A note on the evidence for African migrants in Britain from the Bronze Age to the medieval period

The degree to which pre-modern Britain included people of African origin within its population continues to be a topic of considerable interest and some controversy. Previous posts on this site have discussed a variety of textual, linguistic, archaeological and isotopic evidence for people from the Mediterranean and/or Africa in the British Isles from the Late Bronze Age through to the eleventh century AD. However, the focus in these posts has been on individual sites, events or periods, rather than the question of the potential proportion of people from Africa present in pre-modern Britain per se and how this may have varied over time. The aim of the following post is thus to briefly ponder whether an overview of the increasingly substantial British corpus of oxygen isotope evidence drawn from pre-modern archaeological human teeth has anything interesting to tell us with regard to this question.

Map of the British Isles, showing drinking-water oxygen isotope values and the 16 British archaeological sites (including three in York) with evidence for pre-modern people whose results are consistent with an early life spent in North Africa (image: C. R. Green, using a base-map image © BGS/NERC, reproduced under their non-commercial licence, as detailed on the BGS website).

Proportion of investigated sites from each period with at least one oxygen isotope result consistent with an origin in North Africa (image: C. R. Green).

The rationale for using oxygen isotope evidence as a tool for identifying people from Africa in pre-modern Britain was set out at some length in a previous post—essentially, tooth enamel oxygen isotope values reflect those of the water that was drunk by an individual in childhood, with drinking-water values varying markedly with climate and related factors. As such, it should be possible to identify first-generation migrants to Britain in the archaeological record by measuring their tooth enamel oxygen isotope levels, so long as they grew up in a region with significantly different drinking-water values to those found in Britain, a criteria North Africa fits comfortably, with many parts of it possessing levels notably higher than those found anywhere in Britain or, indeed, Europe.

In order to make a first pass at trying to assess whether isotopic data can help answer the question of the potential number of African people in medieval and earlier Britain and the variations in this number over time, I pulled together a rough corpus of 909 oxygen isotopes results taken from individuals buried at 79 Bronze Age–Medieval sites across Britain published up to the start of 2016, and then sorted these into four broad chronological periods: Bronze Age–Iron Age (22 sites), Roman (15 sites), Early Medieval (29 sites) and Medieval (14 sites), with one site in use across two of the periods.(1) I then went through this material to identify individuals whose results are sufficiently elevated so as to be both clearly indicative of a non-local origin and most consistent with a childhood spent in North Africa, rather than anywhere in Britain or Europe.(2) Needless to say, taking such an overview of the entire period from the Bronze Age to the Medieval era via a single dataset produces some interesting results, as well as some pitfalls. The former can be summarized as follows:

• 20.3% of the 79 surveyed Bronze Age–Medieval sites contained at least one person who has results consistent with a childhood spent in Africa (n=16). As can be seen from the map included above, these sites are spread across Britain, with the majority coming from what is now England, although not exclusively so. Note, some of the 'gaps' in the resultant distribution may well be more apparent than real, stemming from a lack of published sites in some areas, such as north-western England and Norfolk. 
• Sites possessing isotopic evidence consistent with the presence of first-generation immigrants from North Africa are found in all periods looked at, although there is a clear peak in the Roman era. The Roman era—the mid-first to early fifth centuries AD—has the greatest number of sites with such evidence, namely seven, these being Winchester (Lankhills), Gloucester, York (three sites: Trentholme Drive, The Railway & Driffield Terrace), Scorton near Catterick, and Wasperton. Furthermore, nearly 47% of all Roman sites where isotopic analysis has occurred have produced evidence suggestive of the presence of people who grew up in North Africa, a significantly higher proportion than is found for any other era. The next highest raw totals of sites with such isotopic evidence belong jointly to the 'Early Medieval' and 'Medieval' eras (four sites each), although it is important to note that the Early Medieval total results from over twice as many sites being isotopically investigated than is the case for the Medieval era—as such, whilst 28.6% of the Medieval-era sites in the corpus have isotopic evidence consistent with the presence of North African migrants, only 13.8% of the Early Medieval sites do. Finally, the Bronze Age–Iron Age is represented by only a single qualifying site on the Isle of Thanet, Kent, equivalent to 4.5% of all Bronze Age–Iron Age sites where isotopic analysis has taken place, although this Late Bronze Age–Middle Iron Age cemetery has multiple people with such results buried within it.
• In total, 3.7% of the 909 Bronze Age–Medieval individuals surveyed from these 79 sites have results consistent with a childhood spent in Africa (n=34). This percentage reflects the fact that the majority of the sites looked at here only contain one or two individuals with values high enough for inclusion in the present study.
• A small number of results are elevated to such a degree that they strongly indicate a childhood spent in the Nile Valley or Delta. Around 11.8% of the individual oxygen isotope results that were highlighted here were exceptionally elevated to above 21.0‰ δ¹⁸O_p (n=4), a level that is probably indicative of a childhood spent in or around the Nile Valley, where equivalent values have been recorded from the ancient burial site at Mendes in the Nile Delta, Egypt, and other sites up to the third Nile cataract at Tombos. Interestingly, these results come from individuals spread across the chronological range: one from a Late Bronze Age burial at Thanet, Kent (ninth century BC); one from a Middle Iron Age grave at the same site (fourth century BC); one from Roman York (the Driffield Terrace site); and one from the medieval cemetery at Whithorn, Scotland (late twelfth to thirteenth century AD).

With regard to explanations for such a potential presence of people who grew up in North Africa in Britain from the Late Bronze Age through to the medieval period, several possibilities can be identified. For example, the peak in sites with isotopic evidence consistent with the presence of such people in the Roman era is perhaps unsurprising, given the significant epigraphic, textual and archaeological evidence for people from Africa and/or of African descent in Britain at that time, and a major research project has, in fact, recently been completed on the topic of diaspora communities in Roman Britain. Indeed, at York around 11–12% of the individuals buried in two of the large Roman-era cemeteries there are considered to be very likely of 'African descent' on the basis of anthroposcopic/craniometric analysis, whilst yet more are thought to have potential 'mixed' or 'black' ancestry, up to a possible maximum of 51% of the population in the higher-status 'The Railway' cemetery. Similarly, there is documentary and archaeological evidence for contacts between the Byzantine Empire, North Africa and post-Roman western Britain and England in the early medieval period which may well offer a potential explanation for some of the results retrieved—significant quantities of fifth- to sixth-century Byzantine imported pottery have, for example, been found along the west coast of Britain, including some produced in the Carthage region, and Middle Saxon England included churchmen such as Hadrian, the later seventh and early eighth-century Abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury, who was 'a man of African race' (Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, IV.1) and is thought to have grown up in Libya Cyrenaica before moving to Italy following the mid-seventh-century Arab conquest of North Africa. For the Medieval period, the Crusades and the evidence for trade and contacts between England and the Mediterranean/Spain have been suggested as obvious potential reasons for the presence of people from Africa here then, whilst the Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age evidence from Thanet can perhaps be seen in the context of both the well-evidenced Bronze Age trading along the Atlantic coast between the Mediterranean, Iberia, Britain and Scandinavia, and the increasing body of linguistic, numismatic and archaeological evidence for Mediterranean/Punic contacts with Britain during the Iron Age.

Of course, whilst the above isotopic evidence is certainly intriguing, there are undoubtedly pitfalls to be aware of. On the one hand, we need to be wary of overestimating the proportion of any North African migrants in pre-modern Britain using isotopic evidence. For example, sites are sometimes chosen for isotopic analysis because they look potentially 'interesting', as was arguably the case with the cemeteries at York, Winchester and Thanet, and such a situation might well lead to a greater proportion of positive 'hits' in any corpus aiming to look for potential evidence of long-distance migration. Similarly, it is not totally impossible that a few of the people with the more marginal results discussed here could just have had their origins in a small area of southernmost Iberia rather than North Africa, although the bar for inclusion in the present corpus was set at such a level as to hopefully significantly reduce the possibility of this, and a substantial proportion of the results included here are, moreover, well above any plausible southern Iberian range.(3) On the other hand, the corpus could well underestimate both the number of individuals who may have had their origins in North Africa and their chronological spread. So, for example, whilst over 900 results were surveyed here, we still end up with a situation whereby none of the individuals with elevated values date from the Late Saxon/Anglo-Scandinavian period (later ninth to eleventh centuries). Taking this as a reflection of a lack of people from Africa in Britain at that time would, however, be a mistake: not only do we have good textual evidence for the presence of such people in the British Isles, but there are three burials of people of African descent known from tenth- and eleventh-century Gloucestershire and East Anglia—the problem is simply that none of them have been subjected to isotopic analysis and so they haven't been included here. Likewise, there are at least four burials of people who appear to be of African descent in the medieval cemetery at Ipswich, but only one has been isotopically tested (interestingly, five of the post-medieval/sixteenth-century burials there also appear to be those of people of African descent). Finally, by adopting a fairly high bar to inclusion in the corpus so as to avoid—as much as possible—the risk of 'false positives', we actually end up excluding a significant number of individuals who are generally accepted as being of African origin. So, only three members of a group of thirteen burials from Lankhills (Winchester) have results high enough to be included in the current corpus, despite the fact that all thirteen are considered to form a sub-group that is probably of African origin within the cemetery. All told, therefore, it might well be wondered whether the above tendencies to both overestimate and underestimate don't, in fact, cancel each other out.

North African unguentaria found in a grave from the Late Roman cemetery at Lankhills, Winchester, that is part of the sub-group with elevated oxygen isotope results mentioned above, but which has values just a little below the cut-off for inclusion in the corpus used in this post (image: Oxford Archaeology, reused under their CC BY-SA 3.0 license).

Notes

1     This corpus is based primarily upon J. A. Evans, C. A. Chenery & J. Montgomery, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 27 (2012), 754–64 and 'Supplementary Material I' (14 pp.), to which have been added studies published after that paper or missing from it, using a Google Scholar search to catch any publications that weren't already known. Note, the periods assigned to the results taken from Evans et al, 'Supplementary Material I', have been checked and revised by me for this corpus, as they were occasionally idiosyncratic: 'Roman' is here used as a catch-all term for results from the first to early fifth centuries AD, 'Early Medieval' for those results from the period between the early fifth and late eleventh centuries AD, and 'Medieval' for those from the twelfth through to the fifteenth centuries. The additional studies used in creating this corpus are as follows, arranged by date of publication: S. Lucy et al, 'The burial of a princess? The later seventh-­century cemetery at Westfield Farm, Ely', Antiquity, 89 (2009), 81–141; J. Montgomery, 'Isotope analysis of bone collagen and tooth enamel', in C. Lowe (ed.), The P.R. Ritchie Excavations at Whithorn Priory, 1957–67: Medieval Bishops' Graves and Other Discoveries (Edinburgh, 2010), pp. 65–82; A. M. Pollard et al, '"Sprouting like cockle amongst the wheat": The St Brice's Day Massacre and the isotopic analysis of human bones from St John's College, Oxford', Oxford Journal of Archaeology, 31 (2012), 83–102; S. E. Groves et al, 'Mobility histories of 7th–9th century AD people buried at early medieval Bamburgh, Northumberland, England', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 151 (2013), 462–76; K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region', Journal of Archaeological Science, 40 (2013), 2352–59; M. Jay et al, 'British Iron Age burials of the Arras culture: a multi-isotope approach to investigating mobility levels and subsistence practices', World Archaeology, 45 (2013), 473–91; E. Kendall et al, 'Mobility, mortality, and the middle ages: identification of migrant individuals in a 14th century black death cemetery population', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 150 (2013), 210–22; C. A. Roberts et al, 'Isotopic tracing of the impact of mobility on infectious disease: the origin of people with treponematosis buried in Hull, England, in the Late Medieval period', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 150 (2013), 273–85; K. A. Hemer et al, 'No Man is an island: evidence of pre-Viking Age migration to the Isle of Man'. Journal of Archaeological Science, 52 (2014), 242–9; J. I. McKinley et al, Cliffs End Farm, Isle of Thanet, Kent. A Mortuary and Ritual Site of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon Period with Evidence for Long-Distance Maritime Mobility (Salisbury, 2014); J. Montgomery et al, 'Finding Vikings with isotope analysis: the view from wet and windy islands', Journal of the North Atlantic, Special Volume 7 (2014), 54–70; H. Eckardt et al, 'The Late Roman field army in northern Britain? Mobility, material culture and multi-isotope analysis at Scorton (N. Yorks)', Britannia, 46 (2015), 191–223; S. A. Inskip et al, 'Osteological, biomolecular and geochemical examination of an early Anglo-Saxon case of lepromatous leprosy', PLoS ONE, 10.5 (2015), pp. 1–22, online at http://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0124282; R. Martiniano et al, 'Genomic signals of migration and continuity in Britain before the Anglo-Saxons', Nature Communications, 7 (2016), article 10326, 8 pp., online at http://www.nature.com/ncomms/2016/160119/ncomms10326/full/ncomms10326.html, and Supplementary Materials, 54 pp. (Table 3 and discussion in Supplementary Note 2). I also include 'Ipswich Man' in the corpus, a man of African descent who was buried in the thirteenth century in Ipswich, as he was isotopically investigated and consequently determined to probably have his origins in North Africa, although the results are still as yet unpublished: BBC, History Cold Case: Series 1, Episode 1—Ipswich Man (broadcast 27 July 2010); 'Medieval African found buried in England', Discovery News, 11 February 2013, online at http://news.discovery.com/history/medieval-african-england.htm; K. Wade, Ipswich Archive Summaries: Franciscan Way, IAS 5003 (2014), online at http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/ipswich_5003_2015/downloads.cfm; and Xanthé Mallett, pers. comm..
2     The following footnote outlines the methodology adopted here. The conventional upper cut-off for phosphate oxygen isotope values for people who grew up in the British Isles is 18.6‰ δ¹⁸O_p, although it has been suggested that people brought up on the far western margins of Britain and Ireland—where drinking-water oxygen isotope values are at their highest, between -5.0‰ and -4.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw (see map)—could theoretically have values up to 19.2‰ δ¹⁸O_p (see K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region', Journal of Archaeological Science, 40 (2013), 2352–59; C. Chenery et al, 'Strontium and stable isotope evidence for diet and mobility in Roman Gloucester, UK', Journal of Archaeological Science, 37 (2010), 150–63; and especially J. A. Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 27 (2012), 754–64). As such, and in order to avoid as much doubt as possible, I decided only to look at people with tooth enamel phosphate oxygen isotope results of 19.2‰+ for this post. This reflects, across the entire resulting corpus, the childhood consumption of drinking-water with values from -3.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw up to +2.0‰ δ¹⁸O_dw on the 2010 revised Levinson equation or -4.0‰ δ¹⁸O_dw to +0.3‰ δ¹⁸O_dw on the 2008 Daux et al equation—needless to say, whichever equation is used, these values are notably higher than the maximum British drinking-water value of c. -4.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw (found only in a few spots in the far west of the Outer Hebrides and Cornwall), but in line with results from North Africa, whilst the highest of the recorded results in the corpus can only be matched in the Nile Valley, as was discussed in a previous post. Indeed, over 50% of the individuals studied in this post have results of at least 19.5‰ δ¹⁸O_p, equivalent to a drinking-water value of -2.8‰ δ¹⁸O_dw (-3.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw) or more, significantly above any credible British range and only really paralleled in some areas of North Africa. Moreover, it is worth noting from the map attached to this post that none of the individuals who are included in the study corpus were actually found in the areas with the highest drinking-water values in Britain, removing any lingering potential doubt as to their non-local origin. In fact, only a single individual of the 34 discussed here was found in an area with a local drinking-water value above -6.0‰ δ¹⁸O_dw, whilst the vast majority (79%) come from areas where drinking water values are between -7.0‰ and -8.5‰. As such, not only do they largely come from areas where the theoretical maximum for tooth enamel phosphate oxygen isotope values is closer to c. 18.5‰, according to Evans et al (2012, p. 759), not 19.2‰, but their results actually reflect the childhood consumption of water with values at least 3.0‰ higher than the local level right up to potentially as much as 10.2‰ higher (at the Driffield Terrace, York, site)—in all cases, this is significantly above any plausible variations around the local range and is massively so in the case of many results. Finally, it is worth noting that the adoption of this relatively conservative approach may mean that the number of individuals of in Britain who grew up in North Africa is underestimated, rather than overestimated. For example, even a small drop of the bar to include all those with results of 19.0‰ δ¹⁸O_p or above more more than doubles the number to be taken into the current corpus from our main source (the 2012 Evans et al corpus), and it is worth noting that many of the people with results at this level are indeed usually accepted as being probable migrants from North Africa, as are a significant number of people with slightly lower results too (see, for example, Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation', pp. 760–2; K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region'; and the discussion in a previous post, 'Some oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance migration to Britain from North Africa & southern Iberia, c.1100 BC–AD 800', 24 October 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/10/oxygen-isotope-evidence.html). Nonetheless, it was felt worthwhile to set the bar higher in the present study in order to minimize as fully as possible the risk of false positives, and also to avoid as much as possible increasing the chance of some of the people studied here could have their origins in the one other area of Europe with very high drinking-water oxygen isotope values, southernmost Iberia, see note 3.
3     The map included in Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation', p. 761, indicates that the only part of Europe other than Britain with water oxygen isotope values above -5.0‰ is a small area of the south-eastern Iberian peninsula. L. J. Araguas-Araguas & M. F. Diaz Teijeiro, 'Isotope composition of precipitation and water vapour in the Iberian Peninsula', in IAEA, Isotopic composition of precipitation in the Mediterranean Basin in relation to air circulation patterns and climate (Vienna, 2005), pp. 173–90 at p. 178, state that values in this area range down to -4.3‰ δ¹⁸O, which is slightly enriched over the upper end of the British range (c. -4.5‰ δ¹⁸O); they also indicate that similar values above -5.0‰ δ¹⁸O are found in limited areas of the south-western coast of Iberia too, contrary to Evans et al, with groundwater results of c. 4.0‰ or even slightly higher reported from a very small zone around Cádiz (Araguas-Araguas & Diaz Teijeiro, fig. 3 at p. 180). In consequence, the bar for consideration in the present post was set relatively high to reduce the chance of including people from southernmost Iberia in the corpus—as was mentioned in note 2, above, only people with tooth enamel phosphate oxygen isotope results of 19.2‰+ were considered here, which on the 2010 revised Levinson equation (as used in K. A. Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region', Journal of Archaeological Science, 40 (2013), 2352–59, and other recent studies) equates to the consumption of drinking-water with values of -3.5‰ δ¹⁸O or above, with the majority of the results included here moreover reflecting the consumption of drinking-water with even higher values than this, ranging from -2.8‰ δ¹⁸O right up to +2.0‰ δ¹⁸O, well above the southern Iberian range.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2016, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

A Mediterranean anchor stock of the fifth to mid-second century BC found off the coast of Britain

The aim of the following post is to draw attention to a recently-recognised find of a fifth- to mid-second-century BC Mediterranean ship anchor from British coastal waters. Previous posts on this site have discussed the presence of a significant quantity of Greek autonomous coinage of primarily the fourth to second centuries BC in Britain, including Carthaginian/Punic, Ptolemaic, Numidian and Indo-Greek issues. Needless to say, finds of early Mediterranean anchors off the coast of Britain would seem to add further weight to the argument that there was a degree of long-distance maritime contact between Britain and the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC and that some, at least, of the above coins may well be genuinely ancient, pre-Roman losses that were brought to Britain by Mediterranean traders.

A trapezoidal lead core from a Mediterranean Type IIa wooden anchor of the fifth century BC, found in the sea at Plymouth (image: ProMare, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Reconstruction of how the lead anchor stock would have fitted into the original wooden anchor (image: ProMare, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

The item under consideration here is a trapezoidal lead core from a wooden anchor stock that was almost certainly recovered by divers from the sea around Plymouth, where it was subsequently stored for a number of years with other recovered items from the water here—unfortunately without any record of its exact findspot—before it was identified as part of a classical-era wooden Type IIa anchor in 2010.(1) Such anchors represent the earliest departure from the use of stone in anchor construction, with the lead core being cast directly into a trapezoidal mould carved into the stock of a wooden anchor, and the Plymouth example has been suggested to date from the fifth century BC on the basis of a comparison with similar cores recovered from a Classical Greek shipwreck of c. 440–425 BC at Tektaş Burnu, Turkey, although Type IIa cores are also known from a ship of c. 400 BC found at Ma'agan Michael, Israel, and actually appear to have been widely used by Mediterranean ships through until the mid-second century BC.(2)

Such a find from the southern coast of Britain is, of course, of considerable interest. Given its considerable weight (26 kg), the fact that it seems to have been recovered from the sea by divers at Plymouth, its nondescript appearance, and its clear covering of marine growth, there seems little reason to doubt that this is a genuinely ancient loss, rather than some sort of misplaced modern tourist souvenir or the like. As such, the presence of this Mediterranean lead anchor stock core would appear to offer good potential evidence for a Mediterranean ship having visited Plymouth Sound at some point between the fifth and the mid-second century BC, although exactly who these visitors might have been is rather less clear, unfortunately, despite a recent description of the piece as being of 'Classical Greek' origin.(3) Whilst Type IIa anchors are certainly known from Classical Greek wrecks, they also seem to have been in use throughout the whole Mediterranean in that era, from Israel and Turkey in the east through to Morocco in the west. A somewhat lighter Type IIa anchor core (16.6 kg) found at Ras Achakar in Morocco, just on the Atlantic side of the Straits of Gibraltar, may, for example, have come from a Punic ship anchored there en route to the important Phoenician settlement of Gades (Cádiz), whilst another Type IIa anchor recovered from close to this area—at Cap Spartel—almost certainly dates from the fifth century BC and is likely to be Phoenician/Punico-Mauretanian in origin.(4)

If at least one perhaps Punic or Greek ship of the fifth to mid-second century BC may well therefore have visited Plymouth Sound on the basis of this find, it is worth emphasising that such a situation is not necessarily all that surprising. Even if we were to leave to one side the significant numismatic material mentioned above, the limited but intriguing textual sources, and the linguistic evidence for a degree of Carthaginian/Punic involvement and activity in pre-Roman Britain that was discussed at length in a previous post on this site, the Plymouth anchor stock core still would not stand totally alone and without context.(5) For example, the reality of long-distance maritime contact between Britain and the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC has received a significant boost in the past couple of years from the isotopic analysis of teeth found in a Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age cemetery on the Isle of Thanet, Kent. This analysis indicates that around 20% of those who were buried in that cemetery had actually been brought up in either North Africa or southernmost Iberia, much more probably the former, before they moved to Kent. Needless to say, this is a fascinating conclusion that offers considerable support for long-distance direct maritime movement between Britain and the Mediterranean in the first millennium BC, and it is interesting to observe that whilst at least some of these probably North African immigrants belonged to the Middle Iron Age phase of the cemetery (the same era as the anchor stock), the majority were actually interred in the Late Bronze Age.(6)

Aerial view of Poole Harbour at sunset; the two Iron Age piers/moles ran from Cleavel Point and Green Island into the South Deep on the left hand side of the photograph (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Potentially equally important are the results of investigations at Poole Harbour, Dorset, the site of the only excavated Iron Age harbour piers or moles in Britain and, indeed, the earliest such features yet known from the whole of north-west Europe. The two apparently monumental structures discovered here have been radiocarbon dated to around the third century BC, although a date of construction in the fourth-century BC is possible and Historic England's Pastscape database suggests a date of c. 300 BC. In either case, the two piers/moles are exceptionally early in date and clearly well-built and substantial—up to 160 metres long, 8 metres wide, and with paved stone surfaces of creamy-white Purbeck marble, the piers together extended out into the deep-water channel, narrowing its entrance and thus enabling the control of access to the harbour within. The very early construction of what would have been a visually impressive Iron Age harbour at Poole is, of course, important in itself as an indicator of probably significant levels of maritime trading taking place on the south coast of England by the third or fourth century BC. However, even more intriguing in the present context is the fact that a recent study of the site has suggested that the harbour design here might be potentially compared with a number of Mediterranean harbours, including that of Motya, Sicily, a Phoenician/Punic colony, and the fifth-century BC Greek harbour at Piraeus, and in this context it is at least interesting to note that a silver Siculo-Punic coin of the fourth century BC has been recovered from the shore of Poole Harbour.(7)

Another key piece of contextual evidence for the Plymouth find is the fact that it is not, in fact, the only early Mediterranean lead anchor stock to be found in British coastal waters, although it is the first Type IIa anchor to be identified here. A Type IIIb anchor stock weighing 71.5 kg was, for example, recovered from the sea at Porth Felen on the Llŷn Peninsula, North Wales, in the 1970s. This type of anchor stock appears to have been in use throughout the Mediterranean from perhaps the mid-third century BC through until the mid-first century AD, but ornamentation on the stock from Porth Felen indicates that a mid- to late second-century BC date may well be appropriate for this particular example. Needless to say, this anchor stock consequently represents valuable evidence for the presence of at least one other ship from the Mediterranean in British coastal waters in the centuries before the Roman conquest, and so offers further confirmation of the reality of long-distance maritime contact between Britain and the Mediterranean during the first millennium BC. Moreover, it itself does not stand alone, as yet another Type IIIb Mediterranean anchor stock has been very recently identified from British coastal waters, adding additional weight to the above case, this being found, interestingly enough, on the rocks off Fort Bovisand in Plymouth Sound!(8)

Plymouth Sound, as it appeared on Donn's map of 1765, with Rame Head at the western entrance to The Sound and Mount Batten & Bovisand Bay marked on its eastern side.

Lastly, it is worth pointing out that there is not only a reasonable national context for a Mediterranean ship of the fifth to mid-second century BC having been present in Plymouth Sound, but also a good local one too, even beyond the above-mentioned additional find of a Type IIIb Mediterranean anchor of the mid-third century BC to mid-first century AD here. Two points in particular are worth making. First, the large, natural deep water harbour of Plymouth Sound is part of what has been termed the 'Tamar Estuary Iron Age coastal node', and it moreover includes within its bounds the important Mount Batten Late Bronze Age and Iron Age port, which is one plausible candidate for the British tin-trading site Ictis mentioned by the Greek Pytheas of Massalia in the later fourth century BC. Second, the western side of the entrance to Plymouth Sound is guarded by the Iron Age promontory fort of Rame Head, a name that is usually considered 'completely obscure' and 'unexplained', but which has recently been argued by Richard Coates to be, in fact, potentially Proto-Semitic/Punic in origin (compare Ramat Gan, Israel, and Ramallah, Palestine). It goes without saying that both points are of considerable interest in terms of the local context of the fifth- to mid-second-century BC anchor stock under consideration here.(9)

To sum up, it seems clear that the Plymouth Type IIa anchor stock core is an important find, indicative of the presence of a Punic or Greek ship of the fifth to mid-second century BC in Plymouth Sound. Whilst this might appear surprising, such a situation would actually appear to have a reasonable context at both national and local levels, and the find itself adds yet more weight to the case for there having been a degree of long-distance maritime contact between the Mediterranean and Britain in the first millennium BC. Furthermore, this find and that of another, probably slightly later, lead anchor stock in Plymouth Sound means that there are now three early Mediterranean lead anchor stocks known from British coastal waters, something which is important in itself, not least because it means that the Porth Felen anchor stock discovered in the 1970s can no longer be dismissed as a one-off find.


Notes

1     SHIPS Project/ProMare, 'Wooden Anchor Stock Core (09A15)', Shipwrecks and History in Plymouth Sound Project, finds database, accessed 15 August 2015, online at http://www.promare.co.uk/ships/Finds/Fd_09A15AnchorStock.html.
2     K. Trethewey, 'Lead anchor-stock cores from Tektaş Burnu, Turkey', International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 30 (2001), 109–14; D. D. Haldane, The Wooden Anchor (Texas A & M University MA Thesis, 1984), esp. pp. 6–7; A. Trakadas & E. Erbati, 'Lead anchor elements from Tangier, Morocco', Bulletin D'Archeologie Marocaine, 21 (2009), 250–67 at p. 254.
3     G. Wear, 'The anchor stock core from Fort Bovisand', 2014 conference poster, online at https://www.academia.edu/9453256/The_Anchor_Stock_Core_from_Fort_Bovisand.
4     Trakadas & Erbati, 'Lead anchor elements from Tangier, Morocco', pp. 253–4, 256; A. Trakadas, 'Morocco Maritime Survey: the 2002 season', The INA Quarterly, 30 (2003), 12–21, esp. pp. 18–20 on the radiocarbon-dated Type IIa anchor. See also A. Trakadas & S. Claesson, 'On the shores of the Maghreb-al-Asqa: the 1999 survey of Tangier Bay, Morocco', The INA Quarterly, 28 (2001), 3–15; A. Trakadas, 'Morocco Maritime Survey: 2003 season', The INA Quarterly, 31 (2004), 3–9, especially pp. 8–9; and E. Erbati & A. Trakadas, The Morocco Maritime Survey (Oxford, 2008), for example p. 63. A fifth-century date for the Cap Spartel anchor core is based on a combination of the general chronology of Type IIa anchors, that is fifth to mid-second century BC, and the fact that the core still had some of its original wooden stock attached which has been radiocarbon dated to 785–400 cal BC.
5     The numismatic, textual and linguistic evidence relating to possible Punic/Carthaginian activity in pre-Roman Britain is summarised and discussed in C. R. Green, 'Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: place-names, archaeology and pre-Roman trading settlements in eastern Kent?', 21 April 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/04/thanet-tanit-and-the-phoenicians.html. On the linguistic evidence, see further, for example, R. Coates, 'A Glimpse through a Dirty Window into an Unlit House: Names of Some North-West European Islands', in W. Ahrens et al (edd.), Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, August 17-22, 2008 (Toronto, 2009), pp. 228–42, and G. Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 7 (2013), 1–28. On the textual evidence, including the possible expedition of a Carthaginian explorer named Himilco to Britain sometime just after 500 BC or thereabouts and references to the Kassiterides, the 'Tin Islands', see for example, D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14, 27–9; D. W. Roller, 'Himilco the Navigator', in E. K. Akyeampong & H. L. Gates Jnr. (edd.), Dictionary of African Biography, 6 vols. (Oxford, 2012), III.70; and B. Cunliffe, Britain Begins (Oxford, 2013), pp. 319–20.
6     J. I. McKinley et al, 'Dead-sea connections: a Bronze Age and Iron Age ritual site on the Isle of Thanet', in J. T. Koch & B. Cunliffe (eds.), Celtic from the West 2. Rethinking the Bronze Age and the Arrival of Indo-European in Atlantic Europe (Oxford, 2013), pp. 157–83, esp. pp. 166–8, and now J. I. McKinley et al, Cliffs End Farm, Isle of Thanet, Kent. A Mortuary and Ritual Site of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon Period with Evidence for Long-Distance Maritime Mobility (Salisbury, 2014). Consultation of maps depicting water oxygen isotope composition across the Mediterranean basin, northern Africa and western Europe reinforces McKinley et al's suggestion that the 'southern' immigrants in the Thanet cemetery probably come from North Africa rather than southernmost Iberia; whilst a southern Iberian origin might possibly work for some of the samples analysed from this cemetery, others strongly indicate that the person involved spent at least part of their early life in northern Africa, not Iberia. See further J. A. Evans et al, 'A summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation in archaeological human tooth enamel excavated from Britain', Journal of Analytical Atomic Spectrometry, 5 (2012), 754–64 at fig 12; G. J. Bowen & J. Revenaugh, 'Interpolating the isotopic composition of modern meteoric precipitation', Water Resources Research, 39 (2003), fig. 8; L.J. Araguas-Araguas & M.F. Diaz Teijeiro, 'Isotope composition of precipitation and water vapour in the Iberian Peninsula', in IAEA, Isotopic composition of precipitation in the Mediterranean Basin in relation to air circulation patterns and climate (Vienna, 2005), pp. 173–90 at fig. 3; and S. Terzer et al, 'Global isoscapes for δ18O and δ2H in precipitation: improved prediction using regionalized climatic regression models', Hydrology and Earth System Sciences, 17 (2013), 1–16.
7     M. Markey, E. Wilkes & T. Darvill, 'Poole Harbour: an Iron Age port', Current Archaeology, 181 (2002), 7–11. See also Historic England's Pastscape Database, Monument No. 457510 ('Poole Iron Age Port'); E. Wilkes, Iron Age Maritime Nodes on the English Channel Coast: An Investigation into the Location, Nature and Context of Early Ports and Harbours, 2 vols. (Bournemouth University PhD Thesis, 2004), I.169–215, II.316–17, 321–7, with the radiocarbon results reported at p. 326; and E. Wilkes, 'Prehistoric sea journeys and port approaches: the south coast and Poole Harbour', in V. Cummings & R. Johnston (eds.), Prehistoric Journeys (Oxford, 2007), pp. 121–30, particularly p. 128. On the Siculo-Punic coin of the fourth century BC from Poole Harbour, see E. S. G. Robinson, 'Greek coins', British Museum Quarterly, 11.1 (1936), 29–31 at p. 30; RCHME, 'Other Roman Monuments', in An Inventory of the Historical Monuments in Dorset, Volume 2, South East (London, 1970), pp. 592–621, online at http://www.british-history.ac.uk/rchme/dorset/vol2/pp592-621; J. G. Milne, Finds of Greek Coins in the British Isles (Oxford, 1948).
8     On the Porth Felen anchor stock and its date, see G. C. Boon, 'A Greco-Roman Anchor-Stock from North Wales', Antiquaries Journal, 57 (1977), 10–30; G. C. Boon, 'The Porth Felen anchor-stock', International Journal of Nautical Archaeology, 6 (1977), 239–42. Note, images of the recently-discovered Punic anchorage at Cala Levante, Pantelleria, Sicily, indicate that Type IIIb anchors were being used by at least some Punic/Carthaginian ships in the Mediterranean in the mid-third century BC, thus extending the chronology of this type back half a century further than it is assigned in Haldane, The Wooden Anchor, pp. 7–8, 13: see L. Abelli et al, 'The Roman conquest of Pantelleria through recent underwater archaeological investigations', in C. Dagneau & K. Gauvin (eds.), ACUA Underwater Archaeology Proceedings 2014 (ACUA, 2014), 345–55 at p. 347. The Type IIIb lead anchor stock from Plymouth Sound is recorded as SHIPS Project/ProMare, 'Lead Anchor Stock (10A05)', Shipwrecks and History in Plymouth Sound Project, finds database, accessed 15 August 2015, online at http://www.promare.co.uk/ships/Finds/Fd_10A05Anchor.html.
9     On the 'Tamar Estuary Iron Age coastal node' and Mount Batten, see Wilkes, Iron Age Maritime Nodes on the English Channel Coast, I.139–42, II.466–7; A. Firth et al, Tamar Estuaries Historic Environment: A Review of Marine and Coastal Archaeology (Plymouth, 1998); B. Cunliffe, Mount Batten, Plymouth: a Prehistoric and Roman Port (Oxford, 1988). Rame Head Iron Age promontory fort is Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record PRN 6000; on the name 'Rame', see O. J. Padel, Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), p. 147; Coates, 'Names of Some North-West European Islands', 237; and Green, 'Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians'.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2015, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

The distribution of Numidian coins recorded from Britain since the nineteenth century

The aim of the following post is simply to share a distribution map of Numidian coins that have been found in Britain since the nineteenth century. These coins were minted in the ancient North African Kingdom of Numidia and fall into two distinct groups, those issued in the mid-first century BC–early first century AD and those issued during the second century BC.

The distribution of Numidian coins recorded from Britain (drawn by C. R. Green). The above map is based on data from the Portable Antiquities Scheme, Historic England's Pastscape database, J. G. Milne, Finds of Greek Coins in the British Isles (Oxford, 1948); and R. D. Penhallurick, Ancient and Early Medieval Coins from Cornwall & Scilly (London, 2010).

A worn silver denarius of King Juba I, 60-46 BC, of Numidia, North Africa, found in southern Lincolnshire (image: PAS).

Although there are relatively few Numidian coins known from Britain compared to many other early non-Roman types—especially Carthaginian issues of the fourth and third centuries BC, which dominate the record of Greek autonomous coins from Britain—there are nonetheless enough to be at least worth noting, and their spatial distribution would appear to be of some interest. On the whole, these North African coins fall into two groups, with the first group representing issues of King Juba I of Numidia (60–46 BC) and his son, Juba II (29 BC–AD 24). Of these, only a single coin of Juba II is recorded in the material surveyed here (from Piercebridge near Darlington), whilst eight of Juba I are reported. In general, these coins of the mid-first century BC–early first century AD have a marked inland, central and eastern distribution within England, although there is a western outlier contained in a somewhat dubious hoard of coins found at Bath in 1806. With regard to when and how these North African coins of Juba I came to be in Britain, it is worth noting that in the 1960s–70s a silver coin of Juba I of Numidia was found 'stuck' to a silver unit of the Icenian King Prasutagus (c. AD 50–60). Similarly, a number of the coins recorded on the Portable Antiquities Scheme database were found singly within first-century AD hoards of Roman coins, such as those from 'North Suffolk', near Mildenhall, and Sutton (all Suffolk). The latest coins in these hoards date from AD 82–3, AD 79, and probably AD 37 respectively, whilst the report attached to the PAS record of the 'North Suffolk' hoard notes that 'Coins of Juba I are known to have circulated in Britain with Roman denarii, being of similar weight and size'. As such, the Numidian coins of Juba I and Juba II are probably best seen as genuinely ancient imports to Britain, arriving from the Continent with Roman coins either towards the end of the Late Iron Age or in the immediate post-Conquest period.

Map of the western and central Mediterranean in the period c. 148–121 BC, showing the extent of the Kingdom of Numidia in the reign of Micipsa, depicted here in light pink (image © Ian Mladjov, as per the licence).

The second group consists of coins of the second century BC that were minted by two of the early, great Numidian kings, Masinissa (202–148 BC) and Micipsa (148–118 BC), chiefly the latter. Masinissa was the first king of the unified Kingdom of Numidia, which was established in the aftermath of the defeat of Carthage in the Second Punic War of 218–202 BC. Micipsa was his son, who initially ruled Numidia with his brothers for a short period before becoming sole king through until his death in 118 BC. What is particularly of note here, however, is the very different distribution of these coins within Britain compared to those of Juba I—whereas the latter are found primarily inland in central and eastern Britain, the second-century BC coins have a distribution that is in the main coastal, western and southern. This contrast is clearly visible on the above distribution map and suggests that we could well be dealing with a rather different phenomenon to that which led to the presence of the first group of North African coins in Britain. In other words, if the coins of Masinissa and Micipsa are indeed ancient losses, then they probably arrived in Britain in a different manner and/or at a different time to the coins of Juba I and Juba II.

With regard to whether or not these second-century BC coins are, in fact, ancient losses, and when and how they might have arrived, two further points are of particular relevance. First, there are now a number of these coins known from Britain, as the above map shows, and they have not only been found widely distributed along the southern and western coasts of Britain, but also over a long period of time, from the early nineteenth century through until the early twenty-first. As such, the notion of them all being losses from modern collections might seem somewhat implausible. As Martin Biddle has noted with reference to a number of other primarily second-century BC coins from North Africa found in Britain (those of Ptolemaic Egypt), 'the proverbial absent-minded college don or cathedral canon, dropping items of his collection here, there and everywhere... has never seemed a very convincing character. The number of finds and the very various dates and places of their discovery demand some other explanation.' Whilst there are significantly fewer Numidian coins known from Britain than there are Ptolemaic issues, never mind Carthaginian, there are still arguably enough of them now recorded from a sufficiently wide area for this point to have a degree of validity in their case too. In other words, these coins probably similarly ought to be given the benefit of the doubt and treated as genuinely ancient losses, given their number, distribution and varying dates of discovery, unless there is obvious evidence to the contrary.

A Numidian coin of Micipsa (148–118 BC), found close to the Severn Estuary at Woolaston, Gloucestershire, and recorded as CCI 00.1404 (image: PAS)

Second, some of the find-spots of these early Numidian coins are of considerable potential interest. One of the coins of Micipsa plotted on the above map was, for example, discovered over four feet down at Mount Hawke (St Agnes), Cornwall, in 1981. Even more significantly, another was dug up in the nineteenth century at the massive and important prehistoric fort of Carn Brea, Cornwall, which was refortified in the Iron Age and has been the site of substantial finds of Celtic coins of the later second-century and first-century BC. Needless to say, such find-spots and circumstances are highly suggestive, with the Carn Brea coin in particular often thought likely to have been a pre-Roman loss, given where it was found. Indeed, it is worth noting in this context that Roger Penhallurick in his recent detailed survey of ancient and medieval coinage from Cornwall indicated that he considered both of the Cornish coins of Micipsa to be probably genuine pre-Roman imports, perhaps having arrived in Britain in the later second century BC. Similarly, that there was some sort of association between the two coins of Micipsa found in southern Dorset and the nearby and recently-excavated major Iron Age port of Poole Harbour, Dorset (discussed in a previous post), is not at all implausible. In this light, it can be observed that J. G. Milne, at least, certainly considered both of the Dorset coins to be genuine pre-Roman imports of the second century BC, brought to Britain by Mediterranean traders who used that harbour.

This is really the limit of what we can say about this second, earlier group of North African coins found in Britain at the present time. In sum, there would indeed seem to be a case for considering these second-century BC Numidian coins to be genuine ancient losses that, given their distinct and very different distribution, arrived in Britain separately from the issues of Juba I and Juba II, perhaps in the second-century BC itself. Quite what mechanism they found their way to Britain by is open to debate, but Milne's suggestion that these and other Greek coins of the second century BC travelled here with traders from the Mediterranean (who were perhaps seeking tin) has not only been endorsed by Malcolm Todd and others, but could also help to make sense of the primarily coastal, western and southern distribution of these early Numidian issues, for what it is worth. Indeed, it might be legitimately wondered whether their presence might not in fact somehow represent a much smaller-scale, second-century BC continuation of the earlier and increasingly well-evidenced Carthaginian trading contact with Britain, which seems to have taken place principally in the third century BC and before.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2015, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: Place-Names, Archaeology and Pre-Roman Trading Settlements in Eastern Kent?

Recent work suggests that the name of the easternmost part of Kent, the Isle of Thanet, is one that is of considerable potential interest, being indicative of a major pre-Roman trading settlement founded by Phoenician merchants from Cadiz and Carthage. The following post offers some details and thoughts on this intriguing possibility.

The Isle of Thanet in the Roman Period; click for a larger view (image copyright © Gerald Mood/Trust for Thanet Archaeology, 2011, used with permission).

Although no longer an island, Thanet was one right through to the end of the medieval period (until the Wantsum Channel finally silted up) and its name is recorded in a variety of sources from the second century AD onwards. Early and significant forms of the name include Ptolemy's Tonatis (c. AD 150; the TON- of this form was misread as TOΛI-, hence it appears as Toliatis in the surviving manuscripts of Ptolemy); Solinus's Tanatus (3rdC AD); Bede's Tanatos (AD 731); Old English Tenid and Tenet, evidenced in charters and other documents (e.g. charters of AD 679, 689 and thereafter); and the Old Welsh forms Tanet and Danet, found in the Historia Brittonum (c. AD 829/30) and Armes Prydein (c. AD 930).(1) The usual explanation of this name is that it derives from one of two well-known Celtic roots, either *tan-, 'fire', or *tann-, 'oak', so that it would mean 'fire island, place of fire' (perhaps in reference to an unrecorded Roman lighthouse or fire beacon) or 'oak-wood'. However, as Richard Coates has observed, there are notable linguistic issues with the proposed etymologies and the suggested early forms, with the result that a Celtic root for the name cannot, in fact, be confidently asserted. Indeed, Coates excludes the name Thanet from his "Gazetteer of Celtic names in England" and instead assigns it to his "Ancient" category, the description of which states that it 'covers both Old European [names] and anything else not fully explicable which must have been named before the arrival of the Anglo-Saxons, for instance Thanet and Haughmond'.(2)

So, the question becomes: what might be the origin of the name Thanet, if a Celtic etymology is seen as potentially too linguistically problematic to support? With regard to this, there is really only one credible alternative proposal that has been published, first by Rudolf Hennig in the 1920s and then with considerable elaboration by Theo Vennemann in 2006.(3) Vennemann argues at length that an acceptable and plausible root for the original British form of the name Thanet—*Tanitā, *Tanetā or *Tanetos/-is, according to Coates (4)—is actually available in the Punic language via a name 'Y TNT, meaning the 'Isle (of) Tanit', the chief goddess of the great, ancient Phoenician mercantile power of Carthage. He contends that an identical name originally applied to the island on which the Phoenician Atlantic colony of Cadiz was built—said by Pliny (Natural History, IV.36) to have been called by the natives the 'Isle of Juno', which Vennemann plausibly sees as reflecting an original Punic 'Y TNT, the 'Isle (of) Tanit', that had been subject to a clear interpretatio Romana, as Juno correspond to Tanit under this—and that this name was then also applied to a secondary trading colony established in Britain from Cadiz in a similar geographic location and as a result of Carthage's mercantile, colonial activities in the Atlantic.(5)

Needless to say, this is a fascinating possibility, and it is arguably nowhere near as incredible as it might seem to be at first glance. On the linguistic side of the equation, it is worth noting that Richard Coates has briefly returned to the name Thanet since Vennemann wrote, and comments as follows:

Vennemann (2006) explores the possibility of a PrSem [Proto-Semitic] origin for Thanet. I myself mentioned that such a possibility had been suggested in the past, but did not pursue it, in a paper whose main topic was the alternative recorded name Ruoihin or the like (2000: 32–9); Vennemann’s more sophisticated work on this persuades me that I may have missed an opportunity. He concludes, arraying a great deal of evidence which I have no space to repeat here, that the name enshrines that of the Phoenician goddess Tanit.(6)

Such a positive reaction to the linguistic case on offer from a leading English place-name specialist is, of course, interesting. Moreover, recent work on British place-names suggests that Thanet may not, in fact, stand alone, and is instead one of a small number of obscure and difficult names from Britain that could potentially have Proto-Semitic/Punic roots. So, for example, Rame Head in Cornwall is an Iron Age promontory fort that guards the entrance to the large, natural deep water harbour of Plymouth Sound and the associated 'Tamar Estuary Iron Age coastal node'. This name—Rame in 1086 and thereafter—is, according to Oliver Padel, 'completely obscure' and 'unexplained', with no convincing explanation possible in either Cornish or English; however, it has been pointed out that there may well be such a potential and appropriate explanation available in Proto-Semitic, via the Semitic height-word *rām, as found in the modern place-names Ramat Gan, Israel, and Ramallah, Palestine (Proto-Semitic root *rwm), which would fit this imposing, conical headland well.(7)

Rame Head, Cornwall, as seen from the sea (image: Wikimedia Commons)

Similarly, it has recently been argued that a handful of British island-names may derive from various Proto-Semitic roots that seem to be both topographically or otherwise appropriate to the sites in question and elucidate previously inexplicable names. Thus the island-name Sark refers to the easternmost and outermost island of the Guernsey geological group of islands, and while its source has been considered unknown and left unexplained in the past, a potential explanation is, in fact, available in the Proto-Semitic word *śrq, 'redden; rise (as of the sun); east'—compare Arabic šarq, 'east'. Needless to say, such an origin would not only explain the form of the name, but would also be topographically and semantically appropriate. Other instances of British islands bearing names that could likewise derive from Proto-Semitic include the difficult Welsh island-name Echri in the Severn Estuary (English Flat Holm, the last inhabitable island met as one journeys up the Severn, which has a potential Proto-Semitic origin in a name meaning the rearmost island), the unexplained name of the Isles of Scilly (which could reflect Proto-Semitic *s-l-, cf. Hebrew sela, 'rock', and thus be a name meaning 'The Rocks'; note, the -c- in the modern name is a post-medieval innovation), and several islands off the west coast of Britain including the collective name Hebrides, which either means the 'sheep islands' in Proto-Semitic or is impossible to satisfactorily explain.(8)

Obviously the suggested Proto-Semitic etymologies for these other coastal names are themselves open to debate and potential alternative explanations might be advanced for them, with a greater or lesser degree of plausibility. However, what matters is not any individual name, but rather their collective weight and the fact that a Proto-Semitic/Punic origin both appears to be at least possible and appropriate for a small but significant number of otherwise very difficult British coastal names. In other words, when taken together, these names would seem to offer an important potential linguistic context for a derivation of the island-name Thanet from Punic 'Y TNT, the 'Isle (of) Tanit'.

If there is therefore a credible linguistic case and possible context for a Punic origin for Thanet, what then of the historical and archaeological context? Certainly, there is a small amount of well-known textual evidence that might have some bearing on this, not least the classical references to a Carthaginian explorer named Himilco. Himilco undertook a maritime expedition—with 'hints of colonization'—north from Cadiz and the Pillars of Herakles (Straits of Gibraltar) sometime just after 500 BC or thereabouts, and it is thought that he visited Britain and Ireland as part of this.(9) Similarly, Strabo (Geography, 3.5.11) mentions the important ancient tin trade with the Kassiterides, the 'Tin Islands', which have often been credibly identified with either the Isles of Scilly or Cornwall, and goes on to state that 'in former times it was the Phoenicians alone', from Cadiz, 'who carried on this commerce'.(10)

The distribution of Carthaginian coins found in Britain (drawn by C. R. Green). This is image is based primarily on the data recorded by the Portable Antiquities Scheme; Historic England's Pastscape database; J. Laing & L. Laing, 'A Mediterranean trade with Wirral in the Iron Age', Cheshire Archaeological Bulletin, 9 (1983), 7–9; D. Holman, 'Iron Age Coinage and Settlement in East Kent', Britannia, 36 (2005), 1–54; J. G. Milne, Finds of Greek Coins in the British Isles (Oxford, 1948); and R. D. Penhallurick, Ancient and Early Medieval Coins from Cornwall & Scilly (London, 2010).

Such historical hints of a degree of contact between the pre-Roman Britons and Phoenician traders and adventurers from Cadiz and Carthage are obviously few and far between, but they cannot be dismissed entirely and they undoubtedly provide a potential historical context for the suggested derivation of a number of British coastal names from Proto-Semitic/Punic, as Vennemann, Coates and Broderick have all observed.(11) However, they do not stand alone in this. In this light, it need to be remembered that a significant number of Carthaginian coins of the fourth and third centuries BC are, in fact, now known from Britain. In the past, these have been sometimes dismissed as chance losses by modern collectors, but this no longer seems like a credible solution, given the number of coins involved, the long period over which they have been found, and their distribution within Britain, amongst other factors. Instead, it is now usually thought that while some of these coins may have arrived in Britain during the Roman period or the modern era, a great number of them are actually likely to have arrived during the pre-Roman Iron Age.(12)

The above is obviously a point of considerable importance in the present context, and matters become even more suggestive when one turns to look at the distribution of these coins on the map included here. There is, for example, a clear concentration of Carthaginian coinage along the south coast of England, and especially around the major Iron Age port of Poole Harbour, the site of the only excavated Iron Age harbour piers or moles in Britain. These two apparently monumental structures date from the third century BC and were clearly well-built and substantial: up to 160 metres long, 8 metres wide, and with paved stone surfaces of creamy-white Purbeck marble, the piers together extended out into the deep-water channel, narrowing its entrance and thus enabling the control of access to the harbour within.(13) Similarly, other significant concentrations of Carthaginian coins are easily discernible in and around the Severn Estuary; in the north-west, at the important pre-Roman trading site of Meols on the Wirral (Cheshire); and in the Thames Valley—all plausible sites for early maritime traders to have visited. However, the most impressive concentration of Carthaginian coins in Britain is undoubtedly that found in east Kent, including the Isle of Thanet, where far more of these Mediterranean coins have been found (on multiple sites) than is the case anywhere else in Britain.(14) Needless to say, such a coincidence of evidence is astonishing. By far the greatest concentration of Carthaginian coinage in Britain occurs in just that area of the country where a linguistic case has been independently made for the possible presence of a trading settlement in Britain that was used and named by Carthaginian merchants. In such circumstances, it is hard not to see the coin finds as offering a substantial degree of support for Vennemann's etymology and interpretation of the name Thanet.

In conclusion, although at first glance it might seem to be rather incredible, there does in fact appear to be a reasonable outline case to be made for Thanet having been the site of a pre-Roman coastal trading settlement that was used by Phoenician traders from Cadiz and Carthage and named by them after their home island at Cadiz, 'Y TNT, the 'Isle (of) Tanit', as Vennemann suggests. The linguistic case for a derivation of the place-name Thanet from 'Y TNT appears to be credible; there is a linguistic context for the derivation in terms of a small number of other difficult and inexplicable coastal names from around Britain that similarly might be appropriately explained via Proto-Semitic/Punic roots; there are hints in the literary sources of Phoenician/Carthaginian contact with pre-Roman Britain, involving trade and exploration; and there is now a substantial corpus of Carthaginian coins known from Britain that seem to be largely focussed around key coastal and riverine sites, with by far the greatest concentration of this material being found in the vicinity of Thanet itself. Needless to say, no-one would wish to claim that the case is certain, and further archaeological evidence would be very welcome, but the coincidence of evidence is arresting and the case is at the very least worthy of some serious consideration.


Notes

1    V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), p. 606; A. L. F. Rivet & C. Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 468–9.
2    Watts, Cambridge Dictionary, p, 606; E. Ekwall, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Place-Names, 4th edn. (Oxford, 1960), p. 464; Rivet & Smith, Place-Names of Roman Britain, pp. 468–9; B. Cox, ‘The place-names of the earliest English records’, Journal of the English Place-Name Society, 8 (1976), 12–66 at p. 27; R. Coates, A. Breeze and D. Horovitz, Celtic Voices, English Places: Studies of the Celtic Impact on Place-Names in England (Stamford, 2000), pp. 32–9, 267 (quotation); T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), pp. 345–74, especially pp. 345–8, 357–9. Note, the notion that the name Thanet derives from Greek thanatos, 'death', is a learned folk-etymology, see Watts, Cambridge Dictionary, p. 606; Coates in Coates et al, Celtic Voices, p. 32; and Rivet & Smith, Place-Names of Roman Britain, pp. 70, 469.
3    See Vennemann, 'Name of the Isle of Thanet', especially pp. 357–8, where he translates and summarizes Hennig's earlier argument, which was published in his Terrae Incognitae, 4 vols., 2nd edn. (Leiden, 1925), I.87.
4    Coates in Coates et al, Celtic Voices, p. 33; he goes on to say that '[i]ts Brittonic form was *Taned, whichever of the above possibilities was its source'.
5    Vennemann, 'Name of the Isle of Thanet', especially pp. 352–6, 362, 364–5, 370.
6    R. Coates, 'A Glimpse through a Dirty Window into an Unlit House: Names of Some North-West European Islands', in W. Ahrens et al (edd.), Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, August 17-22, 2008 (Toronto, 2009), pp. 228–42 at pp. 234–5.
7    O. J. Padel, Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), p. 147; Coates, 'Some North-West European Islands', p. 237. Rame Head Iron Age promontory fort is Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record PRN 6000; on the 'Tamar Estuary Iron Age coastal node', see E. Wilkes, Iron Age Maritime Nodes on the English Channel Coast: An Investigation into the Location, Nature and Context of Early Ports and Harbours, 2 vols. (Bournemouth University PhD Thesis, 2004), I.141–2, II.466–7, and A. Firth et al, Tamar Estuaries Historic Environment: A Review of Marine and Coastal Archaeology (Plymouth, 1998).
8     See Coates, 'Some North-West European Islands', especially pp. 234, 235; G. Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 7 (2013), 1–28, especially pp. 4–5; Watts, Cambridge Dictionary, p. 531 (on the name Scilly being unexplained); T. Vennemann, 'Remarks on some British Place-Names', in G. F. Carr et al (edd.), Interdigitations: Essays  for Irmengard Rauch (New York, 1999), pp. 25–62 at pp. 40–2, 46.
9    D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 27–9; D. W. Roller, 'Himilco the Navigator', in E. K. Akyeampong & H. L. Gates Jnr. (edd.), Dictionary of African Biography, 6 vols. (Oxford, 2012), III.70.
10    Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles, pp. 12–14; Vennemann, 'Name of the Isle of Thanet', p. 356 and fn. 40. In this context, it may be worth at least noting that Pytheas, writing c. 320 BC, is thought to have visited the tin mines of Cornwall (Belerion) and reported that the inhabitants were 'especially friendly to strangers and have adopted a civilized way of life because of their interaction with traders and other people': B. Cunliffe, Britain Begins (Oxford, 2013), pp. 319–20, citing Diodorus Siculus, 5.1–5, who is generally believed to be repeating Pytheas's account. Note, the idea that people from south-west Iberia and/or north Africa could have directly visited Britain in the pre-Roman era has recently received some very significant support from the isotopic analysis of teeth from a Late Bronze Age to Middle Iron Age cemetery at Cliffs End Farm, Thanet, Kent. This analysis indicates that around 20% of those who were buried in that cemetery had actually been brought up in south-west Iberia or north Africa before moving to Kent. Needless to say, this is a conclusion of considerable interest, both in terms of the support it offers for the reality of long-distance direct maritime movement between Britain and Iberia/Africa in the first millennium BC and, potentially, for the importance of Thanet in this regard. See further J. I. McKinley et al, 'Dead-sea connections: a Bronze Age and Iron Age ritual site on the Isle of Thanet', in J. T. Koch & B. Cunliffe (eds.), Celtic from the West 2. Rethinking the Bronze Age and the Arrival of Indo-European in Atlantic Europe (Oxford, 2013), pp. 157–83 at pp. 166–8, and now J. I. McKinley et al, Cliffs End Farm, Isle of Thanet, Kent. A Mortuary and Ritual Site of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon Period with Evidence for Long-Distance Maritime Mobility (Salisbury, 2014).
11    Vennemann, 'Name of the Isle of Thanet', p. 356; Coates, 'Some North-West European Islands', p. 230; Broderick, 'Some island names', passim.
12    For example, P. de Jersey, Celtic Coinage in Britain (Princes Risborough, 1996), p. 15; J. Laing & L. Laing, 'A Mediterranean trade with Wirral in the Iron Age', Cheshire Archaeological Bulletin, 9 (1983), 7–9; J. G. Milne, Finds of Greek Coins in the British Isles (Oxford, 1948); B. W. Cunliffe, Iron Age Communities in Britain: An Account of England, Scotland, and Wales from the Seventh Century BC Until the Roman Conquest, 3rd edn (London, 1991), p. 431; and D. Holman, 'Iron Age Coinage and Settlement in East Kent', Britannia, 36 (2005), 1–54 at pp. 39–41. See also R. G. Goodchild & J. G. Milne, 'The Greek Coins from Exeter Reconsidered', Numismatic Chronicle, 17 (1937), 124–34; S. Applebaum, 'Were There Jews in Roman Britain?', Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 17 (1951–2), 189–205 at pp. 189–90; and M. Todd, The South West to 1000 AD (London, 1987), pp. 214–16. Compare also M. Biddle, 'Ptolemaic coins from Winchester', Antiquity, 49 (1975), 213–15, on the Ptolemaic coins found in Britain.
13    M. Markey, E. Wilkes & T. Darvill, 'Poole Harbour: an Iron Age port', Current Archaeology, 181 (2002), 7–11. See also Historic England's Pastscape Database, Monument No. 457510 ('Poole Iron Age Port'); Wilkes, Iron Age Maritime Nodes on the English Channel Coast, I.169–215, II.316–17, 321–7; and E. Wilkes, 'Prehistoric sea journeys and port approaches: the south coast and Poole Harbour', in V. Cummings & R. Johnston (eds.), Prehistoric Journeys (Oxford, 2007), pp. 121–30. Interestingly, Wilkes notes not only that the two harbour piers would have been 'visually impressive' and monumental, but also that the harbour design might be potentially compared with a number of Mediterranean harbours, including that of Motya, Sicily, a Phoenician and Carthaginian colony (Wilkes, Iron Age Maritime Nodes, I.212, and 'The south coast and Poole Harbour', p. 128).
14    See especially Holman, 'Iron Age Coinage and Settlement in East Kent', who records at least 22 Carthaginian coins from East Kent (p. 40, fn. 183).

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2015, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

Ptolemaic coins recorded from Britain by the Portable Antiquities Scheme

The primary aim of the following post is to very quickly share a distribution map of Ptolemaic coins that have been recorded from Britain on the PAS. The coins mapped and briefly discussed below date from the reigns of Ptolemy I to Ptolemy VIII, c.323–127 BC, and were minted in Egypt, Cyprus and Libya.

Distribution of Ptolemaic coins dating from the reigns of Ptolemy I to Ptolemy VIII, c.323–127 BC, recorded from Britain on the PAS through to February 2015 (drawn by C. R. Green)

As can be seen from the above map, the PAS records a small but significant number of these coins from Britain, many of which were found on or near to the coast or major rivers. Jennifer and Lloyd Laing, writing before the PAS came into existence, noted that the corpus of 'Greek autonomous issues' then known from Britain was dominated by Carthaginian coins, rivalled only by Ptolemaic issues, and the finds recorded from the PAS reproduce this pattern, as can be seen from the following map of mint sites of Mediterranean Greek autonomous issues. The varying size of the circles depicted on this map reflect the relative numbers of pre-Roman Greek coins from that mint that have been recorded from Britain by the PAS, with Carthaginian issues (minted in North Africa, Sardinia, Sicily and Ibiza) clearly most common of all, but Ptolemaic issues (minted in Egypt, Cyprus and Libya) a close second, and then coins from other areas and dynasties—such as Marseilles, Macedonia and the Seleucid Empire—being much less frequently found.

Mints producing the Mediterranean Greek autonomous coins that have been recorded from Britain by the Portable Antiquities Scheme (drawn by C. R.. Green)

Needless to say, a key question with regard to these coins is whether they are best seen as modern or ancient losses. With regard to this, several points can be made. First, the PAS coins do not stand alone, but instead form part of a larger corpus of Ptolemaic coins found in Britain over the course of more than a century, which is sufficiently substantial that we would have to assume a quite surprising and arguably implausible number of careless nineteenth- and twentieth-century coin collectors existed in Britain in order to explain it away. As Martin Biddle argued in 1975, when discussing the eight to ten Ptolemaic coins found in and around Winchester (Hampshire) during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, 'the proverbial absent-minded college don or cathedral canon, dropping items of his collection here, there and everywhere... has never seemed a very convincing character', and the number of finds and extensive time period over which they have been made means that these coins should probably be seen as genuine ancient losses unless there is obvious evidence to the contrary, rather than modern losses or even hoaxes.

Second, if some of the Carthaginian coins are thought to have been ancient losses that arrived during Britain's Iron Age, rather than in the Roman period, then there seems little reason why the same cannot be true of the Ptolemaic issues too. Indeed, it is worth observing that, for example, the Winchester coins are probably to be associated with the Middle to Late Iron Age oppidum at Winchester.

Third and finally, the map of coin mints included above does not look quite how we might expect it to if the Greek autonomous issues that have been found in a Britain were simply a random selection of losses from modern-era ancient coin collections. As was the case with the pre-PAS finds that Jennifer and Lloyd Laing mention, the PAS dataset is clearly dominated by Carthaginian and Ptolemaic issues, with, for example, notably fewer Macedonian, Anatolian, Syracusan, or pre-Hellenistic (Classical) Greek autonomous coins represented. This differential loss is interesting and might well inspire some confidence that many of the pre-Roman Greek coins that have been been found in Britain are indeed genuinely ancient losses.

The distribution of all coins from the neighbouring Hellenistic Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires that have been found in Britain through to 2015, as recorded by the PAS, Pastscape and Milne (image: C. R. Green). Note, the predominantly coastal and riverine distribution of these coins is of some potential interest in light of the discussion of the possible origins of Ptolemaic coins found in Britain offered above, and it is furthermore worth observing that at least one person buried in fourth–third century BC Kent is now thought likely to have actually grown up in the Nile Delta. Although the majority of the coins plotted here are Ptolemaic, a small but notable proportion are Seleucid, particularly from Exeter; in 1987, Malcolm Todd followed Milne and Goodchild in arguing that these coins may credibly reflect visits by eastern Mediterranean traders to the Exe Estuary/south coast in the pre-Roman period (and note here the Mediterranean anchor and Mediterranean-style harbour of this period recently discovered at Plymouth and Poole, respectively), although the Exeter collection of Hellenistic and later coins has also been conversely subjected to a degree of (arguably somewhat hypercritical) scepticism by George Boon too.

Map of the Ptolemaic and Seleucid Empires in c. 200 BC, drawn by Thomas Lessman (image: Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0).

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2015, 2016, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.