A new exhibition running at the British Museum explores the vast network of cultural and commercial connections that spanned Europe, Africa, and Asia in AD 500-1000. Carly Hilts visited to learn how diverse ideas, materials, and people filtered along these routes to the British Isles.
As Willibald watched the customs officials rifle through his baggage, his native Wessex must have felt worlds away. The early medieval monk was no stranger to travel – he had just completed his fourth pilgrimage to Jerusalem – but while passing through Tyre, in modern Lebanon, in the 720s, he and his companions had been arrested and chained while authorities associated with the ruling Umayyad caliphate searched their belongings for contraband. The penalty for smuggling was death, and Willibald was carrying something that he desperately hoped would not be discovered. In his possession he had an innocuous-looking gourd – but this outwardly innocent fruit had been hollowed out and filled with balsam, a valuable and very strictly controlled plant resin that was much sought-after in the Christian West as a key component of chrism, the blend of oils used in various religious rites.
In an effort to disguise the substance’s distinctive smell, Willibald had inserted a reed into the top of the gourd, and topped it up with petroleum. He and his companions must have watched with their hearts in their mouths as the officials found the fruit and sniffed it to determine its contents – but the deception went undetected, and the group were able to continue safely on their way. Decades later, Willibald was living peacefully at the monastery in Heidenheim (in modern Germany) when he reportedly recounted his adventures to the nun Huneburc, who recorded them in her Hodoeporicon of St Willibald (Itinerary of St Willibald).
Willibald’s daring exploits defy the ‘Dark Age’ stereotypes that have long dogged post-Roman Britain. The centuries immediately after the end of imperial administration have traditionally been depicted as a period of decline, when Britain plunged into cultural obscurity and its inhabitants knew little of, and took less interest in, the wider world. Archaeological evidence completely contradicts this pessimistic picture, however, demonstrating that Britain and Ireland were in fact the westernmost point of a vast network of land, river, and sea routes along which an amazingly diverse range of people, ideas, and materials travelled for hundreds of years. Some of these cosmopolitan connections are explored in Silk Roads, a major exhibition currently running at the British Museum.
Spanning the centuries between 500 and 1000, and covering a geographical sweep from Japan to Ireland, its displays draw on the collections of the British Museum itself, as well as loans from almost 30 other institutions at home and abroad. Its themes include intriguing insights into the impact of these routes on early medieval Britain and Ireland, and the interconnected, internationally interested, and often intrepid inhabitants of these isles.
FASHIONABLE FINDS
Access to international markets was not severed by the withdrawal of Roman officialdom: long before Willibald set out for the Holy Land, elite settlements in the late 5th- and mid-6th-century British Isles were benefiting from far-reaching trade connections that have left lasting traces in the archaeological record. Over the last century, excavations at sites in south-west England, Ireland, Wales, and Scotland have uncovered fragments of pottery containers that once transported wine, oil, and other exotic treats from the eastern Mediterranean to the tables of high status households.
Perhaps the best-known such site is Tintagel on the northern coast of Cornwall, which has produced the largest collection of 5th- to 7th-century Mediterranean pottery in Britain: over 1,800 sherds from wine amphorae and fine tableware from Greece, Turkey, and (possibly) North Africa (see CA 227). These tastes travelled widely, however: as the exhibition catalogue notes, smaller numbers of these fragments are also known from locations along the Atlantic coast – at Bantham Sands in Devon (CA 178), Dinas Powys in Wales, and Dalkey Island in Ireland. A particularly striking addition to this list, though, is Rhynie in Aberdeenshire, a Pictish power centre known for its concentration of symbol stones (CA
289). It represents the most northerly findspot for this kind of pottery – and, more than that, it lies 40km inland, highlighting that these sought-after goods were not only accessible to coastal communities, but were actively acquired by more landlocked leaders.
Being able to show off these exotic wares at lavish feasts appears to have been a key sign of prestige in elite society, but such identities were not only expressed by the living. Grave goods of the same period also demonstrate a flair for the exotic, with particularly well-furnished burials across the 5th to 7th centuries containing glassware from the Mediterranean, cowrie shells from the Red Sea (CA 323 and CA 392), pouch-rings crafted from African ivory pouch-rings crafted from African ivory pouch-rings crafted from African ivory (CA 399), and beads of Egyptian glass. Among the most visually impressive of these no doubt treasured imports are the garnets that were carefully shaped and set in gold ornaments like those that have been found in the ‘princely’ burials of Mound 1 at Sutton Hoo in Suffolk, Prittlewell in Essex (CA 190 and CA 352), and Taplow in Buckinghamshire.
Recent research into the Sutton Hoo garnets, Silk Roads attests, has revealed their diverse origins, with stones traced variously to Czechia, Sri g connections, however. Lanka, and India often mixed together on the same object. It is not only the ornaments’ materials that speak of far-reaching connections, however. The garnets are held in place using a technique called cloisonné, which is thought to have developed in the Black Sea area, the Caucasus region, or West Asia, and spread swiftly across Europe and further afield. As well as examples from Anglo-Saxon England, the exhibition includes a set of cloisonné ornaments found in a late 5th-century female grave at San Marino in Italy, and an extraordinarily ornate dagger sheath, dating to the 6th century, that was discovered in a high-status grave at Gyeongju in South Korea. This is not to suggest any direct contact between Korea’s Silla kingdom, the Ostrogoths, and Anglo-Saxon England; but the strikingly similar decoration adorning these objects attests to how far fashions and artistic inspiration could travel along the web of influences that we now call the Silk Roads.
ANGLO-SAXONS ABROAD?
Garnets are not the only ‘exotic’ items that have been identified within the elite Anglo-Saxon burials mentioned above. Sutton Hoo’s ship grave and the wood-lined burial chambers of Taplow and Prittlewell have also produced metalwork from the Eastern Mediterranean realm of the Byzantine Empire. These have traditionally been interpreted as prestigious imports or diplomatic gifts that may have travelled to early medieval England via multiple steps along a network of elite exchange. As an example, the exhibition catalogue discusses a large silver platter which is not included in the temporary displays but can be seen upstairs in the British Museum’s Sutton Hoo and Europe gallery. Its stamped insignia indicates that it was made in Constantinople during the reign of Anastasius I (491-518), an Eastern Roman emperor who was clearly close to his contemporary, Clovis I of Francia, as he made the king a consul in 508 and lavished him with ostentatious gifts. Might one of these have been the silver platter?
This is an extract of an article that appeared in CA 417. Read on in the magazine, or click here to read it online at The Past, where you can read all of the Current Archaeology articles in full as well as the content of our other magazines, Current World Archaeology, Ancient Egypt, and Military History Matters.
