University of Oxford Department for Continuing Education From Civilisation To Barbarism?

1. 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

2. 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’

3. 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

4. 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’?

5. What might we learn from metalwork? Style (not necessarily or directly) ≠ ‘ethnic’ or cultural identity Techniques & Composition: exchange networks & cultural influence • Clothing / personal adornment • (e.g. brooches, pins, hobnails) • Building / manufacturing techniques / styles • (e.g. nails & tools) • Warfare / subsistence / leisure (e.g. weapons, knives)

6. Metalworking Bowl furnace

7. Copper alloy casting Techniques: • Lead model • ‘Cere Perdue’ (Lost Wax) Peripatetic? Metalworking moulds and crucible, Dinas Powys

8. Champlevé: Cells cast or carved in surface of Field and filled with glass paste, then fired Millefiori Enamel

9. 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 wider distributions Finish: e.g. ‘grass marked’

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

11. 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)

12. C4+ Ceramic styles C4+: 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?

13. c. AD 475-550 Phocean Red Slipped Ware Imported ceramics:Mediterranean Amphorae: Late C5-6 Biv/ LRA 3 N Afr. North African Red Slipped Ware Bii / LRA 1 (Syria)

14. ‘D Ware’: C6-7 Bordeux Imported ceramics:Continental (deriveesigiltee pateochretienne – DSPA) ‘E Ware’: C6-7 Gaulish / Frankish

15. Trade Routes East to eastern Britain: Late C6-C7+ Mediterranean & East to Western Britain: late C5 – mid C6

16. Trading sites Bantham, Devon

17. Mothecombe, Devon

18. Bone, antler, and stone