Long-Distance Contacts

This page brings together and indexes posts and articles concerned with the evidence for long-distance trading, contacts and movement with and to Britain from the Bronze Age through to the medieval era. Posts included below look at the long-distance movement of people and items both to and from Britain in this time frame.

Longer Reads
  1. Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: Place-Names, Archaeology and Pre-Roman Trading Settlements in Eastern Kent?
  2. The medieval 'New England': a forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast
  3. A note on the evidence for African migrants in Britain from the Bronze Age to the medieval period
  4. Global Britain? A brief chronology of an awareness of Britain's existence
  5. A very long way from home: early Byzantine finds at the far ends of the world
  6. Sasanian finds in early medieval Britain and beyond: another global distribution from Late Antiquity?
  7. Indo-Pacific beads from Europe to Japan? Another fifth- to seventh-century AD global distribution
  8. King Alfred and India: an Anglo-Saxon embassy to southern India in the ninth century AD
  9. Macamathehou in Lincolnshire and the evidence for people named Muhammad in medieval England
Long-Distance Trading/Contacts in the Pre-Roman & Roman Periods
  1. Indo-Greek, Indo-Scythian & other early Indian coins found in Britain
  2. Ptolemaic coins recorded from Britain by the Portable Antiquities Scheme
  3. Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: Place-Names, Archaeology and Pre-Roman Trading Settlements in Eastern Kent?
  4. The distribution of Numidian coins recorded from Britain since the nineteenth century
  5. A Mediterranean anchor stock of the fifth to mid-second century BC found off the coast of Britain
  6. Some oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance migration to Britain from North Africa & southern Iberia, c.1100 BC–AD 800
  7. Out of the cold far north and east? Some oxygen isotope evidence for Scandinavian & central/eastern European migrants in Britain, c. 2300 BC–AD 1050
  8. Some Romano-British objects found in Europe & North Africa
  9. A note on the evidence for African migrants in Britain from the Bronze Age to the medieval period
  10. Some evidence for people of 'East Asian' ancestry living in Roman London
  11. Some possible Phoenician/Punic names in Britain and Ireland
  12. Phillack and the Hayle Estuary in the Late Roman and early medieval periods
Long-Distance Trading/Contacts in the Early Medieval Period
  1. The distribution of Islamic dirhams in Anglo-Saxon England
  2. Indian silver coins in Viking-age northern Europe & Britain
  3. Some imitation Islamic coins minted in early medieval Europe
  4. The medieval 'New England': a forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast
  5. A great host of captives? A note on Vikings in Morocco and Africans in early medieval Ireland & Britain
  6. Some oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance migration to Britain from North Africa & southern Iberia, c.1100 BC–AD 800
  7. Out of the cold far north and east? Some oxygen isotope evidence for Scandinavian & central/eastern European migrants in Britain, c. 2300 BC–AD 1050
  8. Britain, the Byzantine Empire, and the concept of an Anglo-Saxon 'Heptarchy': Harun ibn Yahya's ninth-century Arabic description of Britain
  9. The Anglo-Saxons abroad? Some early Anglo-Saxon finds from France and East Africa
  10. A note on the evidence for African migrants in Britain from the Bronze Age to the medieval period
  11. A very long way from home: early Byzantine finds at the far ends of the world
  12. Two long-distance migrants in the eighth- to tenth-century Islamic necropolis at Tauste, Spain
  13. Sasanian finds in early medieval Britain and beyond: another global distribution from Late Antiquity?
  14. St Ia of St Ives: a Byzantine saint in early medieval Cornwall?
  15. A North African Barbary ape in fifth- to sixth-century Britain? A short note on the significance and context of the Wroxeter macaque remains
  16. Indo-Pacific beads from Europe to Japan? Another fifth- to seventh-century AD global distribution
  17. King Alfred and India: an Anglo-Saxon embassy to southern India in the ninth century AD
  18. A man of possible African ancestry buried in Anglo-Scandinavian York
  19. A Middle Byzantine coin from Carbis Bay, Cornwall
Long-Distance Trading/Contacts in the Medieval Period
  1. Al-Idrisi's twelfth-century map and description of eastern England
  2. Islamic gold dinars in late eleventh- and twelfth-century England
  3. A note on the evidence for African migrants in Britain from the Bronze Age to the medieval period
  4. A Christmas visitor: the Byzantine emperor's trip to London in the winter of 1400–01
  5. Wulfric of Lincoln and the English Varangians: the first documented Byzantine ambassador to England in the early twelfth century
  6. An eleventh-century Chinese coin in Britain and the evidence for East Asian contacts in the medieval period
  7. A North African Barbary ape in fifth- to sixth-century Britain? A short note on the significance and context of the Wroxeter macaque remains
  8. Were there camels in medieval Britain? A brief note on Bactrian camels and dromedaries in fifteenth-century Kent
  9. Some Arabic and Persian accounts of the export of tin from Cornwall to Egypt and Iran in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
  10. Another eleventh-century medieval Chinese coin found in England
  11. Macamathehou in Lincolnshire and the evidence for people named Muhammad in medieval England
  12. Al-Idrīsī’s twelfth-century description and map of Lincolnshire (article version)
Britons and Anglo-Saxons Abroad