Age Europe that he organized during the last decade at Oxford and the Symposium volumes that he edited for the British archaeological reports series he has served on the British ancient monuments board he
Served as president between 1976 and 79 for the council for British archaeology and then finally in addition to being a scholar and an administrator baric Kliff is also an Innovative popularizer of archaeology the leading force in the use of radio and television to spread the gospel of archaeology to the General Public
Last week we heard him lecture on Celtic gods and Roman guys I should add one other thing about Barry Kliff in that greatest of all academic debates involving European prehistory he comes down as far as I believe entirely on the side of the Angels tonight we will not
Hear about him speaking of the European selts as some people confusedly do but instead here I’m pronouncing that hard K the way I think that it absolutely should be talking about the Kelts and the Romans is my pleasure to introduce Dr Barry Kliff who will lecture on
Slaves wine and the Roman Conquest Dr K very much good evening ladies and gentlemen uh last week when we were looking at uh Celtic religion and the effects of Celtic religion on the romanization of of Britain the uh religion coming through into the provinces um I tended
To concentrate uh on the simple theme of religion and upon uh the the simple interaction between kelt and Roman now uh part of my brief when I was asked to give these lectures was to um bring in a certain amount of methodology to show how the archaeologist works and I think
After uh last week which I I I regard as um a fairly gentle introduction you you might not but I I thought it was a reasonably gentle introduction um this week um I want to uh take a a single theme which which I think is manageable and understandable and interesting uh
And to show how an archaeologist approaches that theme uh so there will be a certain amount of archaeological reasoning and archaeological thought and presentation going into the the result the the um process of this lecture now uh the story line is very simple um it is Barbarian Europe and I
Should be concentrating mainly on France and Britain uh occupied by Kelts occupied by a fairly primitive form of Barbarian Community um and the way in which Rome imposes itself or the classical world I should say imposes itself upon that Barbarian Community now not in terms of military control and Military
Advance uh but in terms of the bow wave effect of um softening up the provin what is to become the the the provinces of the Roman World softening up this Barbarian area uh with um infiltrations economic infiltrations so it’s really this economic bow wave in advance of the
Moving Army so that is our theme and the the theater in which we’re going to work as I say is largely France from its Mediterranean Fringe uh up to Britain uh but occasionally we we’ll expand out from that may I have the first slide please now the Kelts um I haven’t I’m
Afraid time to discuss Celtic Society in any detail although I shall make a number of points as we progress this evening but we know a great deal about the Kelts as seen Through The Eyes of the Romans Romans remember who are always trying to interpret these
Barbarian people in a way in which um the readership could understand um we have texts like the text of of sto um or diodoros culus uh people like that who um give us physical descriptions of the Kelts the Kelts are War mad we’re told they’re easily stirred up to Feats of enthusiastic
Battle and fighting although they’re not of evil character as as one Roman writer says they are exuberant their art is exuberant um then we have physical descriptions of them as a society and as as a people how powerful their women were how tall some of them were how they they love their physical
Appearance um and whilst you’re looking at these two kinds of Celtic faces uh descriptions for example telling us how the Kelts often uh brush lime in their their hair so that their hair would stand up and make themselves look more Fierce while there are Kelts with their
Hair standing up and how they would take a great deal of trouble um shaving their faces and that the um more aristocratic people would shave the whole of their faces apart from their upper lip and they would grow long droopy mustaches like the chap at the bottom there and
Then there is a splendid description a splendid account from diodoros culus um of um how the mustache sometimes got in the way of eating and drinking and when they drank wine they as it were filtered it through their mustaches um but they come over Through The Eyes of the
Classical writers as a very human uh people boastful noisy exuberant easy easy to battle easy to run away from Battle um and an heroic Society with a Vengeance we’ll come back a little later to the the kind of society one could go on a very long time talking about the
Kelts but that is strictly not my brief this evening now what we’re going to do then is to look at how successively and I I should take a fairly simple chronological progression through this lecture um how progressively uh the Roman World imposed upon the Celtic next slide
Please now if we go back to the sixth and fifth centuries BC um the classical um imposition on Barbarian Europe and this is the part of Europe that we’ll be talking about um I’m not really going down into Spain very much it’s essentially France here bit of the low countries and the whole
Of Britain and if I could just introduce you to the the the key geography the river ran here the river Lair there and the river gon here now at this stage um there were the the interface between the um Mediterranean world and the Barbarian world was a very narrow one a very thin
One along the fringes of France what is now France the Mediterranean coast of France Marseilles traditionally founded at about 600 BC although some people are arguing that it’s a bit later now um uh various Greek cities not all of them shown here around to eporion uh the Market Center
Uras as it now is in Spain and and these cities were very much on the interface between the Barbarian World on the one hand Barbarian Inland Europe and the Mediterranean world and through them flowed products their their entire function was to act as ports of trade in the archaeological jargon places uh
Which could articulate trade and could bring the Commodities which which the consuming world of the Mediterranean required from the producing world of Barbarian Europe and among those Commodities well there were many Furs Amber Metals Manpower in terms of slaves and so on now I don’t want to talk terribly
Much about this particular period this um early period of Greek interfacing but the archaeological record is very clear and very well studied um what seems to have happened is that um particularly in the 550s to 500 a major trading axis developed here from Marseilles into Central Barbarian Europe Eastern France burgundy across to
Bavaria and up into the Midrin and a little bit later um the impetus swapped over to this more easterly axis the atrasan world into the po valley and across through the Alpine passes into rather more eastern part of that zone but the the detail Chron chronology doesn’t concern us this evening what is
Interesting I think is that in this Barbarian area were a number of Chief Chieftain who could manipulate the trade and they were the middl men presumably through whose hands passed all these Commodities from the north down into the Mediterranean by its various routs and they benefited they developed what is um archaeologically recognized
As a Prestige Goods economy in them they maintain their power through the manipulation of prestige Goods which they acquired from the Mediterranean world and uh some of the burials were uh very remarkable next please I just want to show one artifact from one of the burials this is the famous CR from the
Burial at vs in burgundy which um I I remember the statistic it’s 1.64 m in height it doesn’t mean very much and I I remember being absolutely staggered when I first saw it how big 1.64 m is you could comfortably hide three people inside it it’s a huge great wine mixing crat
Purely Greek or probably um made in the uh South Italian um Greek schools and taken apart and trundled up the rine no doubt by boat um by rivercraft and as presumably a diplomatic gift and it ended up in the burial of um a female very rich um female burial in vs now
This is one of the items uh a diplomatic gift representing the wine drinking ritual which the Mediterranean world was trans shipping into the Barbarian world and enabling the chieftain to maintain this display of prestige um it’s a rather Overkill kind of object and one of my classical colleagues said that no
Self-respecting Greek would be seen Dead with a thing like this um it very much is something ostentatious for the natives uh rather than a work of art that a Greek would like to have around next please well but that’s by way of introduction now um let us um explore
What was happening to this um Southern French Fringe in the the next centuries uh it’s very well studied by French archaeologists we know that a number of Greek colonies were founded the squares uh all the way around this coast and they um maintained the trade but Inland
From them and are all these circular spots which are native um I think we must call them Urban settlements although they are purely Barbarian they are outside the the direct control of the Greeks cities um they were very classical in their style they had regular Street grids um masonry building
Masonry temples and so on uh and were very much the middlemen the Barbarian middlemen who were producing uh this is a very rich area of provance uh producing a range of Commodities which the Mediterranean consumers wanted but they were also sitting on the fringes uh of the the trading Network which were
Coming in from outside uh trading networks from the S and the Montan Noir which down here where metals were produced and trading networks from much further a field and we’ve only time this evening just to explore one of them so I can show you how an archaeologist looks at one of these next
Please um this is simply to remind me I don’t want to argue it in any detail simply to remind me to say that we do have good classical sources um and we know quite a lot about the trade in this period because we have a couple of um
Greek Sailors someone who wrote the melate periplus which is a sort of sailing manual somewhere back before 500 and another chap a Greek sailor called pus who was writing in the 320s both of whom sailed in these Atlantic Waters and knew about the trade routts and recorded them as sailing manuals they were
Probably ships masters m ship’s Masters and um their directions come down to us admittedly through a very dubious manner um the mate periplus appears eventually uh in a 4th Century ad Roman poem written in North Africa but at least the the the evidence is there and we have
Times and roots and so on recorded so we have a certain amount of classical evidence about these roots and it’s for the archaeologist to fill them out next please and here is just one of them uh the the tin route which um interests us very much because tin is a rare commodity uh
Tin was only available from up here in Britany and in the southern part of Britain only easily available I should add at this stage there’s more done here um and a regular route developed in this this way now one of the pieces of research which um I’m carrying out with
My colleagues in England is to explore a number of these ports of trade in Britain to look at the interface where the Traders from ultimately the Mediterranean World um corres corresponded with the natives in Britain and indeed in Britany so let’s just explore a little
Bit of this tin roote um the dotted line is given us by the classical sources next please now um it ends up or starts if you like um in Britain in the southwest corner of Britain in what is um Cornwall and Devon the counties of Cornwell and
Devon uh and I believe it starts um at a place called Mount baton which is near Plymouth for those of you who know that particular area um this is a very important area because it’s on the fringes of dartmore up here um dartmore is a mineral Rich area
And a lot of tin was washed out of Dart Moore and found its way into the gravels of the rivers coming down into Plymouth sound and Tin could be extracted from there uh and um uh amassed in one of the best ports on the south coast where Traders were interacting with it next
Please um this is in fact the site of Mount baton uh it’s not a very prepossessing place now unfortunately um that that is Mount baton and it’s seen from Plymouth hoe where traditionally Francis Drake played bowls when the Spanish Armada came across and and close to where of course the Mayflower left um
Finally left Britain um uh but it’s a military base now and extremely difficult to um excavate uh not least because it’s difficult to get permission to move into next please now some of the artifacts which one finds um at Mount baton um are alien to Britain they are foreign there is
This little trilobate arrow head which is almost certainly Greek uh there are these bracelets uh which are I think French and and certainly not British so the artifacts point to the trade route next please and if we just take one of them uh this doesn’t actually come from
Mount baton but it’s very much like a mount baton one this strange fibula uh with um uh a dis foot which people used to call Iberian well it most certainly isn’t next please um here are a large number of them and they all come from aquitania in Western France next
Please and uh this just happens to be a distribution map of some of them uh arride what is part of this Main routeway the um K uh the river that leads from the area of naron past kassan to the gon jiron EST which we know from the classical sources was the main tin
Root so in other words uh we can recognize artifacts from this area uh which are being dispersed along the Route and ending up um in Britain we can also recognize bits of tin uh from the site in Britain which presumably were the main export out and this is the raw
Material uh which archaeologists have to play with to enliven the classical sources but and to give it a sort of geographical reality and a chronological reality next please now um our main theme however is um wine and the relationship of wine to uh this trading pattern um you’ll see in
A moment why I introduce the tin root that is a long established route um along the western Atlantic uh which is maintained as a very important route for many centuries as we shall see now this this is a part of the longer do this is really a holiday snap from Southern
France um but um it it is in fact it’s very near one of those Hill fors the k deak um a very um important site in southern France and you can see now it’s um a wine growing area well there was a certain amount of wine gr grown in this
Area in the um this Roman interface period but not very much um a lot of wine was however grown around Marseilles and what the french archaeologists Excavating these sites have been able to do is by um Excavating a good stratagraph sequence in some of these sites and by counting pot shards
Um by recognizing the different sorts of aery in which the wine was imported they’ve been able to build up a very very interesting picture of how the the wine drinking profile of the community change with time next please um this is the sort of raw material which we’re dealing with uh
These are just this is just a collection of amrey from the museum in Marseilles some of them like these are local melate amrey um very readily recognizable local wine others like these uh Dressed 1 a amrey they’re called we’ll come up against those again later were made manufactured in Central and Northern
Italy on the east coast and represent the transport of Roman Italian wine into what uh was still a barbarian area so that by counting pot by recognizing the form by counting pot chards by looking at it stratag graphically and statistically one can begin to see the changing patterns of wine drinking next
Please um and uh here is exactly uh those changing patterns will this sharpen just a little I think it’s just slightly out of focus thank you um now what we’re looking at is time going that way and here are the local amrey and here are the Italian amrey and I think
It it’s um self-evident that what happens is that the local mrey uh declined dramatically uh as Italian wine drinking becomes more and more popular with time uh there is a complete change in the wine drinking habits of these people um shunning local wine and taking on Italian wine uh there’s another
Statistic interesting here uh this little line here which represents gross wi wine drinking where you’re measuring AER shards against other pottery and you see their wine drinking was moderate for a long while until about the 120s or 130s when suddenly there is a great upsurge in wine drinking and of course this represents
Or reflects exactly what was happening historically to the area because this is the point up here when um Rome was engaged in wars in Spain the Roman armies were going backwards and forwards through this area and gradually opening it up it was before it became a province
But the Roman entrepreneurs were in the wake of the army were seeing here was a ready market and were beginning to flood it with Italian products uh and this this crucial Point here uh is the point at which the uh Southern French area was actually physically taken over by Rome militarily
And became the first Roman province U the province of transalpina the Provincia or provance as we now know it um so you’ve got two major bits of history recorded in this wine drinking profile and and what it shows us basically is that um there is a
Softening up period in the provin in in in this Zone when Roman wine um Roman entrepreneurs are just exploiting the markets before the um provin before the area becomes a Roman province when they have complete Monopoly of of control next now the French archaeologists are doing some extremely exciting work um off the
Coast of France um and are examining um wrecks which were used to transport the wine this is uh one of the Recs underwater shot of the madrag one of the the famous recks uh in which you can see the Timbers of the boats and these dressle 1A wine anre
Still stacked and the importance of Recs like this is that it is now possible to um on based on the the size of the ship and the way in which the amrey are stacked to estimate um the carrying capacity of every ship um next please and when you look at um I’m sorry
There’s quite a lot of Statistics at this point but they are interesting when you look at the number of recks this is the number of recks along the French Coast you see that in this um interface period which concerns us the number of wrecks are dram are quite dramatic and then
Decline well admittedly one could explain that in a number of ways it could be that the sailors were just getting rather more proficient um or that they weren’t drinking so much of their cargo or something like that um or it could represent which most people think simply um a reflection of the bulk
Of wine going in at this time that in this interface period a tremendous amount of wine was just being thrust into this new market and some French archaeologists um have made estimates I think guesstimate is is a fairer phrase uh of the Sher volume of wine uh talking
Of um in the hundred years that concerns us something like 40 million amrey of wine going in and um that that doesn’t perhaps mean too much but um it Compares in sheer volume um quite favorably with the 14th Century wine trade between France and uh Britain and the low
Countries uh it’s a significant fraction of that colossal wine trade so in other words the wine trade was a very very major um industry at this stage next please now let’s think of of why we’ve seen it now in southern France um it is Manifest in these anrey now where was it
Coming from well uh this is um just a simple distribution map of one type of AA stamped with the name cestius and these are known from the very important excavations at Cura and uh uh we some of us were discussing these excavations today um uh the
Important work on the ca Port is to be published by Princeton uh sometime next year and that will undoubtedly revolutionize our understanding of the Roman production end of this trade but to put it very simply and perhaps overs simply in its context in the Republican period in Rome uh the entrepreneurs the
Aristocrats were investing capital in land and in the productive capacity of that land and many of them were indulging in a monoculture um producing some Commodities particularly wine in vast quantity for export and therefore they they or their their middlemen their shippers were very keen to develop markets like the South French
Market um and what we see in this simple distribution map is presumably the products of the Estates and some of them have been excavated some of setti finest as a great Villa excavated just Inland from CA a wine producing Villa where you can actually estimate the amount of wine
Produced in any one vintage um that these great wine producing Estates or in the cura area were gearing themselves entirely to the French Market um they were not trying to export to the rest of Italy or to the irelands or anywhere else uh they saw France as their market
And it was there that they were spot marketing their commodity of wine next please now the the question that we must ask is um what were they getting back if you’re pouring wine in enormous quantity into a barbarian area there must be some return for the shippers and one of the
Commodities um which was coming back undoubtedly was Metals metals from the Montan Noir this is merely another holiday snap of the montanoa um in southern France um and forget the medieval castle uh it’s all the pock marking down from the medieval castle that is relevant which is a metal
Working area uh mainly Roman but that goes back to the pre-roman period enormous quantities of copper were coming out and some silver were coming out of these mountains um and no doubt um being exchanged for wine next please and if you look at the distribution of copper sources the ones
We were talking about were up here you see there were lots of good copper sources in the Pyrenees and in the montanoa and it’s just those areas that these early amrey are going into and are accumulating in so here is clear archaeological evidence of metals for wine in the Barbarian
Fringe now one of the other Commodities uh undoubtedly um that was being exchanged was slaves um we must remember that the Roman um Empire oh it wasn’t an Empire then but the Roman world uh was a slave consuming Society it was a raw material consuming and slave consuming society
And one estimate um that has been put forward on perfectly sound Grounds was that Rome consumed about 15,000 Gish slaves every year in addition to slaves from elsewhere about 15,000 needed to produ be produced in any one year to satisfy the market um so that um if one was dealing
With a barbarian Fringe uh one could quite legitimately um exchange the commodity you had wine and get back the commodity want wanted which was slaves and if I can um see to um yes if I can just read you a quotation here we actually have from the words from the
Pen of diodorus culus a writer writing in the first century um an exchange of this kind he says um being talking of the Cults he says being inordinately fond of wine they gulp I just have to go the being inordinate you can’t hear me now um being inordinately fond of wine
They gulp down what the merchants bring them quite undiluted they have a furious passion for drinking uh and they get altogether Beyond themselves being so drunk that they fall asleep or lose their wits many italian merch prompted by their usual avarice consequently regard The ga’s Taste for wine as a
Godsend uh they take the wine to them in ships up the navigable rivers or by carts traveling Overland and it fetches incredible prices for one AER of wine they receive one slave thus exchanging the drink for the cup Bearer now um that’s a nice twist no that’s okay now finish thanks
Uh that that’s just a nice Twist on it but um it it’s a fascinating Insight because if you went to the market in Rome uh you would be able for an amra for a slave a slave would cost you six or seven amrey of wine so what the merchants were able to
Do on the Barbarian Fringe was to get their slave remarkably cheaply and make a six times markup by the time it got to the Roman Market which isn’t a bad profit to make and the way they could do this presumably is by cashing in on the kind of Celtic um society which they
Came up against because there is a fair amount of evidence that Celtic Society at this stage was um a society practicing a kind of potlatch economy um the kind of economy which required conspicuous consumption uh conspicuous destruction conspicuous gift um to enable you to maintain status and presumably what the Romans
Entrepreneurs were doing was coming up against this Celtic Society and was uh making a gift an amra of wine and the kelt had to respond by making an even more valuable gift which was the slave and hence the Roman entrepreneur um manipulated native Customs to his own benefit exactly as diodora culus tells
Us so um here we see the age-old pattern of um a ro Roman or indeed any um capitalist entrepreneur U manipulating the society the Barbarian Society with which he is dealing to his own interests next please now um let’s explore one aspect of this trade which is an aspect that
I’m involved in in studying and I can show you some of the archaeology of it I described earlier the old trade route um the tin trade from Marseilles um across to tulo along the gon girand the sea trip around Britany and hitting Britain um when the Romans moved in to
The um what was to become transalpina into Southern Gaul um we know that skipio was very keen to try and learn something about this tra and we’re told that he asked the uh Merchants at Marseilles and the merchants at narbon uh something about these trading routes something about
These old trade ports uh and they could tell him nothing we’re told uh presuma presumably they would tell him nothing they were protecting their their specialist knowledge of the Atlantic trade a little bit later about 90 uh puus crus uh we learn uh actually shadowed a number of uh Traders along
The Atlantic and tried to follow the trade routs tried to follow them to explore their trade roots and they kept on trying to give him the slip was a rather interesting example and in the end he did work out the trade Roots he did sus them out and he went back and
Announced them to the Roman world so here then we’ve got clear evidence of the Romans trying to find out how the natives were trading along these Atlantic coasts and this um is a distribution of the dressle wine amrey uh these first century wine amrey of the
Kind produced in Coosa of the kind that we saw going into Southern Gaul and we can see them uh going in great quantities um into the Barbarian areas presumably local shippers uh were carting them off to these Barbarian markets and let’s explore now a little bit about the the trade through Britany
And into Southern Britain next please um the there are two types of amrey I should say um uh dressle we know no need to go into the detail but dressle 1 a and dressle 1B and they’re slightly different the importance is they are chronologically different and
Dressel 1 a uh really fits in the first half of the first century BC and um what we can find is that the dressel 1 a amre predominate in in Britany and in central Southern Britain here and they represent the earliest wine trade hitting Britain nearly all of
These spots on the map here are these early wine amrey 70% of the spots on the map in Britany are these early ones so uh quite clearly the early trade is incorporating Britany Normandy the Chanel islands and hitting Central Southern Britain next please and it’s Poss possible to look at
Um places like the ports um in Britany or could I go back to the last slide is that possible thank you um ports like Camp which is down here in finister ports like samalo San up here in the cop D nor and a port like husb head which is over here in in
Britain I just want to show you very briefly the archaeology of those three next please um this is campare on a good Inlet from the sea um and uh I I won’t go into the detail but uh underneath modern camp and underneath Roman camp we can recognize at this moment when the
Traders move in a trading Port of some size develops uh Industrial Development in terms of iron production and so on next please uh Sam Maro this is a slightly difficult to see but um a little bit sh thank you uh this is for anyone who sailed in this a has taken
The ferry across San Maro is the very fine medieval and later City there great pirate Center a scourge of the British Sailors uh and here is the um Iron Age precursor uh on a promary jutting out into the river Ross U marvelously cited for protection and for maintaining
Control of these cross Channel routs exactly as its medieval successor is and now Britany feries which links Britain to Britany still uses the same port you can’t keep a good Port down basically next please and uh here the French archaeologists have found on this promary um areas of Iron Age occupation
It’s mutilated Now by 18th century forts by second world war fortifications um it was a site of a vicious battle attle in the at the end of the second world war when the the Germans held out here and the American Army bombarded them uh and eventually uh
Got the Germans out of this stronghold and even now there are these great second world war gun imp placements with shell holes in them it’s a vivid reminder again of the the strength of this site next please well um huspy head is the one we know most about and it’s in central
Southern Britain beautifully exited uh it’s a headland here jutting out into the sea it’s a headland that you can see from miles around if you’re sailing and much more important it’s got this very well protected Harbor behind it and two rivers that lead up right into the heartland of central Southern Britain
The productive part of central Southern Britain so it’s an AB absolute gift as a port and it was here that the early traders settled uh and developed a major trading Port the first trading Port uh in Britain to actually experience Italian wine coming in and needless to
Say in fundraising I I tried very hard to make good use of this this fact and wrote to one of our Prime Roman uh Italian wine importers now in Britain and said I’m sure you’ll be terribly interested that we’re Excavating the first place where Italian wine came into
Britain and how about a donation to the excavation and uh they wrote back a Charming letter saying well I’m afraid we don’t have money to give for this sort of thing but here are four or five crates of wine to enjoy it so um needless to say we did um a nice link
With the past next please now the site is I I won’t bore you with the archaeology of the site but it’s a congenial place on the sea as you see literally on the sea uh and the archaeology consists of finding circular build buildings and buildings built of
Timbers all of which have rotted uh and finding masses of occupation debris which represents the the port and the activities uh at that Port next please I can just show you a few things there are our dressle 1 a amrey u made in Italy and having found their way right across
Europe to this obscure part Barbarian part of the British Coast somewhere between 100 BC and 50 BC next please and all sorts of other Commodities were coming in these are two crude lumps of purple glass um small lumps in fact we find bigger lumps of glass metal manganese
Glass metal being brought in no doubt all these cargos were mixed cargos and they were bringing in luxury objects like glass which was actually on the site um these are three EX examples of a bead and two bracelets uh turned manufactured into consumer durables uh which were then traded to the natives
Exactly the sort of thing one would find in any trading port in Africa in the 18th or 19th century you wouldn’t find the wine amrey you would find the gin and Scotch bottles and the glass beads of course next please and then exotic Pottery coming in
Uh enabling us to trace the lines of communication this is Pottery a wheel-made pottery quite unlike anything that uh had occurred in Britain up to this date um we analyze the fabrics and it is made in France next please here is more exotic Pottery in this case painted with he with um
Graphite to give it this metallic Sheen you see the graphite painting very clearly there and there again a French product next please and if one looks at the distribution of those pots um here is the area in which they were made the fabric of the pottery contains minerals found in this area of
Britany there is SVA the um port s Malo where the pots occur in great quantity and here are the stopping off points on the Channel Islands uh which the sailors used as they uh made their way across through the islands island hopping across to henbury head and there at
Henbury is a great quantity of it so from husb alone we can recognize the Roman wine amrey coming from far field the Exotic glass coming from far field and then these French pots no doubt bulking out the cargo uh in the short Hall traffic the last Hall of the trade
Across to the Barbarian Market next please and what were they getting back again we must always asked this what was the reciprocal nature of the trade well strabo writing a bit later writing in first century uh later in the first century um tells us that the products of Britain were Metals
Wheat uh hides hunting dogs and slaves and those were the Commodities which the Roman World wanted uh in an interesting range again raw materials uh hides one Su specs needed for the Army um and wheat of course needed to feed the Army the metals the slaves needed for Manpower uh and the
Hunting dogs well uh the Romans were always rather Keen to uh import exotic animals uh for for use in the chase or for use in the arena um so here are the products from Barbarian Britain um which were passing through France through these trade routes into the Mediterranean consuming world and um
Without going into a great deal of detail we’re able to trace the contact Zone in Britain which would produce certainly the um the wheat in great quantity and then the zones Beyond uh a cattle producing Zone down here which we know of from other archaeological evidence um metal producing zones there
And here and here and there is actually at henbury a great slab a huge slab of silver rich copper um which has Trace Elements which tell us that it comes from uh this this River here so we’ve got Commodities being collected from all the way around Britain the mineral Rich
Southwest the productive Center South the food productive Center South and presumably Beyond this the slave producing Barbarian Inland and all being channeled down no doubt no doubt dislocating native Society in a way it had never pre previously experienced and as a model for this one needs only look
At what was happening in West Africa at the moment when the slave trade hit it in the 18th uh and early 19th centuries to see how A Primitive economy uh completely reoriented itself to being a slave producing economy and endemic Warfare which was a part of the social
System uh became the norm uh Warfare for getting slaves and there is ample evidence in Britain I think to suggest that this is exactly what is happening at this stage that no doubt there was slavery before but from now on once the slave becomes a marketable commodity uh something that you can sell
For great profit then your Society reorients itself to become a slave raing uh slave cropping society and uh when Roman writers look in on Britain uh they see it in the state of uh turmoil and warfare and I suggest that this was the result ultimately um uh the direct
Result of this trade that we’ve been talking about next please well um to finish the story and I can do this fairly quickly um there this trade that I was talking about first half of first century ad was shortlived for the simple reason uh that
In the 50 s between 60 and 50 in fact uh BC Caesar moved into Gaul and took over Gaul and Gaul became a Roman province and this caused a complete reorientation of the trade these rather long old established Atlantic Roots were no longer of any use uh they were too
Long too cumbersome and it was possible to trade directly with the river man mouths over here of the S and and upwards the r uh and Eastern Britain and it’s in eastern Britain that we find the later amrey concentrating and all the rich burials next please um things like uh this burial
It’s an old illustration of the burial from wellin where we find um uh quite fine um pots probably imported and this these um wine strainers from Northern Italy wine drinking equipment um trans shipped to The Barbarians of Britain and used here as part of a status burial
Next please a little bit later we find really exotic things coming in this is Augustin uh Italian North Italian Augustine silver uh wine drinking again silver cups uh which would be part of the wine drinking ritual and these these were imported through middlemen into Barbarian Eastern Britain and found
Their way into the hands of the British middlemen who could command the trade with Rome next please and they found their way into burials like this one this is right on the eve of the Roman Conquest somewhere around 43 ad 4040 about 40 ad uh Roman Conquest was 43 ad
In Britain where we have the uh beer uh um of upon which the dead man was laid uh his cremated ashes uh and his wine drinking equipment uh three or four amrey presumably full of wine Italian wine bronze bowls and cups uh for drinking it the entire wine
Drinking equipment much as uh when um Chinese tea drinking became uh the norm in in in Europe uh so all the all the AC nutraments the teapot the teacups and all the rest of it were introduced along with the beverage so here we get the the wine drinking equipment coming in um
With with the wine and finding its way into these few Rich burials next please now um if you’ll allow me just this one diagram to explain uh what I think was happening uh we have the it’s it’s partly geographical we have the Roman World here now of Gaul of France
Uh which um is part becomes part of the Roman consumer Market um in central Southern uh in in Southeastern Britain we have um the centralized power of a number of dens rulers who we can recognize and name through their coinage they were issuing coins and around the periphery of the
Territory concentrate these very rich burials and they were uh trading with a number of um tribal groups the names of which we have all coin issuing uh so we can recognize them uh distributionally uh and Beyond them Beyond this periphery um we have uh the Beyond The Barbarians Beyond and I think
In Britain we have this picture very clearly stated of uh raw materials coming from the Barbarian eras passing through one kind of tribal middleman into the hand of the real native entrepreneurs here who were able to acquire Roman luxury goods in return and then passing into the Roman consumer
Market all of course long before the Romans arrived in Britain this is what I mean by the bow way of effect of romanization next please now um oh no I’ll skip that one next please now if we just summarize in three or four slides and then I make my final
Point um we go back to where I started with uh somewhere about the in the fifth century fifth uh Cent 6th fifth century BC with this very small classical Fringe on the Mediterranean um and with our natives growing rich with their Prestige Goods economy the great VI crter and all the
Great luxury objects in Barbarian Gaul here um the trade routs recognizable next please then somewhere about between a60 BC uh Rome is cross-hatched Rome has expanded its influence uh expanded its influence into Southern Gaul and we find around the Roman influence state formation the natives beginning to take
On Roman patterns of of government uh Roman patterns of urban life and Beyond them the natives uh getting rich um burying luxury goods in their um in their graves this penumbra of prestige Goods next please when we come on a little bit further and Rome somewhere
Between up to about 43 ad Rome has now pushed to the r on the one hand and the uh the the danu up to the Rin danu front here we see that situation which I summarized in Britain with the trade with Britain and now the middlemen who
Are able to indulge in this Rich burial of luxury goods wine drinking Goods uh move to Southeastern Britain and they are manipulating this area next please um but it doesn’t quite end there because when Rome moves to Britain when it consolidates its its Frontier here
Let us say by 200 ad by which time things were uh fairly stable in the Roman world we find again uh in advance of the the Frontier Zone about 200 me uh 200 meters kilometers from it um again an area of prestige Goods economy uh this time North European Plain spreading
Into Scandinavia and exactly the same pattern of prestige Goods next please here a Rome a sec a first century in fact ad Roman wine drinking jug uh from Denmark next please and in about 200 ad um this Roman wine drinking set from a grave in Sweden so this sort of same
Pattern we can see repeated time and time again as the Roman Frontier moves uh so the the economic pattern in advance of that Roman Frontier moves and we’ve been able to trace it from somewhere about 600 BC uh up to here uh 200 ad and then of course the whole
Thing collapsed with the the end of of the Roman world and the Roman economic system now if I’ve been um slightly harsh on the Romans um and presented them as exploiters and entrepreneurs um it’s because this surely is what they were it’s not to um argue that this was a particularly
Bad thing um and they used I think this economic system of softening up the natives uh as a Prelude always to Conquest and I think in any part of the Roman world we can trace this same fascinating pattern um I don’t think the Romans Are Holy bad at all I hope I
Haven’t given that impression I’ve perhaps tended to take the side of the um but uh there was there is a Roman graphito of the 4th Century ad which uh I’d like to leave you with um scribbled on a wall it’s Anonymous as all good graffiti are uh is the phrase um wine
Women and Bs corrupt our bodies but these things make life itself and any society that says that can’t be holy bad thank you very much can we have the likes please um now um I’d be very happy to take questions yes yes please I’ll stay with my microphone tonight
Yes um we assume there to have been very extensive tra rep oh I’m sorry I’ll repeat the question yes uh the question was do we see um any evidence of trade with um Sweden and uh Norway and Finland um in this early period um and and the answer
Is we do but it’s only in direct evidence uh one of the Commodities which the Mediterranean World always wanted was Amber and Baltic Amber and we see plenty of evidence of Baltic amber coming down uh through through the Amber roots of um um through the rivers of
Northern Europe the Elba and the morava down onto the uh the the Dan into the danu valley and then down into the Roman world and it is possible to trace the Amber rout no doubt fur fur as well was coming down exotic Furs I’m I’m sure that um exotic animals were coming down
As well and there are hints of this um but uh this comes more from the the documentary sources than from the the purely archaeological sources and I think the the Roman luxury goods which were going up there were being creamed off by this zone of middlemen before
They were getting far into the north um and it’s only when the frontier has moved right up to the the Ry danu that we actually see the Roman luxury goods in quantity going right up in indeed into Finland uh yes please yes of the sorry the fibula
Yes oh I’m sorry well can I take them one at a time you’re asking first of all what um a fibula is uh it’s I shouldn’t have used the word it’s simply a jargon jargon phrase for a kind of safety pin bro a particular kind of brooch which is extremely useful archaeologically
Because um broaches change the fashion changes fast U and there were Regional Styles um and um some FIB were um made in particular areas to a regional style um so that uh it’s possible by just looking at them to say more or less what date they are and more or less uh where
They came from if they’re they’re foreign that that was your first question yes yes well um I think we some of my colleagues who study the Neolithic period in Europe in Western Europe uh would argue that they can see elements of conspicuous consumption uh and the the annual well
The the the periodic meetings um actually in the Neolithic period but I I I wouldn’t go quite so far as that I think we can see it very very clearly in um Celtic Society um for example if I may give you an example from the Irish literature
Which um is this uh marvelous set of of oral Traditions Celtic Traditions uh which were maintained in Ireland until the 8th and 9th century ad when they were eventually written down uh by by Christian scribes uh they were emasculated and written down but enough of them comes
Um we see in these traditions and heroic Stories the the the Potlatch coming over very very clearly uh the need um particularly feast and gaining status uh through Feast uh the care with which one has to prepare the house in which the feast takes place um send out
Invitations a year in advance bolster it into the happening of the year um produce the richest the best every everything uh then invite people to it and in doing that you gain the most colossal status and this is actually explicit in in the CTIC literature and I
Think it’s that that we see rather more dimly reflected but absolutely clearly there um in the classical writers writing about the Kelts in the third and 2 and 1 centuries BC in Europe it’s the same tradition so I would say that um uh archaeologically and historically we can
See it clearly at that time and there is no reason to suppose it didn’t extend over most of Europe uh and there is no reason to suppose um that it wasn’t a normal part of that kind of heroic society which we can trace back at least
Into the Bronze Age uh if not before in Europe so it’s very old established I think um I like you I I was introduced to the Potlatch uh in studying anthropology and the nkar and the quak those were the key example uh for me as a a young Anthropologist studying um and
Uh it’s very interesting to see this as a a response of a particular kind of society um a frequent response not an invariable response of a particular kind of society um at a particular stage in its its development and and Universal uh yes please uh
Yes thank you yes uh the um question was um is there do I find any evidence of coinage actually being used for the purchase of wine um certainly we’re dealing with um the equivalent to a money economy in southern Gall at this stage um I know of no direct
Evidence um apart from uh a rather uh late text the pro fono um when cisero was defending fonus um um who was a propritor um something like a governor of Southern Gaul um Cicero was defending him against a charge of embezzlement and and a number of other things and uh
Incidentally gives us a very interesting insight into the wine trade he says that um know an it’s all right an AA of wine goes into such and such a town and when they pass it when it passes through the merchants in that town uh they charge a
Denarius or a Denarius and a half on it then it goes to the next town and they charge another Denarius and all right so those people are getting rich on this trade but it doesn’t matter the wine ultimately is going to the natives so here where it’s passing through the The
Romanized Fringe we’re we’re getting the money economy but when it goes beyond that there is no evidence of that um it’s arguable when a real money economy uh came into the Celtic world uh some archaeologists would argue that there was no such thing as a market economy uh
In the pre-roman period and some of my colleagues uh on growing and very interesting grounds are beginning to argue that there was no proper uh money economy even in Roman Britain throughout most of Roman Britain uh that the circulation of coins and the the volume of coin in use was not sufficient to
Maintain a full money economy uh but I’m I’m not proficient to to talk on this but um Mo most people um feel that in this uh sort Twilight period that we’re studying that all the um trade was in embedded it was an embedded economy in an anthropological sense of the word
That um it was exchange within the social system rather than purchase out purchase um although um I can’t help feeling and I I have argued although it’s been argued against that in Southeastern England um one might begin to see the a range of coins which could um which are
The sorts of coins that one might have if one had a money uh economy uh as early as the time of Caesar mid 1st Century BC but certainly nothing earlier there are coins earlier but they are high value coins which are presumably used as gift exchange rather than for um purchase uh yes
Please right the the question is is there any evidence of the activity of of Jewish Traders um I think I must say no there is no positive evidence uh of it um uh the in fact there is very little evidence of the of the Traders the themselves unfortunately until one gets
Right into the Roman period uh it’s it’s a pretty Anonymous period that we’re dealing with and we have to enliven it through um looking at stamps on anrey as we did um there’s a little bit of information um about the sort of middlemen uh the the Mercantile class uh
In Rome who were manipulating this kind of trade uh in in in Rome but um when it comes to the the fringes uh no decent evidence at all I’m afraid yes please um the first question was uh were the maps the white on black part of a
Publication um some of them uh occur in um uh several papers that I’ve written that um one building on another on this theme uh a number of them are not yet published uh but will be part of a book uh which is U very much on this theme
It’s it’s I don’t know what it’s going to be called but it’s it’s it’s just about this but more than just the wine trade you had another question right the question is um is there any evidence of of the drinking equipment that that goes with the wine in the sort
Of husb area and and in the area around it it’s it’s an extremely interesting question because the answer is there isn’t any evidence and I don’t know why um it’s puzzling the sort of thing one would expect to be coming in at the stage are campanian cups uh which are
All over France um but there is only one dubious shard in spite of all our hard digging all over England there’s one dodgy Shard although we have a lot of amrey but um could I say that um the maps look as though we’re dealing with a bulky trade um all the amrey from
Britain could fit into the lower part of one boat um when we it’s difficult to know what volume we’re dealing with uh in in Britain and um you could take uh it’s not the view I take but you could take the minimal view um that
Husb uh was the site of one boat going in and taking a load of wine in and that was it it was a one-off um I I think there are lots of things one could argue against that but um why in in this certainly in the later period after
After 50 BC there was a lot of wine drinking paraphernalia going in wine strainers wine jugs cups of well the silver ones we saw but also the caramic cups certainly the artine and and um terranegra cups made in Gaul um going in um but in this early period there are
None yet and um it may simply be that they were organic vessels or that they were just using local I I don’t know the answer but it is an extremely interesting question to ask yes please yeah yes well the question is why was kosa so um intent on getting tin and
Copper and other things I think I must I may have given the wrong impression um CA uh was one of the Prime ports through which the product of wine was exported for profit it doesn’t mean to say that the things that were um coming back were
For the use of that area indeed the ships may have been doing um triangular or multifaceted runs um the sort of thing one could imagine is the ships from um Cura taking wine to maré and nbon and offloading their wine there and taking on board indeed any cargo that
Was available and bringing it back not necessarily to kosa but to osta or or any other Port I think it’s a much more complex trade um than perhaps I may have um suggested um all we can do is to isolate some of the threads of that
Trade um but I think if one looks at the sorts of um slave um fish trade that was going on between Europe and America and Africa in the 18th and 19th century the ships were taking on all sorts of things and moving them around um and uh serving a number
Of countries and a number of ports and I think that we’ve got the um aristocratic um Monopoly producers monocultural producers of wine on the one hand producing this great quantity in League with ship owners and probably with a financial stake in the ships anyway uh and um getting rid of their
Wine that way and um bringing back u a range of valued Commodities please yeah well I I think that today um the the question is um uh is was wine used by the Romans as um really a tool of submission for submission and does the graph which I showed of a sudden
Increase in in wine drinking reflect that well I I think um one can generalize and say yes to that uh as as usual these things are so much more complex um there is one one text which is quite interesting um about the the Bel guy um I think it was Caesar talking
About the Bel guy uh who lived in um northern France and Belgium and were at this stage away from the innovating effects of Roman luxuries and that’s exactly what he said so Caesar was seeing those tribes who absorbed Roman luxuries as becoming soft whereas those away now to what extent it
Was deliberate policy I think it’s far more uh I I would prefer excuse me um prefer an explanation in terms of it being um just in marketing terms uh that here was um a a a a great New Market um which uh wanted wine um liked wine uh drank it in
Great quantities as so so many classical writers tell us about the Kelts drank it undiluted we’re told no self-respecting Roman would drink his wine undiluted so they they deserve all they got by drinking it undiluted was the implication um that um here was a market
And uh why not exploit it and I think it was far more that rather than a deliberate attempt uh to soften up I don’t think Roman Imperial policy was quite that deliberate um I think once the area around was um really economically uh linked to Rome um it was
Just easy to move in and and Conquer it it was marginally easier to do that uh than not to do it so I think it was rather more that I’m oversimplifying but that graph that I showed um taken on its face value and I think the the data is
Good um does suggest that um after um The Province uh forly became a part of the Roman Empire why wine drinking did dramatically increase yes I think one can accept that uh but then um presumably what it’s showing us is that the wine drinking level of society was
Way below that of the Roman world and when it became part of the Roman World wine consumption went up to an equivalent to the Roman world I suspect it’s that rather than anything else yes MH yes the question is um how how extensive was The Phoenician involved
Ment in in the tin trade well um uh in terms of the texts that are available to us the texts imply that it was regular and established um though whether it was Phoenicians all the way is another matter um to what extent it was short Hall trade um tin going from Britain to
Britany and then tin going from Britany down to the mouth of the um Lair and then someone else pingy up the mouth of and Tak it down still further what to or to what extent it was um the Phoenicians from southern Spain um going around Iberia and and and right up to Britain
It’s difficult to say but in in terms of the texts Phoenician involvement is implied in terms of the archaeology there is not a single scrap of evidence unfortunately um no scrap of anything that looks like a Phoenician pot uh anywhere in Britany or Britain uh um the
Only evidence that one could use and that’s can be argued lots of ways is that there are um Mediterranean coins and some Phoenician uh which are found scattered in the area but then they they’re all out of context and they could have come in um as 18th century ad
Collections uh or uh in in the Roman period or in the immediate pre-roman period so um I don’t think one could use that it’s a very very interesting problem but I see no way of Designing a piece of archaeology to to throw further light on
It um I’ll take one more question if I may uh yes please soaves in the end uh yes the Romans didn’t know that uh when when they moved in um uh why do they conquer Britain um I think that there there are lots of reasons one was a purely political
Reason that that uh Claudius uh needed a Triumph to establish himself politically uh in Rome and um we better uh to uh to to gain a Triumph than by conquering Britain it was there it was virtually Roman anyway um and it was just a matter
Of he thought sending a few uh you know Legion or two across and uh there it was uh but as as you imply in your question um the the costs of maintaining Britain were were very heavy indeed and I think it’s pretty clear that um the Romans were thoroughly disappointed
Once they got here uh and there is some evidence to suggest that during the reign of Nero they actually thought of getting out um and uh because um it’s usually as um there were various loans uh made to Britains and then in the reign of Nero those loans were being
Called in and it looks as though the entrepreneurs were getting ready to make a quick getaway um and the usual explanation is because uh they realized that the mineral wealth wasn’t all that it was thought to be uh and that the Hostile tribes in the mountainous areas
Were always going to be a nuisance and it was going to be a very expensive Province to maintain um but policy reverted um and they they did stay um but uh uh each one of these conquests I think has got to be seen in terms of not
Only the broad economics and the broad strategies but also in the the day-to-day ambition of the individuals not least the uh Roman Emperor’s needs uh to maintain a standing army but also to spread that St standing army and to keep these generals uh quite often isolated out of the way so they couldn’t
Be a nuisance in Rome so there were lots lots of factors and it’s a very good point to finish on thank you very much thanks for listening for more information on the 92nd Street y New York and all of our programs please visit us at 92 y.org