A man of possible African ancestry buried in Anglo-Scandinavian York

The aim of the following brief note is to direct attention to a burial from a late ninth- to early eleventh-century cemetery in York. The burials here were originally excavated in 1989–90, but an osteological analysis in 2015 suggested that one of the people buried here was a man of possible African or mixed ancestry.

Reconstruction painting of the wooden houses of the Viking-Age city of Jorvik (York), as it might have appeared in the early 10th century (image: York Archaeological Trust, CC BY-NC-SA).

The burial in question is known as SK 3377, which is a well-preserved skeleton of a mature adult male that was buried in a wooden coffin dated via dendrochronology to 'after 892'. This oak coffin comes from a late ninth- to early eleventh-century cemetery that was excavated at 12-18 Swinegate, 14 Little Stonegate and 18 Back Swinegate, York, in 1989–90, this being originally the graveyard of the former St Benet's Church at York (demolished between 1299 and 1307). Around 100 burials have been excavated from this site, half of which were placed in wooden coffins with no metal fittings, and only a single burial within the cemetery was accompanied by grave goods. In this context, SK 3377 doesn't appear to have been treated noticeably different from the majority of the people who were buried there.(1) Seven of the skeletons from this cemetery, including SK 3379, were subsequently examined in 2015 by Katie Keefe and Malin Holst of York Osteoarchaeology. They concluded that the population of this cemetery as a whole showed signs of having lived a physically strenuous life and suffered from poor health, with SK 3379 being just one of a number of people buried here who had evidence for dietary deficiencies, joint disease and crush injuries to their spines. However, an examination of the remains in order to make ancestry determinations suggested that SK 3379 was unusual in one way: unlike the other six individuals examined, Malin Holst and Katie Keefe concluded that he 'may have been of African or mixed ancestry and may have migrated to York or descended from those that did'.(2)

A tableau of fishermen working and talking at Anglo-Scandinavian York, from the Jorvik Viking Centre, York (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Needless to say, the above possibility is of considerable interest. SK 3379 is not, of course, the first person from Late Saxon/Anglo-Scandinavian England to have been identified as of potential 'Sub-Saharan' African ancestry. As was detailed in a previous post, a small number of other burials from this period have been identified with varying degrees of certainty as those of people of African ancestry on the basis of an examination of their skeletal remains. One of these burials was discovered in 2013 at Fairford, Gloucestershire, and has been described as being that of 'a woman, aged between 18 and 24, from Sub-Saharan Africa', with radiocarbon dating indicating that she very probably died at some point between AD 896 and 1025, although the full details of this burial are unfortunately yet to be published.(3) Perhaps the best known, however, is that of an apparent African woman buried c. 1000 in the Late Saxon cemetery at North Elmham, Norfolk. This burial is discussed in detail in Calvin Wells' and Helen Cayton's contribution to the East Anglian Archaeology report on North Elmham, published in 1980, and also in Helen Cayton's 1977 PhD thesis, and the identification is said by them to 'leave little doubt' and be 'incontestable', although we do need to be aware that this ancestry determination was made some time ago and without details provided of how it was reached.(4) In addition, there is an interesting body of oxygen isotope evidence drawn from archaeological human teeth for the presence of people in seventh- to ninth-century in eastern Britain who could potentially have grown up in North Africa. In particular, multiple people buried in both the Bamburgh and Ely cemeteries have phosphate oxygen isotope values that might be consistent with them having spent their youth in a warmer and more southerly region such as parts of southernmost Iberia or North Africa. Such a situation would, of course, find support in the often-noted description of Hadrian—the later seventh and early eighth-century Abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury—as 'a man of African race' by Bede (Historia Ecclesiastica, IV.1), perhaps reflecting an early life spent in Libya Cyrenaica, although in the present context it must be recognised that the above isotopic evidence cannot tell us about the ancestry so much as the geographical origins of these people.(5)

The final section of FA 330, detailing how the Vikings brought a 'great host' of North African captives back to Ireland, from O'Donovan's 1860 edition of the text; click the image for a larger view (image: Internet Archive).

In addition to such archaeological parallels, attention can also be drawn to the evidence of the eleventh-century Fragmentary Annals of Ireland, which relates the story of a Viking raid on Morocco (Mauritania) in the mid-ninth century that led to the taking of 'a great host' of captives:

Then they brought a great host of them captive with them to Ireland, i.e. those are the black men. For Mauri is the same as nigri; 'Mauritania' is the same as nigritudo. Hardly one in three of the Norwegians escaped, between those who were slain, and those who drowned in the Gaditanian Straits. Now those black men remained in Ireland for a long time.(6)

This account was discussed at length in a previous post, and the notion that it reflects real events is supported by Al-Bakrī's Kitāb al-Masālik wa-al-Mamālik, which relates that 'Majūs [Vikings]—God curse them—landed at Nakūr [Nekor, Morocco], in the year 244 (858–9). They took the city, plundered it, and made its inhabitants slaves, except those who saved themselves by flight... The Majūs stayed eight days in Nakūr.'(7) Likewise, the late ninth-century Christian Chronicle of Alfonso III relates that the 'Northman pirates... sailed the sea and attacked Nekur, a city in Mauritania, and there they killed a vast number of Muslims.'(8)

Of course, it does need to be emphasised that there is no reason to directly connect the burials of a small number of people of possible African or mixed ancestry in Late Saxon/Anglo-Scandinavian England with this specific, mid-ninth-century Viking raid on Morocco. Rather, the various accounts of a raid on Morocco are best interpreted as offering support for the plausibility of the sort of movement between North Africa and Britain/Ireland in this period that might have resulted in SK 3379 having 'migrated to York' or been 'descended from those that did', if he was indeed of 'African or mixed ancestry' as Keefe and Holst cautiously suggest. Likewise, we don't need to assume that all such interactions were hostile in the way described in the Fragmentary Annals either, nor that any people of African ancestry who might have been present in Britain at this time were enslaved or descended from enslaved people. Certainly, there is nothing from the burial of SK 3379 himself to offer support for such a conclusion; instead, he appears in both life and death to be similar to the rest of the community buried at St Benet's.

A silver penny minted at York in the name of St Peter of York, c. 921–7, found in Lincolnshire near to Newark (image: PAS).

Notes

1.     For details of this burial site and discussions of the material found there, see K. Keefe & M. Holst, Osteological Analysis 12-18 Swinegate, 14 Little Stonegate & 18 Back Swinegate, York, North Yorkshire, York Osteology Report no. 1815 (York, 2015); J. M. McComish, The Pre-Conquest Coffins from 12-18 Swinegate and 18 Back Swinegate, York Archaeological Trust Report no. 2015/46 (York, 2015); S. J. Allen, Wooden Coffins and Grave Furniture from 12–18 Swinegate, 14 Little Stonegate, and 18 Back Swinegate, York (YORYM 1989.28, 1990.28, 1990.1): an Insight Report (York, 2015); and J. L. Buckberry, A Social and Anthropological Analysis of Conversion Period and Later Anglo-Saxon Cemeteries in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire, 4 vols. (University of Sheffield PhD Thesis, 2004), vol. 1, pp. 23–5, 185, 217–19.
2.     Keefe & Holst, Osteological Analysis; see especially pp. 1 (quotation), 7–8, on the ancestry determination; my thanks to Malin Holst of the York Osteoarchaeology and the University of York for discussing this burial with me. The remains were analysed using standard methods for the assessment of ancestry in modern forensic anthropology, like those undertaken recently for a significant number of Roman-era burials from York too, using the criteria set out by S. N. Byers, Introduction to Forensic Anthropology (International Edition), 3rd edn (Boston, 2010), pp. 152-65. For the Roman-era studies, see S. Leach et al, 'Migration and diversity in Roman Britain: a multidisciplinary approach to the identification of immigrants in Roman York, England', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 140 (2009), 546–61, and S. Leach et al, 'A Lady of York: migration, ethnicity and identity in Roman Britain', Antiquity, 84 (2010), 131–45.
3.     M. Archer, 'Fairford schoolboys who found skull are fascinated to hear it dates back 1,000 years', Wilts and Gloucestershire Standard, 20 September 2013, newspaper report, available online.
4.     P. Wade-Martins, East Anglian Archaeology Report No. 9: Excavations in North Elmham Park 1967–72, 2 vols. (Gressenhall, 1980), vol. 2, pp. 259–62, 317–9; H. M. Clayton, Anglo-Saxon Medicine within its Social Context (University of Durham PhD Thesis, 1977), pp. 224–6.
5.     The phosphate oxygen isotope values recorded from the seventh- to ninth-century cemetery at Bamburgh (the 'royal city' of the Northumbrians) and the seventh-century cemetery at Ely both show the presence of multiple people buried there with values significantly above the maximum values expected for people who grew up in the British Isles (often defined as 18.6‰ δ¹⁸O_p, although people on the far western margins of Britain and Ireland could theoretically have values up to 19.2‰ δ¹⁸O_p) or, indeed, anywhere in Europe: see further this previous post, especially footnote 2. So, at Ely two people buried there had results of 19.7‰ δ¹⁸O_p and 19.9‰ δ¹⁸O_p, whilst at Bamburgh two people had results of 20.1‰ δ¹⁸O_p and 20.3‰ δ¹⁸O_p and a further five people had results ranging from 19.3‰ δ¹⁸O_p to 19.5‰ δ¹⁸O_p. See on these sites S. Lucy et al, 'The burial of a princess? The later seventh-­century cemetery at Westfield Farm, Ely', Antiquity, 89 (2009), 81–141; 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.); and 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. On Hadrian's origins, see for example B. Bischoff & M. Lapidge, Biblical Commentaries from the Canterbury School of Theodore and Hadrian (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 84–92.
6.     J. N. Radner (ed. & trans.), Fragmentary Annals of Ireland (Dublin, 1978), FA 330, pp. 120–1.
7.     A. Christys, Vikings in the South: Voyages to Iberia and the Mediterranean (London, 2015), p. 54.
8.     V. E. Aguirre, The Viking Expeditions to Spain During the 9th Century, Mindre Skrifter No. 30 (Odense, 2013), p. 21.

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A North African Barbary ape in fifth- to sixth-century Britain? A short note on the significance and context of the Wroxeter macaque remains

The focus of the current post is an unusual find of Barbary ape remains from a fifth- or sixth-century AD context at Wroxeter (Shropshire), once the fourth largest city in Roman Britain. The Barbary ape, or more properly the Barbary macaque, is primarily a North African species of monkey, but the Wroxeter find forms part of a small body of archaeological evidence for their presence as exotic pets and imported curiosities in Iron Age, Roman and medieval Europe, with a significant proportion of these finds actually coming from Britain and Ireland.

Finds of North African Barbary ape remains from Iron Age, Roman and medieval Europe; click here for a larger version of this map. Archaeological excavations producing Barbary ape remains are shown by dark blue dots whilst the modern-day range of Barbary apes is shown in dark red (image: C. R. Green, based on a base map from Wikimedia Commons).

Barbary macaques (Macaca sylvanus), commonly known as Barbary apes, are a species of Old World monkey indigenous to North Africa whose range in antiquity is thought to have extended from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco and Algeria across into what is now Tunisia and western Libya, with the small European colony on the Rock of Gibraltar probably established by the eighth century AD but potentially not much earlier than this (it is not mentioned by the classical authorities who discuss the Rock). As such, the presence of Barbary ape remains in 'post-Roman' Wroxeter, Shropshire, is certainly intriguing.

The remains in question consist of a well-preserved first phalange of a Barbary ape from a Phase Y–Z context (E74) at the Romano-British city of Viroconium Cornoviorum, modern Wroxeter.(1) These phases of activity were ascribed by Philip Barker to the sixth to seventh centuries in his final excavation report on the Wroxeter baths basilica, although the date and significance of these post-Roman phases have subsequently been the subject of some scepticism and potential revision—so, for example, the reality of the vast timber-framed structure of Phase Z has been challenged, as has the archaeomagnetic dating of Phase X that placed that period firmly in the post-Roman era.(2) Nonetheless, it still seems clear that there was indeed notable activity in Wroxeter during the early post-Roman era, even if we can no longer be as certain of its scale or duration. Thus radiocarbon dates from a hearth, a dump and a surface all suggest continued activity into the late fifth and sixth centuries, and this is supported by finds of a fifth- or sixth-century memorial stone with a Latin inscription (the Cunorix stone), a bronze coin of Valentinian III (c. AD 430–35), and sherds of imported Palestinian LR4 amphorae which are arguably of fifth-century date here.(3) Needless to say, the Barbary ape remains fit well into the above context and clearly offer further evidence for long-distance contacts between Britain and the Mediterranean in the 'post-Roman' era, particularly given that it is thought significantly more likely that the animal would have arrived in good condition if it had travelled directly from North Africa via the sea rather than indirectly overland, perhaps being imported via the port of Meols on the Wirral (which has seen finds of early Byzantine coins and one or two late fifth- to mid-seventh-century St Menas pilgrim flasks from Egypt) or the River Severn (the Bristol Channel area having seen finds of 'post-Roman'-era African Red Slip Ware from North Africa as well as other Mediterranean imports).(4)

The remains of the 'Old Work', part of the baths basilica complex at Viroconium Cornoviorum (Wroxeter); this surviving 7 metre high wall and arch is the largest piece of free-standing Roman wall in Britain (image: Nilfanion/Wikimedia Commons).

With regard to the role that this Barbary ape might have had in fifth- or sixth-century Wroxeter, there is unfortunately no contextual evidence from Wroxeter, but it is certainly the case that other archaeological finds from Britain and Europe suggest that Barbary apes were often highly valued in Roman and Late Antique society. For example, there is currently one other Late Antique find of a Barbary ape known from western Europe, discovered in the former Roman city of Iulia Libica, modern Llívia, in north-eastern Spain. This animal died in the fifth or sixth century (AD 515 ± 85) at around five and a half years of age, and was buried with a number of offerings including decorated metallic pieces and some bronze military belts typical of the Late Roman period, something believed to be indicative of the macaque having been a military pet—perhaps associated with an officer—that may have played a symbolic role as a mascot, totem or signum within the unit as a whole.(5) In this context, it is worth noting that Roman-era finds of Barbary ape remains have likewise been found in probable military contexts from a military (legionary) necropolis at Cutry in Meurthe-et-Moselle, northern France; from the vicus associated with the second- to third-century Roman fort of Rainau-Buch in Germany; and from the Roman fort of Cataractonium (Catterick, North Yorkshire), where a presumed Roman-era fragmentary skull of a male individual aged around 3 years was discovered whilst digging a modern service trench.(6)

A number of finds of Barbary apes also come from Roman urban or domestic contexts. Of particular interest here is a later third- to early fourth-century AD necropolis at the Roman city of Lemonum, modern Poitiers, where an adult Barbary ape was apparently buried alongside its owner inside a large stone-built funerary enclosure. Needless to say, this would seem to reflect the macaque being especially valued by its owner, and in this light it is perhaps worth noting that its burial probably involved a wooden coffin and is comparable in character to a number of infant burials excavated within the necropolis.(7) Other finds of Barbary apes from urban or domestic contexts include an incomplete juvenile skeleton of a macaque from Pompeii; a skull and mandible of a young Barbary ape from Constantinople that was discovered during the excavation of the Harbour of Theodosius, Yenikapı; a late second- to early third-century AD individual found at the House with the Large Triclinium at Le Clos de la Lombarde, Narbonne, France, where it had been deposited in a well at Marcus Claudius Aestivo's rich domus along with 27 human infants and dogs; and the skeleton of a young macaque found in a second-century pit at the small Romano-British town of Durocobrivis, modern Dunstable, Bedfordshire.(8)

An Early Byzantine mosaic of a Barbary ape from the Great Palace of Constantinople, usually dated to the sixth century AD (image: Laurom/Wikimedia Commons).

In addition to the ten finds listed above from Roman or Late Antique archaeological contexts in Europe, there have also been a small number of Iron Age and medieval Barbary apes found too. The Iron Age is represented by only two finds, one from Titelberg, a hillfort/oppidum of the Treveri in Luxembourg, and another from Navan Fort, Northern Ireland. The latter find consists of a skull and mandible of a Barbary ape radiocarbon dated to 390–20 BC and found in a phase IIIii context of c. 250–100 BC. It was discovered within the wall-slot of one of the large central buildings of Navan Fort, something that has led to the suggestion that the macaque's remains were utilized in death as a votive offering, and its presence in Iron Age Northern Ireland has been reasonably considered evidence for a sea-trade route between northern Ireland and the western Mediterranean world at that time.(9) From the medieval period there are five archaeological finds of Barbary apes known. Three come from the UK and consist of a macaque excavated from a medieval context at Friars’ Street, London, which shows signs of having been kept in captivity; a fourteenth-century skeleton found at Carrickfergus, Northern Ireland; and a late thirteenth-century skull and clavicle from Southampton, recovered from a rubbish pit attached to a large stone house owned by Richard of Southwick, a wealthy merchant who had trading connections with Spain.(10) There are also two finds made on the Continent, namely a medieval macaque discovered in Hitzacker, Lower Saxony (Germany), and a probably late twelfth-century skull from Novgorod, north-western Russia. The latter is the most northerly archaeological find of Barbary ape remains known from Europe and comes from Rurikovo Gorodische, a princely residence in that period.(11)

Of course, there are also a number of textual and artistic references to the keeping of Barbary apes as pets and performers in Roman and medieval Europe which can supplement the archaeozoological record to a significant degree.(12) Nonetheless, the archaeological evidence summarized above is of interest in itself. First, it is clear that Barbary apes like that discovered in fifth- or sixth-century Wroxeter are a very rare archaeological find from ancient and medieval Europe, and even though Roman and Late Antique discoveries are somewhat more common than medieval, it is worth noting that they are still significantly outnumbered by, for example, finds of camel remains across Europe. Second, at least some of the finds clearly come from high-status sites or were found in situations suggestive of the macaques being used as exotic companion animals, something that both confirms the written evidence and offers a potential context for the Wroxeter find, particularly given the interpretation of that site as a post-Roman elite centre. Third, it is interesting to note that most of the finds come from areas reasonably close to the coast or major riverine routes, again contrasting markedly with the distribution of Roman and Late Antique camel finds and thus potentially adding weight to the suggestion that pre-modern Barbary apes as exotica were primarily transported directly from the southern Mediterranean via the sea and rivers, rather than indirectly overland across Europe.(13) And fourth and finally, it can be observed that 7 of the 17 Barbary apes so far identified in the medieval and earlier European archaeological record (c. 41% of the total) were actually found in Britain or Ireland—whilst one might be tempted to suggest that an explanation may lie in the intensity of British archaeological work and its relative accessibility, this may well not be the whole story, particularly given that the pattern doesn't necessarily seem to be replicated with other long-distance exotica.(14)

A Barbary ape looking at itself in a mirror, from the fifthteenth-century Isabella Breviary, BL Additional 18851, f. 270r, made in the Southern Netherlands; for some more examples of medieval illuminations of monkeys, see this blog from the British Library (image: British Library).

Notes

1.     A. J. Hammon, Late Romano-British – Early Medieval Socio-Economic and Cultural Change: Analysis of the Mammal and Bird Bone Assemblages from the Roman city of Viroconium Cornoviorum, Shropshire (University of Sheffield PhD Thesis, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 152–3; A. Hammon, 'Understanding the Romano-British–Early Medieval transition: a zooarchaeological perspective from Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum)', Britannia, 42 (2011), 275–305 at pp. 290, 298; P. Barker et al, The Baths Basilica Wroxeter: Excavations 1966–90 (London, 1997), p. 358.
2.     P. Barker et al, The Baths Basilica Wroxeter: Excavations 1966–90 (London, 1997); M. Fulford, 'Wroxeter: legionary fortress, baths, and the "great rebuilding" of c. AD 450–550'. Journal of Roman Archaeology, 15 (2002), 639–45; A. Lane, 'Wroxeter and the end of Roman Britain', Antiquity, 88 (2014), 501–515. Note, Lane's argument that Barker's interpretation of Wroxeter as a continuing Roman town stands alone and without parallel in post-Roman Britain fails to take into account the evidence from Lincoln, where continued use of the Roman forum area into the sixth-century AD is now well-established, see especially Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–9, 82–3, and Green, 'The British kingdom of Lindsey', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), 1–43 at pp. 18–23, and the summary discussions in Green, 'The fifth-to sixth-century British church in the forum at Lincoln: a brief discussion', blog post, 11 December 2017, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2017/12/fifth-to-sixth-century-british-church-lincoln.html, and Green, 'Romano-British pottery in the fifth- to sixth-century Lincoln region', blog post, 12 June 2016, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2016/06/romano-british-pottery-fifth-century-lincoln.html.
3.     On the radiocarbon dates still implying post-Roman activity, see A. Lane, 'Wroxeter and the end of Roman Britain', Antiquity, 88 (2014), 501–515 at pp. 508, 513; he also mentions the coin and inscription as still indicative of post-Roman activity (p. 511), but doesn't refer to the amphorae sherds. On Palestinian ('Gaza') LR4 amphorae in Britain and their date, see especially K. Dark, 'Western Britain in Late Antiquity', in F. K. Haarer et al (eds.), AD 410: The History and Archaeology of Late and Post-­Roman Britain (London, 2014), pp. 23­–35, and also M. Duggan, 'Ceramic imports to Britain and the Atlantic Seaboard in the fifth century and beyond', Internet Archaeology, 41 (2016), online at https://doi.org/10.11141/ia.41.3 on recent finds of LR4 at Bantham, Devon, and on the Continent; see the University of Southampton's Roman Amphora: Digital Resource (ADS 2005) for further details of LR4 amphorae, which are 'common in major western ports from c. AD 400 to early seventh century' and are usually thought to have been primarily, but not exclusively, used for transporting the famous wines of Gaza in Late Antiquity. For the Wroxeter amphorae sherds, see P. Barker et al, The Baths Basilica Wroxeter: Excavations 1966–90 (London, 1997), pp. 120, 237; J. A. Riley, 'The coarse pottery from Berenice', in J. Lloyd (ed.), Excavations at Sidi Khrebish, Benghazi (Berenice) II, supplement to Libya Antiqua, 5 (1979), 91–465 at p. 221; A. Hammon, 'Understanding the Romano-British–Early Medieval transition: a zooarchaeological perspective from Wroxeter (Viroconium Cornoviorum)', Britannia, 42 (2011), 275–305 at p. 293. It is perhaps worth noting that another sherd of a Palestinian amphora has recently been recovered from the Walbrook area of the Thames foreshore at London, adding to that known from the Billingsgate bath house at London, and has been assigned a fifth-century date on the PAS: LON-BB27D6.
4.     A. J. Hammon, Late Romano-British – Early Medieval Socio-Economic and Cultural Change: Analysis of the Mammal and Bird Bone Assemblages from the Roman city of Viroconium Cornoviorum, Shropshire (University of Sheffield PhD Thesis, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 152–3, 162–3, 172; S. Bangert, 'Menas ampullae: a case study of long-distance contacts', in A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Globalization? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2007), pp. 27–33.
5.     O. Olesti et al, 'Controlling the Pyrenees: a macaque's burial from Late Antique Iulia Libica (Llívia, La Cerdanya, Spain)', in A. Sarantis & N. Christie (eds.), War and Warfare in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives (Leiden 2013), pp. 703–31.
6.     F. Gerber & A. Baudry-Dautry, 'La mode de l’animal exotique dans la haute société gallo-romaine. Sépulture d’un singe dans la nécropole de la rue des Caillons à Poitiers', Archéopages, 35 (2012), 42–7; O. Olesti et al, 'Controlling the Pyrenees: a macaque's burial from Late Antique Iulia Libica (Llívia, La Cerdanya, Spain)', in A. Sarantis & N. Christie (eds.), War and Warfare in Late Antiquity: Current Perspectives (Leiden 2013), pp. 703–31 at p. 714; G. Hodgson, 'A Barbary ape from the 1958–9 bypass excavations (Site 433)', in P. R. Wilson (ed.), Cataractonium: Roman Catterick and its Hinterland. Excavations and Research, 1958-1997: Volume II (York, 2002), p. 415; A. J. Hammon, Late Romano-British – Early Medieval Socio-Economic and Cultural Change: Analysis of the Mammal and Bird Bone Assemblages from the Roman city of Viroconium Cornoviorum, Shropshire (University of Sheffield PhD Thesis, 2005), vol. 1, p. 152.
7.     F. Gerber & A. Baudry-Dautry, 'La mode de l’animal exotique dans la haute société gallo-romaine. Sépulture d’un singe dans la nécropole de la rue des Caillons à Poitiers', Archéopages, 35 (2012), 42–7.
8.     J. F. Bailey et al, 'Monkey business in Pompeii—unique find of a juvenile Barbary macaque skeleton in Pompeii identified using osteology and ancient DNA techniques', Molecular Biology and Evolution, 16 (1999), 1410–14; V. Onar et al, 'A bridge from Byzantium to modern day Istanbul: an overview of animal skeleton remains found during Metro and Marmaray excavations', Journal of the Faculty of Veterinary Medicine at Istanbul University, 39 (2013), 1–8 at p. 8; F. Gerber & A. Baudry-Dautry, 'La mode de l’animal exotique dans la haute société gallo-romaine. Sépulture d’un singe dans la nécropole de la rue des Caillons à Poitiers', Archéopages, 35 (2012), 42–7; and J. Schneider, 'The Manshead Archaeological Society 1951–1991', Bedfordshire Archaeology, 20 (1992), 96–104 at p. 102.
9.     See, for example, I. Armit, Headhunting and the Body in Iron Age Europe (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 72–3; D. M. Waterman & C. J. Lynn (eds.), Excavations at Navan Fort 1961-71, County Armagh (Belfast, 1997), pp. 120–4; K. A. Costa, 'Marketing archaeological heritage sites in Ireland', in Y. M. Rowan and U. Baram (eds.), Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past (Walnut Creek, 2004), pp. 69–92 at p. 73.
10.     A. Pipe, ‘A note on exotic animals from medieval and post-medieval London’, Anthropozoologica, 16 (1992), 189–91 at p. 190; A. Hamlin and C. Lynn (eds.), Pieces of the Past (Belfast, 1988), pp. 64–5; C. Platt & R. Coleman-Smith (eds.), Excavations in Medieval Southampton 1953–1969 (Leicester, 1975), vol. 1, pp. 32, 334; M. Brisbane & E. Hambleton, 'A monkey's tale: the skull of a macaque found at Ryurik Gorodische during excavations in 2003', Medieval Archaeology, 51 (2007), 185–91 at pp. 189–90.
11.     D. M. Waterman & C. J. Lynn (eds.), Excavations at Navan Fort 1961-71, County Armagh (Belfast, 1997), pp. 120–4; M. Brisbane et al, 'An African monkey at the court of Novgorod princes', in The Origins of the Russian State (St Petersburg, 2007), pp. 74–81; M. Brisbane & E. Hambleton, 'A monkey's tale: the skull of a macaque found at Ryurik Gorodische during excavations in 2003', Medieval Archaeology, 51 (2007), 185–91.
12.     See J.  M. C. Toynbee, Animals in Roman Life and Art (London, 1973), pp. 56–60, for a survey of references to monkeys in classical literature and art, and K. Walker-Meikle, Medieval Pets (Woodbridge, 2012), pp. 13–4, and M. Brisbane & E. Hambleton, 'A monkey's tale: the skull of a macaque found at Ryurik Gorodische during excavations in 2003', Medieval Archaeology, 51 (2007), 185–91 at p. 190, for medieval documentary references. See also Widukind in the tenth century for a reference to 'monkeys' at the court of Otto I of Germany: H. Mayr-Harting, 'The church of Magdeburg: its trade and its town in the tenth and early eleventh centuries', in D. Abulafia et al (eds.), Church and City, 1000–1500: Essays in Honour of Christopher Brooke (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 129–50 at p. 144. Charlemagne is likewise suggested to have kept monkeys in the late eighth century, and the menagerie of animals that accompanied Thomas Becket's mission to France in 1158 included apes: W. B. Clark, A Medieval Book of Beasts: The Second-family Bestiary (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. 17–18.
13.     As noted above: A. J. Hammon, Late Romano-British – Early Medieval Socio-Economic and Cultural Change: Analysis of the Mammal and Bird Bone Assemblages from the Roman city of Viroconium Cornoviorum, Shropshire (University of Sheffield PhD Thesis, 2005), vol. 1, pp. 152–3, 172, and D. M. Waterman & C. J. Lynn (eds.), Excavations at Navan Fort 1961-71, County Armagh (Belfast, 1997), p. 123.
14.     The obvious comparison is again with camel remains—c. 50 sites in Europe have produced Roman-era camel remains, but only one of these is in Britain: C. R. Green, 'Were there camels in Roman Britain? A brief note on the nature and context of the London camel remains', blog post, 8 November 2017, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2017/11/were-there-camels-in-roman-britain.html. However, we might likewise note the lack of medieval parrot remains or, indeed, the almost total lack of Early Modern–Modern guinea pig remains from Britain, despite textual evidence for the presence of these species here then; see, for example, T. O'Connor, 'Animals in urban life in Medieval to Early Modern England', in U. Albarella et al (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Zooarchaeology (Oxford, 2017), pp. 214–29 at p. 222. Note also, perhaps, the presence of leopard and ostrich remains at Rome versus their absence from the Roman-era zooarchaeological record in Britain: M. MacKinnon, 'Supplying exotic animals for the Roman amphitheatre games: new reconstructions combining archaeological, ancient textual, historical and ethnographic data', Mouseion: Journal of the Classical Association of Canada, 6 (2006), 137–161 at pp. 154–5.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2018, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

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.

Some oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance migration to Britain from North Africa & southern Iberia, c.1100 BC–AD 800

The following post offers a brief discussion of some of the oxygen isotope evidence for long-distance contact and migration between Britain and other parts of the world in the early medieval period and before. The particular focus here is on those individuals excavated in Britain whose results are above the expected range for people who grew up on these islands, indicating that they could well have spent part of their childhood in southern Iberia and/or North Africa.

The British Geological Society map of the oxygen isotope values of modern European drinking water from 2004; click for a larger view (image © BGS/NERC, reproduced under a non-commercial/academic, educational and instructive licence, as detailed on the Wessex Archaeology & BGS websites).  

The evidence used below primarily derives from recent research into the British oxygen isotope data retrieved from archaeological human dental enamel. The key principal underlying the utility of this material to archaeologists and historians is the fact that both phosphate oxygen isotope values (δ¹⁸O_p) and structural carbonate oxygen isotope values (δ¹⁸O_c) of excavated teeth reflect the isotope composition of the drinking water (δ¹⁸O_dw) that the individual consumed in their early years, when their teeth formed. Given that the local oxygen isotope composition of drinking water varies widely across not only the British Isles but also Europe and North Africa, reflecting variations in local climate and elevation, this means that oxygen isotope analysis has the potential to allow archaeologists to identify people who grew up outside of Britain with a far greater degree of confidence than was previously possible.(1)

The above is undoubtedly of considerable importance for the history of long-distance contact and movement between Britain and other parts of the world, and the focus in what follows is on the potential use of such material for identifying people who may have moved to Britain from southern Iberia and especially North Africa. There are two main reasons for such a focus. First and foremost, contact between Britain and this area is a recurring topic of interest for this blog, and the oxygen isotope evidence offers another possible window on such contacts in the early medieval period and before.(2) Second, people brought up in southern Iberia and North Africa can have notably higher oxygen isotope values that those brought up in Britain, unlike those brought up in France and the Netherlands, for example, where the drinking water oxygen isotope range is similar to that found in Britain. Needless to say, this makes their identification in the British archaeological record potentially somewhat easier.(3)

What follows offers a look at some of the sites that include burials of people whose dental enamel oxygen isotope results are at the highest end of the British range and beyond and so are potentially migrants to Britain from southern Iberia and/or North Africa, starting with the early medieval era and working backwards to the Bronze Age.

Early Medieval South Wales

A survey of dental enamel recovered from four early medieval cemeteries in South Wales reveals at least twelve individuals spread across three of the cemeteries who have oxygen isotope values above the upper end of the British range, representing more than a third of the total number of individuals investigated from these burial grounds.(4) Four of these people are defined as 'marginal', having results only just above 18.6‰ δ¹⁸O_p, the conventional upper cut-off for phosphate oxygen isotope values from the British Isles, and so could possibly still represent people who grew up on the extreme western coast of Ireland, the Outer Hebrides or the Lands End area, where δ¹⁸O drinking water values are at their highest (-5.0‰ to -4.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw). The other eight individuals, however, have what are described as 'notably enriched δ¹⁸O_p values', clearly above the conventional δ¹⁸O_p upper cut-off for Britain and reflecting the consumption of water with δ¹⁸O_dw values noticeably higher than the maximum British level of c. -4.5‰, and five of them moreover have very significantly enriched values, indicative of their childhood consumption of drinking water that had δ¹⁸O_dw values ranging up to a maximum of around -3.3‰, well over 1‰ above the highest values found in Britain. In this context, it is worth noting that water oxygen isotope values above the British range and between -4.5‰ and c. -4.0‰ appear only to be encountered in Europe in small areas of south-east and south-west Iberia and are otherwise restricted to North Africa or further afield. Values between -4.0‰ and -3.5‰ are again found in North Africa but are even rarer in Europe, being only reported from a small area around Cádiz, southwest Spain, where groundwater values as high as -3.5‰ have been noted, whilst even higher values up to 0‰ and beyond are encountered only in Africa and Arabia.(5) As such, the above oxygen isotope results from early medieval South Wales are clearly of considerable potential interest to historians and archaeologists.

The geographic distribution of areas outside of the UK with rainwater oxygen isotope values above ‑5.0‰, shown in dark blue; all twelve of the people from South Wales discussed above consumed water with a δ¹⁸O level of c. ‑4.5‰ or higher (up to c. ‑3.3‰) in early life. Note, only 1% of the UK has δ¹⁸O_dw water levels above ‑5.0‰, up to a maximum value of c. ‑4.5‰, but as the map shows, such levels are widely encountered throughout North Africa and in small areas of southern Europe. Levels above ‑4.0‰ are even more restricted in extent, being only recorded in Europe from a small area around Cádiz, southwest Spain, and are otherwise confined to North Africa, whilst levels above c. ‑3.5‰ are only known from North Africa and further afield. Image: C. R. Green, based on data from the sources cited in fn 3, especially Evans et al 2012 and Bowen 2003–15, utilising a Wikimedia Commons map of the Mediterranean region as a base.

With regard to the interpretation of this evidence, several points need to be made. First and foremost, it should be remembered that there is now a significant body of archaeological evidence that is usually thought to indicate the direct importation of goods from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean into western Britain in the post-Roman period, probably beginning in the late fifth century AD and continuing into the sixth. The evidence for this consists of finds of Mediterranean amphorae sherds, used for transporting wine and olive oil, along with sherds of African Red Slip-Ware (ARSW) from the Carthage region and Phocaean Red Slip-Ware (PRSW) from western Asia Minor, with north-eastern Mediterranean material dominating the trade at first followed by surge in North African imports in the middle third of the sixth century AD. This material is primarily found at the important post-Roman high-status promontory fort of Tintagel, Cornwall, but it also occurs more widely throughout the south-west and along the western coast of Britain, including in South Wales, and is thought to have potentially arrived in Britain as a result of direct (and directed) imperial trade aimed primarily at procuring tin in the period c. 475–550.(6) Needless to say, this direct trade between the Mediterranean and Atlantic Britain supplies an obvious context for the apparent presence of migrants from southern Iberia and/or North Africa revealed by the isotopic material mentioned above, and it is indeed considered the most credible interpretation by the authors of the dental enamel survey.

Second, it is worth observing that three of the four cemeteries studied (Brownslade, Llandough and Porthclew) all included not only individuals with phosphate oxygen isotope results above the conventional British tooth enamel δ¹⁸O_p cut-off of 18.6‰, but also that all three of these cemeteries actually included individuals with the very significantly enriched results indicative of the consumption of drinking water with δ¹⁸O values above -4.0‰, arguably most consistent with a North African origin. This obviously suggests that the long-distance movement of people from the Mediterranean to early medieval Wales was not an isolated event, something further supported by the fact that people with 'notably enriched' δ¹⁸O_p results in these cemeteries formed nearly a quarter of all those tested, a very significant proportion indeed. Moreover, the possibility that migrant groups may well have been living in South Wales in the early medieval period is further heightened by the fact three of the individuals with notably enriched values were women and two were non-adults, implying the presence of families and further countering the idea that the post-Roman direct trade between the Mediterranean and Atlantic Britain was carried out solely by male, mercantile groups who stayed only for a brief period of time. Third and finally, it is interesting to observe that one of the people from Porthclew with a significantly enriched phosphate oxygen isotope value of 19.1‰, suggesting the childhood ingestion of drinking water with a value of c. -3.8‰, was radiocarbon dated to AD 680–900 (at 2σ). This dating is rather later than the period in which the maritime trade between South Wales and the southern Mediterranean discussed above was focussed, and it may consequently be suggestive of continued contact and movement between these areas even after the cessation of significant trading activity.(7)

Early Medieval Northumbria

An oxygen and strontium isotope survey was undertaken on 78 individuals buried in the seventh- to early ninth-century cemetery at Bamburgh (Northumberland), the 'royal city' of the Anglo-Saxon Northumbrian kingdom of Bernicia. This revealed that over 50% of those buried here have 'non-local' isotopic signatures, indicative of them having spent their childhood in other areas such as Scandinavia, Ireland, western and southern Britain, continental Europe and North Africa. Such a degree of cosmopolitanism is credibly ascribed by the authors of the survey to the fact that the cemetery here was associated with the principal pre-Viking royal centre in the north of England, and documentary and archaeological sources certainly record the presence of people from Ireland, Scotland, continental Europe and North Africa in Anglo-Saxon England.(8) With regard to the specific results retrieved, there are 14 people buried in this cemetery who have isotope levels indicative of the consumption of water with a value at or a little above the maximum encountered in the British Isles, c. -4.5‰ (see above). and 3‰ or more above the oxygen isotope level of drinking water in the Bamburgh area, c. -7.5‰ δ¹⁸O_dw. Even more interesting from the perspective of the present post, however, are the seven men, women and non-adults—9% of the total—whose oxygen isotope values are in fact significantly enriched beyond both the British range and the rest of the population of the cemetery, being indicative of the consumption of water with values ranging from -4.0‰ up to -2.45‰ δ¹⁸O_dw. As was discussed in the previous section, such results are most consistent with an early life spent in southwestern Iberia or North Africa, perhaps most plausibly the latter given that three of these people had values reflecting δ¹⁸O_dw between -3.2‰ and -2.45‰, levels only encountered in North Africa or further afield.(9)

Bamburgh Castle viewed from Holy Island (image: Akuppa, used under its CC BY 2.0 license).

Roman Winchester

An isotopic survey of 40 individuals buried in the Late Roman Lankhills cemetery at Winchester revealed the presence of a significant number of probable non-locals, primarily from areas with higher drinking water oxygen isotope levels than are found in Britain or much of Europe. Eleven of the people tested in this cemetery have isotope results indicative of a non-British origin, with ten of these—25% of the total number tested—having values above the conventional upper cut-offs for oxygen isotope values from the British Isles (see above). As before, some of these have values only just above the latter level and so could conceivably still represent people who grew up on the extreme western coast of Ireland, the Outer Hebrides or the Lands End area, where δ¹⁸O drinking water values are at their highest. Others, however, have results that are notably enriched, and five have results indicative of the consumption of drinking water with oxygen isotope values from -4.0‰ right up to -2.8‰, the latter far above the British range and clearly implying an early life spent in North Africa.(10) Given this, it might well be wondered whether all those with values above the normal British range are not more likely to be of Mediterranean origin too, and a recent analysis of the thirteen people with the highest δ¹⁸O values from Lankhills, at or above the top of the British range, suggests that they form a discrete sub-group within the cemetery and that it is significantly more probable that they had their origins either in southern Iberia and/or North Africa than in the British Isles.(11)

Interestingly, the burial rites of the people with these extremely high results showed, in the main, no consistent pattern, confirming earlier observations that there is a mismatch in this cemetery, at least, between 'non-local' and 'local' burial rites and the actual origins of the people buried, contrary to previous hypotheses resulting from the original 1967–72 excavation of part of the Lankhills site. However, it is perhaps worth noting that one of the people with oxygen isotope results that were enriched above the usual British range was buried with two rare North African unguent flasks. Similarly, the individual with the very highest results, equivalent to -2.8‰ δ¹⁸O_dw, has cranial characteristics that are suggested to be consistent with an origin in Egypt, and another person with oxygen isotope values above the conventional British cut-off has cranial characteristics said to be indicative of a 'Black' or 'Asian' origin. Finally, it is also important to note that the people with significantly enriched values were once again not exclusively male, as has sometimes been assumed to the case for early migrants—indeed, four of the five with the highest results were all female.(12)

North African unguentaria from Grave 82 at the Late Roman cemetery, Lankhills, Winchester (image: Oxford Archaeology, reused under their CC BY-SA 3.0 license).

Roman York

Isotopic analysis has been undertaken for a number of cemeteries from Roman York. One is the extremely unusual all-male cemetery at Driffield Terrace, York, where more than half the individuals interred had been decapitated. Teeth from eighteen individuals were sampled from 6 Driffield Terrace, three of which had oxygen isotope values at or just above the conventional upper cut-off for the British Isles and another of which had a result far above this, of 19.8‰ δ¹⁸O_p, indicating the childhood consumption of drinking water with a value significantly above -3.0‰. Similarly, the remains of 43 individuals from the Trentholme Drive and The Railway cemeteries at York were subjected to isotopic analysis. Five of these had oxygen isotope results above the British range and three moreover had values that were very significantly above this, indicative of the childhood consumption of drinking water with values of -3.12‰, -2.87‰ and -2.31‰, respectively.(13) As was noted above, drinking water with such enriched values as these is not encountered in Europe and is instead indicative of an origin in North Africa.

In this light, it is interesting to note that anthroposcopic/craniometric analysis was also undertaken for both of the latter cemeteries at York too, with 11% of the Trentholme Drive samples and 12% of The Railway individuals being considered very likely to be of 'African descent', whilst yet more are thought to have potential 'mixed' or 'black' ancestry, up to a possible maximum of 38% of the population buried at Trentholme Drive and 51% of the population in the higher-status The Railway cemetery. Two of the three individuals with the highest oxygen isotope results were assessed by these means, one of whom was identified as being of potential 'mixed' ancestry and the other of 'white' ancestry. Of those thought likely to be of 'black' ancestry, only a proportion were also subject to isotopic analysis. The majority of these had oxygen isotope results significantly above the local range at York, where some of the lowest results in Britain are found, but still within the theoretical British range, and the interpretation of these individuals is a matter of debate, just as is the case for the famous Late Roman 'ivory bangle lady' of York too, who is believed to be of 'black' ancestry but consumed drinking water in childhood with a δ¹⁸O_dw value only just within the upper end of the British range. Drinking water δ¹⁸O values that might produce the results of all of these people can certainly be found in western or far western Britain and Ireland, but it should be recalled that they are also available in other regions of the Roman Empire, including along parts of the Atlantic coast of France and Iberia, in some areas of the European Mediterranean coast, and in North Africa too. As such, it must remain unclear whether these people might all represent 'second generation migrants', as the authors of the study suggest, or if some of them could be 'first generation migrants' who had simply spent their childhood in those parts of North Africa that have similar δ¹⁸O_dw values to those found in parts of Europe and Britain.(14)

A re-erected Roman column at York; this once stood within the great hall of the headquarters building of the fortress of the Sixth Legion at York (image: Carole Raddato, used under its CC BY-SA 2.0 license). 

Roman Gloucester

The teeth of 21 individuals were sampled from a first- to fourth-century AD cemetery at Roman Gloucester, ten from the main cemetery and eleven from a second-century AD mass grave. As at Winchester, a significant subgroup within both areas of this cemetery had clearly enriched oxygen isotope values when compared to both the expected local range for people brought up in the local area of the town and the British Isles in general. This subgroup numbers 6 or 7 people, representing 28–33% of the total subjects tested, all of whom have oxygen isotope values at or above the conventional upper cut-off for oxygen isotope values from the British Isles, with the majority of them having consumed significantly enriched drinking water with δ¹⁸O values above -4.0‰, implying a probable early life spent in either southernmost Iberia or North Africa. Moreover, the members of the subgroup also all had notably enriched δ¹³C results compared to the rest of the population of the cemetery, something that is credibly seen as resulting from an early consumption of plants grown in the Mediterranean region rather than Britain. Finally, it is worth noting that the group with enriched oxygen isotope results was once again made up of both men and women.(15)

Late Bronze Age and Iron Age Kent

An isotopic analysis of the teeth of 26 individuals from a Late Bronze Age–Middle Iron Age (eleventh- to third-century BC) cemetery at Cliffs End Farm on the Isle of Thanet, Kent, has produced some of the highest oxygen isotope values yet recovered from archaeological teeth in Britain. Drinking water in this part of Kent has an oxygen isotope value of around -7.1‰, with no significant change believed to have taken place over the Holocene, but it is clear that a significant proportion of the people buried in this cemetery had actually consumed water with much higher or lower values than this in their early life. A small number of individuals from this cemetery had, for example, δ¹⁸O_p results indicative of consuming drinking water with oxygen isotope values between c. -5.0‰ and -4.5‰. People with such elevated results are perhaps unlikely to have spent their childhood in eastern Kent, although quite where they might have moved to Kent from is open to debate, as drinking water with these values is found in several areas including the extreme west of Britain or Ireland, southern Iberia, the heel of Italy, and North Africa. More clarity is possible, however, with a further five individuals from this cemetery—19% of the total number investigated—who had results suggesting that they grew up in areas where water oxygen isotope values were even higher, above -4.0‰. Such levels are only really encountered in the extreme south-west of Iberia (around Cádiz) and in North Africa, and four of the people in question moreover had results indicative of consuming drinking water with levels above -3.0‰, well above those encountered anywhere in Europe and clearly implying an early life spent in North Africa.(16)

With regard to the five individuals with the most highly enriched δ¹⁸O values, it is worth noting that they belonged to both the Bronze Age and the Iron Age phases of the cemetery, although the majority date from the earlier era. It is also intriguing to note that two of them—one interred in the Late Bronze Age (eleventh to ninth century BC) and one in the Middle Iron Age (fourth to third century BC)—have the highest δ¹⁸O_p values ever recorded from Britain, c. 21.4‰. Such results reflect the consumption of drinking water with an oxygen isotope value of around -1.0‰ to 0‰, which is far beyond anything known from Britain and probably indicative of a childhood spent in the Nile Valley, where equivalent δ¹⁸O_c values have been recorded from the ancient burial site at Mendes in the Nile Delta, Egypt.(17) Needless to say, this is of considerable interest. In terms of potential contexts for such long distance movement between the Mediterranean and Britain in the Late Bronze Age and Iron Age, previous posts on this site have discussed a variety of numismatic, archaeological, textual and linguistic evidence for contact between these areas in the pre-Roman Iron Age, including the presence of a Mediterranean anchor of potentially as early as the fifth century BC in Plymouth Sound. One might also point to the find of a North African Barbary ape skull from a probable third- to second-century BC context at Navan Fort, Northern Ireland, in this regard too. With regard to the Late Bronze Age, things area possibly a little less clear, unfortunately, although it is usually thought that there was movement along at least the Atlantic coast of Europe in this era and there are certainly a small number of possible Mediterranean items and anchors of this era that have been found off the southern coast of Britain and which may have some relevance here.(18)

A Sicilian strumento of c. 1200–1100 BC, found on the sea-floor at Salcombe, Devon, with other Bronze Age items from a probable twelfth-century BC shipwreck (image: British Museum).

Conclusion

Several key points emerge from the above summary of burial sites producing oxygen isotope evidence indicative of the presence of people from North Africa and southern Iberia in Britain between c. 1100 BC and c. AD 800, three of which are highlighted here by way of a conclusion. First and foremost, it is important to note that at least some migrants from these areas appear to have been present in Britain during all periods from the Late Bronze Age onwards. Whilst the presence of people from North Africa in Roman Britain is to a large degree unsurprising, as they are otherwise attested via literary and epigraphic sources, the fact that it can be shown that people from these areas were very probably also present in Bronze Age, Iron Age and early medieval Britain is a point of some considerable interest.

Second, the proportion of such individuals in each of the cemeteries surveyed is significant. For example, around a fifth of those buried in the Cliffs End prehistoric cemetery have oxygen isotope values probably indicative of such origins, as do around a quarter of those tested from the three early medieval cemeteries in South Wales and the Late Roman cemetery at Winchester, whilst at Roman Gloucester the proportion may be as high as a third. In this context, it is interesting to note that the anthroposcopic/craniometric analysis of two Roman cemeteries at York similarly points towards the presence of a potentially large number of people whose own or family origins lay in North Africa, with 11%–12% of those examined considered very likely to be of 'African descent', and yet others thought to have potential 'mixed' or 'black' ancestry, up to a possible maximum of 38% of the population buried at Trentholme Drive and 51% of the population in the higher-status The Railway cemetery. Of course, the sites and cemeteries surveyed here are likely to be to some extent exceptional, being located either at local capitals or close to the coast, but these results are nonetheless fascinating and certainly imply that some areas of Britain, at least, saw a degree of immigration from North Africa and/or southern Iberia in the early medieval period and before.

Finally, it is interesting to note that the potential migrants to Britain from North Africa and/or southern Iberia discussed above include men, women and non-adults, implying that contact between Britain and these areas was not solely the preserve of male mercantile or military groups, as has sometimes been assumed. Indeed, in some cases women and non-adults actually form the majority of the migrants identifiable there via oxygen isotope analysis, as is the case at Winchester and in South Wales.


Notes

1     On current approaches to oxygen isotope analysis and the underlying methodology, principles and issues, see, for example, 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.), and 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. The current post follows the interpretations and approaches to those individuals with notably enriched dental enamel oxygen isotope results adopted in these studies and also in other recent publications such as 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.
2     See, for example, 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; 'A Mediterranean anchor stock of the fifth to mid-second century BC found off the coast of Britain', 29 August 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/08/a-mediterranean-anchor.html; and 'A great host of captives? A note on Vikings in Morocco and Africans in early medieval Ireland & Britain', 12 September 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/09/a-great-host-of-captives.html.
3      The current oxygen isotope range for drinking water (δ¹⁸O_dw) in Britain and Ireland is around -9.0‰ to -4.5‰, with only 1% of the British Isles having values above -5.0‰, namely in the extreme south-west of Britain, the extreme south-west of Ireland, and part of the Outer Hebrides, a situation that is believed to have changed little between the Mesolithic and Medieval eras. This range accords well with the apparent local British range of phosphate oxygen isotope values from excavated teeth, which is usually agreed to fall between 16.6‰ and 18.6‰ δ¹⁸O_p, although Evans et al have recently concluded that people brought up on the far west of the British Isles could potentially have values a little higher too, reflecting the degree of normal ambient variation that might be seen within populations exposed to the extremes of drinking water composition within the British Isles. Similar or lower drinking water oxygen isotope values, from <-10.0‰ to -5.0‰, are found across much of western Europe, as can be seen from the first map reproduced above. In contrast, southern Iberia has notably higher drinking water/precipitation δ¹⁸O values, from -5.0‰ up to a maximum of c. -4.0‰, except around Cádiz where drinking water values of up to c. -3.5‰ have been noted, and North Africa has values from the British range right up to around 0‰, with even higher values found in parts of Sudan (ancient Nubia) and Ethiopia. See further on Britain W. G. Darling et al, 'The O and H stable isotope composition of freshwaters in the British Isles. 2. Surface waters and groundwater', Hydrology and Earth System Sciences Discussions, 7 (2003), 183–95;  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 at pp. 757–8 and Table 1; 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 at pp. 153, 156–7, 160. On mainland Europe and Africa, see BGS/C. Chenery, 'Oxygen isotopes values for modern European drinking water' (map), online at www.wessexarch.co.uk/projects/amesbury/tests/oxygen_isotope.html; Evans et al, 'Summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation', fig. 12; G. Bowen, 'Waterisotopes.org: global and regional maps of isotope ratios in precipitation', online dataset 2003–15, figures online at http://wateriso.utah.edu/waterisotopes/pages/data_access/figures.html; 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; M. R. Buzon & G. Bowen, 'Oxygen and carbon isotope analysis of human tooth enamel from the New Kingdom site of Tombos in Nubia', Archaeometry, 52 (2010), 855–68, esp. Table 2; C. White et al, 'Exploring the effects of environment, physiology and diet on oxygen isotope ratios in ancient Nubian bones and teeth', Journal of Archaeological Science, 31 (2004), 233–50 and Table 2.
4     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.
5     See further the references cited in footnote 4, especially Evans et al, 'Summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation', fig. 12, and Araguas-Araguas & Diaz Teijeiro, 'Isotope composition of precipitation and water vapour in the Iberian Peninsula', fig. 3. See also K. Killgrove, Migration and Mobility in Imperial Rome (University of North Carolina PhD Thesis, 2010), pp. 263, 280, 284–5, 310–11 who identifies the three people in her study of Rome who have oxygen isotope results indicative of consuming drinking water with a δ¹⁸O value above -4.0‰ as probable North African immigrants to the city, rather than European.
6     See, for example, M. Fulford, 'Byzantium and Britain: a Mediterranean perspective on post-Roman Mediterranean imports in western Britain and Ireland', Medieval Archaeology, 33 (1989), 1–6; E. Campbell, Continental and Mediterranean Imports to Atlantic Britain and Ireland, AD 400–800, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 157 (York, 2007); E. Campbell & C. Bowles, 'Byzantine trade to the edge of the world: Mediterranean pottery imports to Atlantic Britain in the 6th century', in M. M. Mango (ed.), Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange (Farnham, 2009), pp. 297–314; T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 222–3.
7     Hemer et al, 'Evidence of early medieval trade and migration between Wales and the Mediterranean Sea region', 2357–8.
8     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. The description of Bamburgh as 'the royal city' of Bernicia is that of Bede, writing in the first half of the eighth century (Historia Ecclesiastica, III.6). With regard to the documentary evidence for Africans in Anglo-Saxon England, see also Historia Ecclesiastica IV.1, where Bede describes Hadrian, the later seventh- and eighth-century Abbot of St Augustine's, Canterbury, as 'a man of African race' (HE IV.1).
9     Groves et al, 'Mobility histories of 7th–9th century AD people buried at early medieval Bamburgh', esp. pp. 465, 470 and Supplementary Figure 7.
10     P. Booth et al, The Late Roman Cemetery at Lankhills, Winchester: Excavations 2000–2004 (Oxford, 2010), pp. 421–8; H. Eckardt et al, 'Oxygen and strontium isotope evidence for mobility in Roman Winchester', Journal of Archaeological Science, 36 (2009), 2816–25.
11      Evans et al, 'Summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation', fig. 11 & pp. 760–2.
12     Booth et al, The Late Roman Cemetery at Lankhills, pp. 249–51, 361, 509–16.
13     G. Müldner et al, 'The ‘Headless Romans’: multi-isotope investigations of an unusual burial ground from Roman Britain', Journal of Archaeological Science, 38 (2011), 280–90; S. Leach et al, 'Migration and diversity in Roman Britain: a multidisciplinary approach to the identification of immigrants in Roman York, England', American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 140 (2009), 546–61.
14     Leach et al, 'Migration and diversity in Roman Britain', Table 4 and pp. 546, 550–2, 558–9; S. Leach et al, 'A Lady of York: migration, ethnicity and identity in Roman Britain', Antiquity, 84 (2010), 131–45. On the isotopic values of water in North Africa, see for example Evans et al, 'Summary of strontium and oxygen isotope variation', fig. 12, and G. Bowen, 'Waterisotopes.org: global and regional maps of isotope ratios in precipitation'.
15     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, who note that 'the probability of these [individuals] being from Britain is small and an origin abroad is more likely' (p. 158).
16     The above is based primarily on 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 figs. 6.5, 6.6 and 6.7.
17     The oxygen isotope values from the Mendes burial site in the Nile Delta, Egypt, are expressed as both δ¹⁸O_dw and δ¹⁸O_c in Buzon & Bowen, 'Oxygen and carbon isotope analysis of human tooth enamel from the New Kingdom site of Tombos in Nubia', Table 2, and the latter can be converted to δ¹⁸O_p using the equation in C. Chenery et al, 'The oxygen isotope relationship between the phosphate and structural carbonate fractions of human bioapatite', Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, 26 (2012), 309–19. Needless to say, the δ¹⁸O_p and equivalent δ¹⁸O_dw values of the two people from Thanet fall within both the reported δ¹⁸O_dw and the calculated δ¹⁸O_p ranges for Mendes, and are moveover above the bottom of the range of δ¹⁸O_p values for people who grew up in the Nile Valley (21.0‰) as reported in Chenery et al, 'Strontium and stable isotope evidence for diet and mobility in Roman Gloucester, UK', p. 158.
18     On pre-Roman Iron Age contacts, see especially 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, and 'A Mediterranean anchor stock of the fifth to mid-second century BC found off the coast of Britain', 29 August 2015, blog post, online at http://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/08/a-mediterranean-anchor.html. On the Barbary ape from Navan Fort, Northern Ireland, see for example I. Armit, Headhunting and the Body in Iron Age Europe (Cambridge, 2012), pp. 72–3, and K. A. Costa, 'Marketing archaeological heritage sites in Ireland', in Y. M. Rowan and U. Baram (eds.), Marketing Heritage: Archaeology and the Consumption of the Past (Walnut Creek, 2004), pp. 69–92 at p. 73. On possible finds of Late Bronze Age Mediterranean items from Britain, see for example S. Needham & C. Giardino, 'From Sicily to Salcombe: a Mediterranean Bronze Age object from British coastal waters', Antiquity, 82 (2008), 60–72, and D. Parham et al, 'Questioning the wrecks of time', British Archaeology, 91 (2006), 43–7, online at http://www.archaeologyuk.org/ba/ba91/feat2.shtml. A possible three-holed Bronze Age stone Mediterranean anchor from Plymouth Sound has been mentioned in news reports relating to the SHIPS Project/ProMare, but is as yet unidentified on the database for this project; see T. Nichols, 'Unique project launched to shed light on hidden treasures in Plymouth Sound', Plymouth Herald, 5 July 2014, online at http://www.plymouthherald.co.uk/Shedding-light-hidden-treasures-Sound/story-21332210-detail/story.html, although it should be noted that the dating and geographical origins of such stone anchors is open to debate.

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