Some possible Phoenician/Punic names in Britain and Ireland

The current post follows on from a previous discussion of the potential Phoenician/Punic roots of the island-name Thanet and the linguistic, historical and archaeological context and support for such a suggestion. Needless to say, the aim of what follows is not to revisit in detail the arguments made in that post, nor the additional archaeological, isotopic and numismatic evidence for contact between North Africa/the Mediterranean and pre-Roman Britain discussed in three subsequent posts. Instead, the aim here is simply to offer, for the sake of interest, a map and list of the British and Irish place-names that are currently thought by a number of linguists to be of potentially Phoenician/Punic origin, along with a few brief observations on these and their distribution.

British and Irish place-names considered to be of potentially Phoenician/Punic origin (image: C. R. Green).

The names listed below include some of the most obscure and difficult toponyms surviving from Britain, many of which have no satisfactory explanation aside from a potential Phoenician/Punic origin, as both Richard Coates and George Broderick have recently emphasised in their important discussions of this evidence.(1) The Phoenician language and its later, divergent form Punic are extinct Semitic languages that originated in the Near East and were spoken in antiquity across into North Africa and southern Iberia by Phoenician and Carthaginian traders and colonists. Needless to say, an origin for a number of British and Irish names in these languages is an intriguing possibility, and such a linguistic hypothesis does, in fact, have a potential historical context too. A degree of direct contact between the ancient Punic world and pre-Roman Britain has, after all, often been argued for since the sixteenth century on the basis of a small number of Classical sources that seem to point in this direction, and in recent years this notion has gained a degree of additional support from a variety of numismatic, isotopic, and archaeological evidence, as has been discussed in previous posts.(2)

With regard to the names themselves, several points can be made by way of a brief introduction. First and foremost, it is worth observing that they are all either coastal or island names, something that obviously accords well with the idea of them having Phoenician/Punic origins, given that any contacts between pre-Roman Britain and the Punic world of southern Iberia and North Africa are likely to have been primarily maritime in nature. Likewise, the suggested Proto-Semitic/Punic roots identified by Coates and others as potentially underlying these British and Irish coastal/island names are—importantly—plausible in terms of their lexical content too, referring to islands, the coast, cliffs/rocks, plants and animals, relative positions and/or compass points, culturally significant metals, and divine words or names.(3) In other words, the basic characteristics of the group as a whole, in terms of not only their general difficulty within the overall corpus of British names, but also their shared geographic characteristics and the range of meanings that they would possess, is credible and might inspire a degree of confidence.

Second, looking more closely at their geographic distribution, the names seem to fall naturally into two major groups. The first group is located in southern Britain from the Scilly Isles/Cornwall in the west across to the Isle of Thanet, Kent, in the east. Needless to say, such a southern group of Phoenician/Punic names in Britain would obviously accord well with the often-noted textual hints of Punic traders visiting pre-Roman southern Britain, primarily to obtain tin, a rare metal that was certainly exported to the Continent and Mediterranean from the Bronze Age onwards.(4) Indeed, in this context it is interesting to observe that several of these potential Punic names are, in fact, located at or close-by sites with links to the ancient tin trade and/or with evidence for significant pre-Roman Mediterranean contacts, as is discussed in more detail in the list below. The second group is located in the west, from Ireland up to the Outer Hebrides in the far north-west. The significance of this concentration of potential Punic island and coastal names is open to debate, although the well-known archaeological evidence for copper mining in Bronze Age Ireland is certainly worth noting (see further below), as is the find of a North African Barbary ape skull from a probable third- to second-century BC context at Navan Fort, Northern Ireland. The fragmentary surviving records of the later fourth-century BC voyage of Pytheas of Massalia may also be relevant here too, given that they indicate the presence of at least some Continental traders along the west coast of Britain up to the area of the Hebrides and beyond by the fourth century BC.(5)

A trapezoidal lead core from a Mediterranean Type IIa wooden anchor of the fifth to second century BC that was found in Plymouth Sound, close to Rame Head, one of the potentially Punic names listed below; note, other finds of such early anchor stocks in Atlantic waters are usually thought to be of Phoenician or Punico-Mauretanian origin, see fn. 12 (image: ProMare, CC BY-NC-SA 2.0).

Third and finally, it is interesting to note that a Punic origin has also been tentatively suggested for three major island names in the region as well as a number of more minor island and coastal names, the names in question being Britain, Ireland and Thule. Needless to say, these suggestions are perhaps the most contentious of all those outlined below, not least because Britain and Ireland already have frequently cited Celtic etymologies, in a notable contrast to the more local or regional names covered here, with Britain usually believed to derive from a word meaning 'the people of the forms' or 'the tattooed people', whilst Ireland (Éire) is often considered to mean 'the fat, or fertile, country'. However, Broderick in particular has pointed out that these etymologies are not wholly certain nor universally agreed upon, and neither are they totally without linguistic issues; moreover, it might be wondered how plausible some of the proposed meanings are as specific people-/country-names too (the use of tattooing and body art was not, for example, confined or specific to the Britons, but seems rather to have been fairly widespread in Iron Age Europe). In this light, it is intriguing to observe that Phoenician/Punic etymologies are also available for both of these major island-names, giving the ‘tin land’ (pretan, ‘tin’) for Britain (*Pritan-) and the ‘copper island’ (*’i: weriju:, ‘island of copper’) for Éire/Ireland (*Īweryon), and that Richard Coates has argued that these suggestions cannot be casually dismissed, especially in light of the likely presence of other Proto-Semitic/Punic island- and coastal-names in the British Isles. Indeed, the fact that the suggested Phoenician/Punic roots of these two names would actually complement each other remarkably well and are, moreover, semantically credible—making reference to key material resources that were certainly available and exported from these islands in the pre-Roman period—would seem to be at least notable.(6) In this context, it is also worth observing that it has been recently independently argued from the available archaeological evidence that there existed a 'maritime' Atlantic network carrying metalwork and metal north from the Mediterranean/Iberia to Sweden via Britain in the Bronze Age and that, as part of this, 'ports in the British Isles acted as transit centres for copper from other parts of Europe as well as providing local tin ore', something that would obviously offer a potentially significant degree of support to the above idea of Britain being originally known as the 'tin land'.(7)

In sum, the evidence relating to these names is undoubtedly intriguing and the case for at least a proportion of these names being genuinely Proto-Semitic/Phoenician/Punic in origin would appear to be worthy of at least some serious consideration. Obviously the suggested Punic etymologies for these island and coastal names are open to debate and potential alternative explanations might be advanced for them, with a greater or lesser degree of plausibility. However, what matters is perhaps not any individual name, but rather their collective weight and the fact that a Proto-Semitic/Punic origin both appears to be at least possible and appropriate for a small but significant number of otherwise often very difficult British coastal names.

The list that follows contains all of the British and Irish names included on the map above, these having been identified as possibly or probably of Phoenician/Punic origin by Richard Coates, George Broderick and others.(8)

1. The Isle of Thanet, Kent — Tanatus, Tanatos, Tenet, Tanet, originally probably *Tanitā or similar. A difficult name with no credible etymology in insular languages and often considered inexplicable. However, it is readily explicable as a Phoenician/Punic island-name 'Y TNT, meaning the 'Isle (of) Tanit', the chief goddess of the ancient Phoenician mercantile power of Carthage, a name also seemingly applied to the island on which the Phoenician Atlantic colony of Cádiz was built (said by Pliny, Natural History, IV.36, to have been called by the natives the 'Isle of Juno', i.e. the 'Isle of Tanit', given that the Roman goddess Juno corresponded to the Phoenician Tanit under the interpretatio Romana). It has been argued that name could well have been transferred/applied to a secondary trading colony established in Britain from Cádiz in a similar geographic location to the original and as a result of Phoenician mercantile, colonial activities in the Atlantic, especially in light of the really quite exceptional concentration of Carthaginian coins in eastern Kent. See further the in-depth discussion of this name in a previous post.(9) In terms of the motivation for this name, it is worth emphasising that the Isle of Thanet in Kent has recently been independently identified as a potential key strategic 'Late Bronze Age trading centre' lying at a mid-point on a trade route between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean, acting as a 'transit centre' for metalwork from other parts of Europe as well as 'providing local tin ore' to these traders, a scenario strongly supported by both the presence of multiple people who grew up in North Africa and in Scandinavia within a ninth- to third-century BC cemetery discovered at Cliffs End, Thanet, and the recent isotopic analysis of a pure tin ring-ingot from  c. 950–700 BC found at Vårdinge, Sweden, which revealed that the tin in question did indeed come from Cornwall.(10)
2. Rame Head, Cornwall — Rame in 1086 and thereafter. No credible etymology in insular languages; 'completely obscure' and 'unexplained'. However, would make good sense as a derivative of the Semitic height-word *rām, compare Ramat Gan, Israel, and Ramallah, Palestine (Proto-Semitic root *rwm), especially as it is the name of a conspicuous conical headland guarding the western entrance to Plymouth Sound.(11) Interestingly, not only is Rame Head located in Cornwall, an ancient tin-producing region, but a major excavated Late Bronze Age and Iron Age trading site, Mount Batten, lies within Plymouth Sound itself, just to the north-east of Rame. Barry Cunliffe has argued that this trading site can be plausibly identified as the pre-Roman British tin-trading centre of Ictis, mentioned in the fourth century BC by Pytheas of Massalia (via Diodoros), and it is especially intriguing in this context  to note that Plymouth Sound itself has actually produced a potentially Punic trapezoidal lead core from a Mediterranean Type IIa wooden anchor of the fifth to mid-second century BC too.(12)
3. Sark — Sargia, Serc, Serk. No known etymology in insular/European languages. The only credible explanation is an origin in the Proto-Semitic root *śrq, ‘redden; rise (as of the sun); east’, compare Modern Arabic šarq, ‘east’, which would give good sense as Sark is the easternmost and outermost island of the Guernsey group.(13)
4. Echri (Flat Holm, Severn Estuary) — The Welsh name for this island in the Severn Estuary, Echri, is apparently unexplained via insular languages, but a solution is possible if it is an island-name involving Proto-Semitic *’ħr, ‘behind, back’, meaning the 'rearmost island' or similar, which would be topographically appropriate given that Flat Holm is the last usable island encountered as one journeys up the Severn Estuary from the sea.(14)
5. Isles of Scilly — Early spellings include Sylinancim, Sully and Sullia. No good etymology in insular languages, with those that have been proposed having significant issues. The island-name could, however, plausibly reflect a Proto-Semitic root *s-l-, meaning 'rock, cliff', as found in Hebrew sela' (note, the -c- in the modern name is a post-medieval innovation). Alternatively, Richard Coates also compares the Punic site Zilis, modern Asilah, Morocco, which has been interpreted as meaning 'fishery'. Interestingly, the Atlantic Kassiterides, or 'Tin Islands', mentioned by Strabo and others have often been credibly identified with either the Isles of Scilly or Cornwall, with Strabo stating that 'in former times it was the Phoenicians alone', from their southern Iberian colony of Gades (Cádiz), 'who carried on this commerce'.(15)
6. The Solent — Soluente in 737 and 890. Only debatable etymologies in insular languages, although an Indo-European root is possible. However, the Proto-Semitic root *s-l- (cf. Hebrew sela) meaning 'rock, cliff' would also potentially work, as Vennemann and Coates note, giving a topographically not-implausible meaning of ‘place of cliffs’ or, more likely, ‘the prominent cliffs’.(16)
7. Uist — Scottish Gaelic Uibhist. No etymology in insular languages. The most credible solution, according to Richard Coates, is that it is identical in origin to the Mediterranean name Ibiza (Catalan Eivissa, Ebusos/'Ebousos in Pliny and Diodorus Siculus), a Phoenician island-name possibly meaning 'island of some fragrant plant, e.g. balsam or pine', implying lush vegetation, with a final /t/ gained under influence from Old Norse. The name may have been directly coined as a Phoenican/Punic island-name meaning ‘the ?lush island’ or it may be the result of transference, with the island-name Uist consciously coined after Ibiza; compare the situation suggested for Thanet and the ‘island of Juno/Tanit’ on which the Phoenician colony of Cádiz was originally sited, above. The name is either Phoenician/Punic in origin, as outlined here, or inexplicable.(17) 
8. Iona — Ioua, Old Irish Í. No good etymology in insular languages. The easiest and most credible solution is that the name simply represents the Punic/Phoenician for 'island, isolated place', 'y or iw. Both Coates and Broderick suggest that such a simplex name could have carried the sense of Iona as an ‘island of a special sort, a holy place’, something that perhaps underlies the island’s later religious significance. Broderick notes that the island-name Iona is either a Phoenician/Punic name meaning ‘the island (possibly of some special/religious significance)’, or it is impossible to satisfactorily explain. (18) 
9. Islay — Gaelic Eilean Ìleach, earlier Ile/Ila/Ilea insula. Coates notes that there are only problematic etymologies for this island-name in insular languages and suggests instead that the most credible solution is to see the name as resulting from the Punic/Phoenician generic for island, 'y, in initial position + a form of root of the divine name seen in Phoenician 'l (cf. Hebrew ’Eloah, Biblical Aramaic ’Ĕlāhā and Arabic Aḷḷāh, < Proto-Semitic *al-’ilāh, 'the god, God'), passed through Gaelic: so 'island of the god' or similar (compare Thanet, above, probably originally 'Y TNT, ‘the island of the goddess Tanit’).(19)
10. Southern Inner Hebrides (Islay, Colonsay, Jura) — Ebudae, Eboudai in Pliny and other classical sources. There is no etymology for this name available in insular or Western European languages; however, the name can be potentially explained as a Punic/Phoenician name meaning 'the sheep/lamb islands’. ‘Hebrides’ is either this Phoenician name or is impossible to satisfactorily explain.(20)
11. Rum — Ruimm in the Annals of Ulster (677). Once again, it is argued that there is no satisfactory explanation for this island-name in an insular languages. As with Rame Head and Ram Head, an origin in a Semitic height-word would give good sense, given its mountainous topography from all approaches and possession of the second highest mountain in the Western Isles; Broderick suggests Semitic *rūm, ‘be high’, would regularly give the name as recorded, with a later shortening of the vowel in the southern Hebrides. Otherwise, the name is inexplicable.(21)
12. Bute — Botis in the Ravenna Cosmography. The name is root-identical with Proto-Celtic *butā, British *bot-, ‘dwelling’; however, Richard Coates considers the word *butā/*bot- to be, in fact, a direct borrowing from Proto-Semitic *but-, ‘hut’, and therefore suggests that this island-name could well be itself another surviving Proto-Semitic island-name in the Hebrides, meaning ‘dwelling island’ or similar, given the others discussed here.(22)
13. Seil — Gaelic Saoil, earlier Sóil. Richard Coates compares Arabic sāħil, 'coast' from the Proto-Semitic root *šħl, considering the final form of the island-name to reflect this root under Gaelic influence. It is worth noting that a name derived from a Punic/Phoenician root meaning 'coast island' would be topographically appropriate here, as Seil/Saoil is separated from the mainland by a thin ocean channel spanned by the eighteenth-century Clachan Bridge.(23) 
14. Britain & Éire/Ireland — Britannia/Prydain/*Pritan- and Ivernia/Hibernia/*Īweryon. Celtic etymologies for both of these major island-names are often cited, although these are not certain (see further above). Broderick, Coates and Vennemann all argue that plausible Proto-Semitic roots for both names are also available, however, and would moreover offer good sense when taken as a pair, with Britain being the ‘tin land’ (pretan, ‘tin’) and Éire/Ireland the ‘copper island’ (*’i: weriju:, ‘island of copper’) on this basis. Needless to say, tin and copper together make bronze, and archaeological, literary and isotopic evidence all combine to suggest that not only was long-distance trading taking place in the Late Bronze Age between Britain, the Mediterranean and Scandinavia, but also that these metals were likely one of the key drivers of this trade.(24)
15. Thule — An appropriate and credible Proto-Semitic etymology is available for this very difficult and often unexplained name in the root *ṯl, ‘become dark, shaded’, which would obviously work well for an island said to have been located in the far north where the ‘Arctic peculiarity’ of the Midnight Sun took hold, a phenomenon known to Pliny and other ancient authors.(25)

The Bronze Age 'Nebra sky disk' of c. 1600 BC; found near Nebra, Germany, & made using Cornish tin and gold (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Notes

1.     R. Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', in W. Ahrens et al (edd.), Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, August 17-22, 2008 (Toronto, 2009), pp. 228–42 at pp. 234–5; R. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, Nomina 35 (2012), 49‒102; G. Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 7 (2013), 1–28; and G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7. See further 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; T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), pp. 345–74; and T. Vennemann, ‘Remarks on some British place-names’, in G. F. Carr et al (edd.), Interdigitations: Essays for Irmengard Rauch (New York, 1999), pp. 25‒62.
2.     See Avienus, Ora Maritima, LI.108-119; Strabo, Geography, 3.5.11; and especially D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14, 27–9. See also D. W. Roller, 'Himilco the Navigator', in E. K. Akyeampong & H. L. Gates Jnr. (edd.), Dictionary of African Biography, 6 vols. (Oxford, 2012), III.70; T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), p. 356 and fn. 40; G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7; and 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.
3.     Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, passim.
4.     Strabo, Geography, 3.5.11; D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14; T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), p. 356 and fn. 40; G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7. On the export of British tin to the Continent and Mediterranean from the Bronze Age through to the medieval era, see for example J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32; M. Hausten et al, 'Tin isotopy – a new method for solving old questions', Archaeometry 52.5 (2010), 816–32; B. Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek: The Man Who Discovered Britain, rev. edn (London, 2002); and B. Cunliffe, Britain Begins (Oxford, 2013), pp. 319–21. The continuance of this trade into the medieval period is confirmed by a number of sources, including (a) the seventh-century Byzantine Life of St John the Almsgiver, which tells of a ship from Alexandria that visited Britain around AD 610–620 and exchanged a cargo of corn for one of tin, and (b) the thirteenth-century Arabic account of Sa'id al-Maghribi, preserved in the early fourteenth-century Geography of Abu'l-Fida, who mentions the export of 'tin and copper... from the island of England and island of Ireland' to Alexandria, Egypt: Leontius, Life of St John the Almsgiver, chapter 10; C. A. Snyder, An Age of Tyrants: Britain and the Britons, AD 400–600 (Stroud, 1998), p. 152; C. J. Salter, 'Early tin extraction in the south-west of England: a resource for Mediterranean metalworkers of late antiquity', in M. M. Mango (ed.), Byzantine Trade, 4th–12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange (Farnham, 2009), pp. 315–22 at p. 320; and D. N. Dunlop, 'The British Isles according to medieval Arabic authors', Islamic Quarterly, 4 (1957), 11–28 at p. 25. Note, although tin is only found in the south-west of Britain, the spread of names all along the south-coast through to Kent does not conflict with the idea of some connection between them and the tin trade. For example, the Isle of Thanet in Kent has recently been identified as a key strategic 'Late Bronze Age trading centre' lying at a mid-point on a trade route between Scandinavia and the Mediterranean and acting as a 'transit centre' for metalwork from other parts of Europe as well as 'providing local tin ore' to these traders (Ling et al, 'Moving metals II', p. 126. See also J. Ling & C. Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', Adoranten, 21 (2014), 23–43, and T. Earle et al, 'The political economy and metal trade in Bronze Age Europe: understanding regional variability in terms of comparative advantages and articulations', European Journal of Archaeology, 18.4 (2015), 633–57, esp. pp. 642–4).
5.     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 Pytheas of Massalia, see especially B. Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek: The Man Who Discovered Britain, rev. edn (London, 2002) and B. Cunliffe, Britain Begins (Oxford, 2013), pp. 319–21.
6.     See especially on the etymology of Britain, Ireland and Thule G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7 and R. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, Nomina 35 (2012), 49‒102. For the scientific analysis confirming the presence of Cornish tin on the Continent and in Scandinavia, see M. Hausten et al, 'Tin isotopy – a new method for solving old questions', Archaeometry 52.5 (2010), 816–32, on the Bronze Age Nebra sky disk found near Nebra, Germany, and J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32, on the pure Cornish tin ring-ingot found at Vårdinge, Sweden, which is dated to c. 950–700 BC. See, for example, Cunliffe, The Extraordinary Voyage of Pytheas the Greek, on Iron Age references to this trade and Sa'id al-Maghribi's medieval account of its continuance into the thirteenth century, cited in note 4 above.
7.     J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32; J. Ling & C. Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', Adoranten, 21 (2014), 23–43; T. Earle et al, 'The political economy and metal trade in Bronze Age Europe: understanding regional variability in terms of comparative advantages and articulations', European Journal of Archaeology, 18.4 (2015), 633–57, esp. pp. 642–4.
8.     The following list is based primarily on the four papers by Richard Coates and George Broderick cited in note 1, above, supplemented by a number of important papers by Theo Vennemann, cited in the footnotes to the list; note, Vennemann identifies a significant number of potential Punic names in Britain, but these are only listed below if they are discussed and endorsed by Coates and/or Broderick. All names and vocabulary discussed in the papers by Coates and Broderick are listed here, excluding the Isle of Mull, suggested as possibly Punic by Coates but rejected as probably Celtic by Broderick, 'Some island names', p. 13.
9.     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; T. Vennemann, 'The name of the Isle of Thanet', in A. J. Johnstone et al (edd.), Language and Text: Current Perspectives on English and Germanic Historical Linguistics and Philology (Heidelberg, 2006), pp. 345–74, especially pp. 345–8, 357–9; R. Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', in W. Ahrens et al (edd.), Names in Multi-Lingual, Multi-Cultural and Multi-Ethnic Contact: Proceedings of the 23rd International Congress of Onomastic Sciences, August 17-22, 2008 (Toronto, 2009), pp. 228–42 at pp. 234–5; R. Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, Nomina 35 (2012), 49‒102. Note, the notion that the name Thanet derives from Greek thanatos, 'death', is a learned folk-etymology, see V. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), p. 606; R. Coates in R. Coates et al, Celtic Voices, English Places: Studies of the Celtic Impact on Place-Names in England (Stamford, 2000), p. 32; and A. L. F. Rivet & C. Smith, The Place-Names of Roman Britain (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 70, 469.
10.     See the references cited in note 7, above. For a brief discussion of the burial site on the Isle of Thanet, see C. R. Green, '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, 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. Full details of the site and the burials are available in 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 J. I. McKinley et al, Cliffs End Farm, Isle of Thanet, Kent. A Mortuary and Ritual Site of the Bronze Age, Iron Age and Anglo-Saxon Period with Evidence for Long-Distance Maritime Mobility (Salisbury, 2014).
11.     O. J. Padel, Dictionary of Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), p. 147; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 237; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, pp. 80‒1.
12.     On the anchor, other finds of such early anchor stocks in Atlantic waters are usually thought to be of Phoenician or Punico-Mauretanian origin: so, a similar Type IIa lead anchor core found at Ras Achakar, Morocco, on the Atlantic side of the Straits of Gibraltar, is thought to have been lost by a Punic ship en route to the important Phoenician settlement of Cádiz, and another Type IIa anchor has been recovered from Cap Spartel, Morocco, that almost certainly dates from the fifth century BC and is similarly though to be from Phoenician/Punico-Mauretanian ship. See further C. R. Green, '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 Moroccan examples of Type IIa Mediterranean anchors, see A. Trakadas & E. Erbati, 'Lead anchor elements from Tangier, Morocco', Bulletin D'Archeologie Marocaine, 21 (2009), 250–67 at pp. 253–4, 256; A. Trakadas, 'Morocco Maritime Survey: the 2002 season', The INA Quarterly, 30 (2003), 12–21, esp. pp. 18–20 on a radiocarbon-dated Type IIa anchor. See also A. Trakadas & S. Claesson, 'On the shores of the Maghreb-al-Asqa: the 1999 survey of Tangier Bay, Morocco', The INA Quarterly, 28 (2001), 3–15; A. Trakadas, 'Morocco Maritime Survey: 2003 season', The INA Quarterly, 31 (2004), 3–9, especially pp. 8–9; and E. Erbati & A. Trakadas, The Morocco Maritime Survey (Oxford, 2008), for example p. 63. A fifth-century date for the Cap Spartel anchor core is based on a combination of the general chronology of Type IIa anchors, that is fifth to mid-second century BC, and the fact that the core still had some of its original wooden stock attached which has been radiocarbon dated to 785–400 cal BC. On Mount Batten and Plymouth Sound/the Tamar Estuary, see E. Wilkes, Iron Age Maritime Nodes on the English Channel Coast: An Investigation into the Location, Nature and Context of Early Ports and Harbours, 2 vols. (Bournemouth University PhD Thesis, 2004), I.139–42, II.466–7; A. Firth et al, Tamar Estuaries Historic Environment: A Review of Marine and Coastal Archaeology (Plymouth, 1998); B. Cunliffe, Mount Batten, Plymouth: a Prehistoric and Roman Port (Oxford, 1988).
13.     Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 235, and Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’.
14.     Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', p. 11; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 237; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, pp. 80‒1.
15.     T. Vennemann, ‘Remarks on some British place-names’, in G. F. Carr et al (edd.), Interdigitations: Essays for Irmengard Rauch (New York, 1999), pp. 25‒62 at pp. 40‒2; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 234. On the identification of the Atlantic Kassiterides with the Scilly Isles, see especially D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14.
16.     R. Coates, ‘Periplus: a voyage round The Solent’, in R. Coates, Toponymic Topics: Essays on the Early Toponomy of the British Isles (Brighton, 1988), pp. 1‒20; Vennemann, ‘Remarks on some British place-names’, pp. 38‒40; G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7.
17.     G. Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', Journal of Scottish Name Studies, 7 (2013), 1–28 at pp. 8‒9; R. Coates, ‘Uist ‒ Ibiza’, in R. Coates, Toponymic Topics: Essays on the Early Toponomy of the British Isles (Brighton, 1988), pp. 21‒3; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, pp. 63‒5.
18.     Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', pp. 13‒15; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, p. 66; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 234.
19.     Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', pp. 233‒4; Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’; Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', pp. 15‒16.
20.     See especially Broderick, 2013, pp. 4‒5; also Coates, 2009, p. 234; Coates, 2012, pp. 70‒1; and Vennemann, ‘Remarks on some British place-names’, p. 46.
21.     Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, pp. 80‒1.
22.     Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, p. 81, although see Broderick, 'Some island names in the former "Kingdom of the Isles": a reappraisal', pp. 19‒20.
23.     Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’; Coates, 'A glimpse through a dirty window into an unlit house: names of some north-west European islands', p. 233.
24.     See especially G. Broderick, ‘The names of Britain and Ireland revisited’, Beiträge zur Namenforschung, 44 (2009), 151‒7, who gives a thorough survey of the ancient textual evidence for the tin trade too; also Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’, and T. Vennemann, ‘Zur Etymologie von Éire, dem Namen Irlands’, Sprachwissenschaft, 23.4 (1998), 461‒9. See further the following on Phoenician traders/colonists and the early trade in British tin: D. W. Roller, Through the Pillars of Herakles: Greco-Roman Exploration of the Atlantic (London, 2006), pp. 12–14, 27–9; D. W. Roller, 'Himilco the Navigator', in E. K. Akyeampong & H. L. Gates Jnr. (edd.), Dictionary of African Biography, 6 vols. (Oxford, 2012), III.70; Vennemann, 'Name of the Isle of Thanet', p. 356 and fn. 40; J. Ling et al, 'Moving metals II: provenancing Scandinavian Bronze Age artefacts by lead isotope and elemental analyses', Journal of Archaeological Science, 41 (2014), 106–32; J. Ling & C. Uhnér, 'Rock art and metal trade', Adoranten, 21 (2014), 23–43; and T. Earle et al, 'The political economy and metal trade in Bronze Age Europe: understanding regional variability in terms of comparative advantages and articulations', European Journal of Archaeology, 18.4 (2015), 633–57, esp. pp. 642–4.
25.     See further the discussion in Coates, ‘A toponomastic contribution to the linguistic prehistory of the British Isles’.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Notes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Notes

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

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