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.

St Ia of St Ives: a Byzantine saint in early medieval Cornwall?

The origins and identity of St Ia, the patron saint of St Ives, Cornwall (Porthye/Sancta Ya in 1284, Porthia in 1291), has rarely been seriously investigated, beyond noting the existence of late medieval legends that claim she arrived in Cornwall c. 500 AD from Ireland on a leaf.(1) However, recent work suggests that St Ia may be rather more interesting than she at first appears, perhaps having been originally a Byzantine saint whose cult arrived in south-western Britain in the fifth or sixth century, at the same time as the exceptional quantities of imported eastern Mediterranean goods known from sites such as Tintagel and Gwithian (St Ives Bay).

The fifteenth-century church of St Ia at St Ives, Cornwall, looking across the roofs from the Barbara Hepworth Sculpture Garden, with the opposite side of St Ives Bay visible in the background, an area that has seen notable finds of imported eastern Mediterranean pottery of the fifth to sixth centuries (image: C. R. Green).

The earliest known traditions about St Ia are found in the Life of Gwinear, written in around 1300 by Anselm, who tells how St Ia—supposedly an Irish virgin of noble birth living over 800 years or so earlier in c. 500 AD—failed to make it to the coast on time to catch the boat from Ireland to Cornwall with St Gwinear and his 777(!) companions, but was able to follow after them on a leaf that miraculously enlarged itself to the size of a boat. William of Worcester in the fifteenth century and John Leland in the sixteenth add further details, including the rather dubious claims that she was the sister of two other obscure Cornish saints, St Euny and St Erch, and that she landed at Pendinas, the rocky peninsula next to St Ives, where a great lord in Cornwall with the name Dinan (a transparent case of a person invented out of a local place-name) built her a church. Needless to say, none of this inspires great confidence, being both late and clearly fantastical. Indeed, even the bare suggestion of an Irish origin for St Ia probably cannot be relied upon; as Nicholas Orme has emphasised, such an origin was routinely claimed in the late medieval era for Cornish saints and carries little weight.(2)

In light of all this, St Ia could easily be considered simply an obscure saint about whom little to nothing solid can be said. However, it is worth noting that in her case at least, this may not be the end of the matter. The reason for this is that the name St Ia is not, in fact, 'otherwise unknown', but rather also belonged to a Late Roman/Early Byzantine female saint too, as Ken Dark has pointed out.(3) This eastern St Ia is said to have been a woman who was martyred in the fourth century by the Sasanian emperor Shapur II (d. 379) as part of his long and bloody persecution of the Christians from c. 339. Furthermore, not only was a Greek version of her life circulating along with other Passions of the Persian martyrs in the Eastern Roman/Byzantine Empire, but her cult was also clearly an established one in Early Byzantine Constantinople, given both that her shrine was located right by the main imperial ceremonial entrance to the city, the Golden Gate, and that it was apparently extensively and lavishly renovated by the Emperor Justinian (527–65), as Procopius in the mid-sixth century notes:

And on the left as one enters the gate which is known as the Golden Gate, this Emperor found a martyr's shrine of St. Ia, fallen in ruins, which he restored with all sumptuousness. Such were the labours accomplished by the Emperor Justinian in connection with the holy places in Byzantium... (4)

Such a situation is, of course, most intriguing. On the one hand we have an obscure female saint in Cornwall named Ia about whom only very late, untrustworthy legends survive, and on the other hand we have a female St Ia who was martyred in fourth-century Persia and venerated in the eastern Mediterranean, with her shrine being next to the Golden Gate at the imperial capital and renovated with care by the Emperor Justinian himself in the sixth century. In this light, it certainly seems permissible to wonder whether the enigmatic Cornish St Ia and the Early Byzantine St Ia might not, in fact, be one and the same, especially given that they are both female saints. So, how credible is it that a Late Antique eastern Mediterranean cult of a female St Ia might have been transferred to south-western Britain?

A Byzantine depiction of the martyrdom of St Ia of Persia, from the late tenth-century Menologion of Basil II, MS Vat.gr.1613 (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Two sherds of fifth- to sixth-century eastern Mediterranean Phocaean Red Slip Ware with impressed crosses found at Tintagel, Cornwall (image: C. R. Green)

A fragment of an Early Byzantine wine amphora found at the important fifth- to sixth-century site of Tintagel, Cornwall (image: C. R. Green).

With regard to this, it is worth pointing out once again that there is now solid evidence for a substantial degree of contact between western Britain and the Byzantine Empire in the 'post-Roman' period. For example, there have been significant finds of fifth- to sixth-century eastern Mediterranean and North African pottery from a range of sites in western Britain and Ireland, with around half of the total coming from the probable royal site of Tintagel, Cornwall, as well as discoveries of early Byzantine coins and other items such as Late Antique eastern Mediterranean pilgrim flasks associated with St Menas.(5) Moreover, a recent isotopic analysis of burial sites in South Wales suggests that people who had probably grown up in Byzantine North Africa or further afield were actually being buried in western/Atlantic Britain in the post-Roman period, something that is undoubtedly of considerable interest in the present context.(6) In this light, we might also note here the seventh-century Life of St John the Almsgiver, which tells of a ship from Alexandria, Egypt, that visited Britain around AD 610–620 and exchanged a cargo of corn for one of tin (a tale that is clearly suggestive as to continuing seventh-century contacts with the tin-producing Cornish peninsula), and the probably late sixth-century memorial stone at Penmachno, North Wales, which dates itself with reference to a Byzantine consulship, stating that it was erected 'in the time of the consul Justin', probably meaning here the Emperor Justin II (d. 578). Indeed, the latter may be of especial interest, given that Thomas Charles-Edwards has recently argued that this inscription probably reflects 'British loyalty to the Emperor Justin' and functioned as an affirmation that the erectors of the stone believed that they 'still belonged to the far-flung and loose-knit community of citizens of which he was the head'.(7)

Looking specifically at the immediate vicinity of St Ives, the available evidence would certainly seem to accord well with the above general portrait of close links between western Britain and the eastern Mediterranean in the fifth and sixth centuries. Thus whilst there have been no relevant and reliable modern excavations in St Ives itself, two other sites in St Ives Bay have produced imported fifth- to sixth-century pottery from North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean. The first is an important 'post-Roman' specialised industrial complex at Gwithian, across the bay from St Ives, which has produced both North African and eastern Mediterranean finewares—African Red Slip Ware from modern Tunisia and Phocaean Red Slip Ware from what is now western Turkey—along with a substantial quantity (82 sherds) of eastern Mediterranean transport amphorae.(8) The second is a find of Phocaean Red Slip Ware made just around the bay from St Ives in the churchyard of Phillack (aka Egloshayle), Hayle, a site that also houses a probably fifth-century Chi-Rho stone and is the focus for a large number of early east–west cist burials. This site has been recently interpreted by Charles Thomas and others as the location for a significant and very early Christian centre, and it has moreover been reasonably suggested that St Ives Bay was home to an important secondary centre of power within the post-Roman kingdom of Dumnonia too, perhaps situated at the as-yet-unexcavated multivallate hillfort at Carnsew that is located within and overlooking the Hayle Estuary (around 2.5 miles or so directly across the bay from the church of St Ia at St Ives), with this centre potentially being responsible for distributing Mediterranean imports within western Cornwall.(9)

A map of Mediterranean imports and early Christian sites of the fifth to seventh centuries in and around St Ives Bay, Cornwall. St Ives lies at the western end of the bay, with the Hayle Estuary at its centre (Phillack or Egloshayle is located just north of the eastern branch of the estuary) and Gwithian on the Red River at its north-eastern end; click the image or here for a larger version of this map or go here for a zoomable version of the base map. Finds of Mediterranean imports are indicated by a red dot (with the debated finds from Hellesvean, St Ives, mentioned in fn. 8, indicated by a red ring), probable early chapel/church sites by small crosses (see fn. 9 on Lelant), the likely ecclesiastical centre at Phillack by a large cross, and the suggested secular centre at Carnsew hillfort, Hayle, by a purple star; early Christian inscribed memorial stones are also shown, depicted by an upright black rectangle (image: C. R. Green, on a base map from OpenStreetMap, CC BY-SA 2.0).

The distribution of Mediterranean imports in fifth- and sixth-century western Britain and Ireland, after E. Campbell, Continental and Mediterranean Imports to Atlantic Britain and Ireland, AD 400–800, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 157 (York, 2007), and A. M. Kelly, 'The Discovery of Phocaean Red Slip Ware (PRSW) Form 3 and Bii ware (LR1 amphorae) on sites in Ireland - an analysis within a broader framework', Proceedings Of The Royal Irish Academy, 110 (2010), 35–88 (image: C. R. Green).

The entrance to the Hayle Estuary, with Porthkidney Sands, Lelant, on the left and Hayle beach on the right (image: C. R. Green).

In addition to such archaeological and textual evidence for fifth- to seventh-century contacts with the Byzantine world, it is also worth noting that St Ia may well not stand entirely alone either. There are, in fact, a handful of other possible imported cults in early medieval Cornwall and South Wales which might offer further support and context for the transference of a female St Ia to western Cornwall in the fifth or sixth century. So, for example, Ken Dark has recently directed attention to the dedication of a chapel near St David's, Wales, to an otherwise unknown and obscure 'St Stinian', noting the intriguing fact that this saint's name is a form of the Byzantine imperial name Justinian, who was coincidentally both the ruler responsible for restoring St Ia's shrine at Constantinople and the ruler in whose reign a significant proportion of the Byzantine imports to western Britain arrived. Likewise, Andrea Harris has argued that St Just of St Just-in-Penwith, western Cornwall, may be a post-Roman dedication to the fourth-century St Justus, who served as the 13th bishop of Lyon before retiring to Egypt as a hermit, and in this context it is perhaps worth recalling that a fifth- or sixth-century Chi-Rho stone has been found in the church here, confirming a post-Roman Christian presence.(10)

All told, then, it would thus seem clear that there is at least a case to be made for identifying the obscure St Ia of St Ives, Cornwall, with the Byzantine St Ia of Persia (a martyr whose shrine by the Golden Gate at Constantinople was sumptuously restored by the emperor Justinian in the sixth century), rather than seeing her as an otherwise unknown female saint with a coincidentally identical name, with this cult of St Ia perhaps having been introduced to western Cornwall in the later fifth or sixth centuries. Certainly the shared name, the fact that they are both female saints, and the sheer quantity of the evidence now available for contact between Cornwall/western Britain and the eastern Mediterranean in the fifth and sixth centuries—including from what appears to be an important Christian site in St Ives Bay itself—are all at the very least suggestive, as is the potential for there having been other imported cults elsewhere in Cornwall and western Britain. Whilst a coincidence cannot, of course, be ruled out, the possibility of an origin for the Cornish St Ia in the Byzantine eastern Mediterranean would consequently seem to deserve at least some serious consideration.

Drawing of the probably fifth-century AD small Chi-Rho stone from the porch gable of the church at Phillack (or Egloshayle), Hayle, which has been compared to early Chi-Rhos from the continent and eastern Mediterranean, e.g. S. M. Pearce, South-Western Britain in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 2004), p. 244, and C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff 1994), pp. 199–200; a photograph of the stone can be seen here (photo: C. R. Green, from an original drawing by Charles Thomas in the Royal Cornwall Museum, Truro).

Hayle Beach seen across St Ives Bay from Porthminster beach, St Ives; for a larger version of this image click here. Interestingly, a report from the late nineteenth century notes that a medieval chapel and two burials were exposed at Porthminster, St Ives, by the shifting sands in c. 1870, but were then buried again; certainly the presence of a chapel and burials might help explain the 'minster' element in the name here, which is first recorded in 1301 (image: C. R. Green).

Notes

1.     N. Orme, The Saints of Cornwall (Oxford, 2000), p. 144; O. J. Padel, Cornish Place-Names (Penzance, 1988), p. 100. Note, the correct form of the saint's name is Ia, not Ive or similar, as found in the modern English form of the place-name: the intrusive -v- is non-original and probably emerged under the influence of the unrelated place-names St Ive in eastern Cornwall (Sanctus Ivo in 1201) and/or St Ives in Cambridgeshire (Sancto Ivo de Slepe in 1110), both of which reference a distinct male saint named St Ivo; see further Padel, Cornish Place-Names, p. 100, and D. Mills, A Dictionary of British Place-Names (Oxford, 2011), p. 401; V. Watts, Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), p. 520..
2.     See especially N. Orme, The Saints of Cornwall (Oxford, 2000), generally on the claimed 'Irish' origins of Cornish saints, of which he is sceptical; he discusses St Ia on pp. 144–5 and St Gwinear on pp. 136–8. See also P. C. Bartrum, A Welsh Classical Dictionary (Cardiff, 1993), pp. 426–7, and G. H. Doble, The Saints of Cornwall: Part One, Saints of the Land's End District (Felinfach, 1997), pp. 89–94, on St Ia.
3.     K. R. Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire (Stroud, 2000), p. 163; K. R. Dark, 'Globalizing late antiquity: models, metaphors and the realities of long-distance trade and diplomacy', in A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Globalisation? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2007), pp. 3–14 at p. 7.
4.     Procopius, Buildings, I.ix.16–17; the text of St Ia's passion is printed in H. Delehaye, Les versions grecques des actes des martyrs Persans sous Sapor II (Paris, 1907), vol. II, pp. 453–73.
5.     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; A. Harris, Byzantium, Britain and the West: the Archaeology of Cultural Identity, AD 400–650 (Stroud, 2003); E. Campbell, Continental and Mediterranean Imports to Atlantic Britain and Ireland, AD 400–800, Council for British Archaeology Research Report 157 (York, 2007); A. Harris, 'Britain and China at opposite ends of the world? Archaeological methodology and long-distance contacts in the sixth century', in A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Globalisation? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2007), pp. 91–104; 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; M. Duggan, 'Ceramic imports to Britain and the Atlantic Seaboard in the fifth century and beyond', Internet Archaeology, 41 (2016), online at http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue41/3/index.html; S. Moorhead, 'Early Byzantine copper coins found in Britain – a review in light of new finds recorded with the Portable Antiquities Scheme', in O. Tekin (ed.), Ancient History, Numismatics and Epigraphy in the Mediterranean World (Istanbul, 2009), pp. 263–74; W. Anderson, 'Menas flasks in the West: pilgrimage and trade at the end of antiquity', Ancient West and East, 6 (2007), 221–43; and 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.
6.     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. See further 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 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.
7.     For the reference to an early seventh-century ship visiting Britain, see Leontius, Life of St John the Almsgiver, chapter 10; C. 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; M. M. Mango, 'Tracking Byzantine silver and copper metalware, 4th–12th centuries', in M. M. Mango (ed.), Byzantine Trade, 4th-12th Centuries: The Archaeology of Local, Regional and International Exchange (Farnham, 2009), pp. 221–36 at p. 223. For the Penmachno stone, see T. M. Charles-Edwards, Wales and the Britons, 350–1064 (Oxford, 2013), pp. 234–8, quotations at p. 235 and 238.
8.     For the Gwithian site, see now J. A. Nowakowski et al, 'Return to Gwithian: shifting the sands of time', Cornish Archaeology, 46 (2007), 13–76, and I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 360–82. Note, there are confused reports of Mediterranean imports from just to the south of St Ives proper at Hellesvean, St Ives; however, the circumstances of the excavations, first undertaken in the 1920s, mean that they need to be treated with caution and Ewan Campbell rejects them on the grounds that they we cannot be certain that the finds ascribed to Hellesvean don't come from other sites: E. Campbell, Imported Material in Atlantic Britain and Ireland c.AD 400–800, 2007, project archive, online at http://archaeologydataservice.ac.uk/archives/view/campbell_cba_2007/index.cfm, sites database. For what it is worth, claimed post-Roman Mediterranean imports from Hellesvean, St Ives, include "5 sherds of Aii imported Mediterranean ware [i.e. African Red Slip Ware from the Carthage region]" (G. Hutchinson, 'The bar-lug pottery of Cornwall', Cornish Archaeology, 18 (1979), 81–103 at p. 96) and a possible sherd from a Biii amphora (Cornwall and Scilly Historic Environment Record, PRN 31135.02).
9.     C. Thomas, A Provisional List of Imported Pottery in Post-Roman Western Britain and Ireland, Institute of Cornish Studies Special Report No. 7 (Redruth 1981), p. 6; C. Thomas, 'The context of Tintagel. A new model for the diffusion of post-Roman Mediterranean imports', Cornish Archaeology, 27 (1988), 7–25 at p. 22; C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff 1994), pp. 197–201; E. Okasha, Corpus of Early Christian Inscribed Stones of South-west Britain (Leicester, 2003), pp. 205–07; S. M. Pearce, South-Western Britain in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 2004), pp. 12, 149–51; S. Turner, 'Making a Christian landscape: early medieval Cornwall', in M. Carver (ed.), The Cross Goes North: Processes of Conversion in Northern Europe, 300–1300 (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 171–94 at pp. 175–6; S. Turner, Making a Christian Landscape: How Christianity Shaped the Countryside in Early-Medieval Cornwall, Devon and Wessex (Exeter, 2006), pp. 35–6; and I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 39, 132, 378–81. On the potential important secondary centre of power for the Dumnonian kingdom located in the Hayle Estuary, see C. Thomas, 'The context of Tintagel. A new model for the diffusion of post-Roman Mediterranean imports', Cornish Archaeology, 27 (1988), 7–25, especially p. 16 and fig. 3 (p. 17). Thomas suggests that this secular focus was located at the 'small coastal fort of Carnsew commanding the Hayle inlet,' which is 'unexplored, hardly recorded but suggestively placed' (p. 16); in this context, it is worth noting that the small multivallate hillfort at Carnsew, Hayle, was the site of an antiquarian find of an early post-Roman inscribed memorial stone and cist grave that Thomas dates to the fifth century ('The context of Tintagel', p. 21; And Shall These Mute Stones Speak?, pp. 191–3), and moreover occupies a strategically significant controlling position on a low but prominent small hill overlooking the Hayle Estuary. Another potentially notable early site on the Hayle Estuary is at Lelant, where a probably fourth- or fifth-century AD burial site and a chapel were uncovered in the late nineteenth century, see I. Tompsett, Social Dynamics in South-West England AD 350–1150: An Exploration of Maritime Oriented Identity in the Atlantic Approaches and Western Channel Region (University of Nottingham PhD Thesis, 2012), pp. 134 (fig. 45), 375 (fig. 201), and 379–81; C. Noall, 'Nineteenth-Century discoveries at Lelant', Cornish Archaeology, 3 (1964), 34–6; Cornwall & Scilly Historic Environment Record no. 31061; C. Thomas, And Shall These Mute Stones Speak? Post-Roman Inscriptions in Western Britain (Cardiff 1994), p. 198, fig. 12.1.
10.     K. R. Dark, Britain and the End of the Roman Empire (Stroud, 2000), p. 163; K. R. Dark, 'Globalizing late antiquity: models, metaphors and the realities of long-distance trade and diplomacy', in A. Harris (ed.), Incipient Globalisation? Long-Distance Contacts in the Sixth Century (Oxford, 2007), pp. 3–14 at p. 7; A. Harris, Byzantium, Britain and the West: the Archaeology of Cultural Identity, AD 400–650 (Stroud, 2003), pp. 159–60; S. M. Pearce, South-Western Britain in the Early Middle Ages (Leicester, 2004), p. 244. On St Just, it is worth noting that he, like St Ia, is often described as 'obscure' and a saint about whom 'nothing is known' (N. Orme, The Saints of Cornwall (Oxford, 2000), p. 155; V. Watts, Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), p. 520).

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 Christmas visitor: the Byzantine emperor's trip to London in the winter of 1400–01

The aim of following post is to share an interesting fifteenth-century image of the meeting between King Henry IV and the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in 1400 at London. The emperor was touring western Europe trying to solicit help for the Byzatine Empire against the Ottoman Turks and visited England for two months over the winter of 1400–01, staying with king for Christmas and being lavished by him with presents and entertainments.

The meeting between King Henry IV of England and the Byzantine emperor Manuel II Palaiologos at London in 1400, from a late fifteenth-century manuscript of the St Alban's Chronicle (image: Lambeth Palace Library MS 6, f. 240r).

The trip to England by the Byzantine, or Eastern Roman, emperor Manuel II Palaiologos in 1400 was the first such visit to these islands by a Roman emperor since Emperor Constans arrived in Britannia in AD 343, more than 1,000 years before. Emperor Manuel had been urging the rulers of western Europe to send men or money to the aid of Constantinople against the Ottoman Turks, who were close to a final conquest of the Byzantine Empire, and it was eventually decided that the emperor should travel to the west himself to put his case personally, which he did in 1400. Arriving initially in Italy and France, the emperor brought with him a large retinue of his own priests and dignitaries, alongside a collection of relics and treasures to offer as gifts to his hosts, as he sought to enlist their aide in his cause.

It appears that the emperor at first intended to cross over to England to visit Henry IV in the September of 1400, but was forced to wait whilst the new king dealt with the Scots in the north of the island. Emperor Manuel finally set sail from Calais to Dover on 11 December 1400, suffering a rough sea crossing, and was greeted by the Prior of Christ Church at Canterbury on 13 December, where he visited Thomas Becket's shrine. He then travelled on to London with an English noble escort and met King Henry at Blackheath on 21 December, subsequently staying with the king for nearly two whole months. Needless to say, this visit by the Emperor of Constantinople excited considerable interest in England at the time, with Thomas Walsingham's Chronicle observing his arrival as follows:

At the same time the Emperor of Constantinople visited England to ask for help against the Turks. The king with an imposing retinue, met him at Blackheath on the feast of St Thomas [21 December], gave so great a hero an appropriate welcome and escorted him to London. He entertained him there royally for many days, paying the expenses of the emperor's stay, and by grand presents showing respect for a person of such eminence. (Chronica Maiora of Thomas Walsingham, s.a. 1400)

An apparent eyewitness account to his arrival is also offered by Adam Usk, who comments on the emperor's retinue of priests, the unusual dress of the visitors, and his feelings about the emperor's plight that drove him to tour western Europe:

On the feast of St Thomas the apostle [21 December], the emperor of the Greeks visited the king of England in London to seek help against the Saracens, and was honourably received by him, staying with him for two whole months at enormous expense to the king, and being showered with gifts at his departure. This emperor and his men always went about dressed uniformly in long robes cut like tabards which were all of one colour, namely white, and disapproved greatly of the fashions and varieties of dress worn by the English, declaring that they signified inconstancy and fickleness of heart. No razor ever touched the heads or beards of his priests. These Greeks were extremely devout in their religious services, having them chanted variously by knights or by clerics, for they were sung in their native tongue. I thought to myself how sad it was that this great Christian leader from the remote east had been driven by the power of the infidels to visit distant islands in the west in order to seek help against them. (The Chronicle of Adam Usk, 1377-1421, pp. 119-21)

The surviving late fifteenth-century Great Hall of Eltham Palace, London (image: Dun.can/Flickr, CC BY 2.0).

Whilst at London, the emperor stayed with Henry at his favourite palace of Eltham (now within the Royal Borough of Greenwich, south-east London), where he was treated to a grand Christmas party, with a great tournament being staged in the palace grounds in his honour. The people of London also went out of their way to entertain their exalted guest, with the Chronicle of London recording under 1400 that 'In this year was here the emperor of Constantinople: and the king held his Christmas at Eltham; and men of London made a great mumming to him of 12 aldermen and their sons, for which they had great thanks.'

As for Emperor Manuel, he was clearly highly impressed by the lengths the king had gone to in order to entertain his imperial guest, as a letter written by the emperor whilst in London to his friend Manuel Chrysoloras indicates:

Now what is the reason for the present letter? A large number of letters have come to us from all over bearing excellent and wonderful promises, but most important is the ruler with whom we are now staying, the king of Britain the Great, of a second civilized world, you might say, who abounds in so many good qualities and is adorned with all sorts of virtues. His reputation earns him the admiration of people who have not met him, while for those who have once seen him, he proves brilliantly that Fame is not really a goddess, since she is unable to show the man to be as great as does actual experience.

This ruler, then, is most illustrious because of his position, most illustrious too, because of his intelligence; his might amazes everyone, and his understanding wins him friends; he extends his hand to all and in every way he places himself at the service of those who need help. And now, in accord with his nature, he has made himself a virtual haven for us in the midst of a twofold tempest, that of the season and that of fortune, and we have found refuge in the man himself and his character. His conversation is quite charming; he pleases us in every way; he honours us to the greatest extent and loves us no less. Although he has gone to extremes in all he has done for us, he seems almost to blush in the belief—in this he is alone—that he might have fallen considerably short of what he should have done. This is how magnanimous the man is. (Letters of Manuel II Palaeologus, Jan/Feb 1401, p. 102)

Manuel II Palaiologos finally returned to France in February 1401, with high hopes of the king providing substantial help and funds for Constantinople. On taking his leave, he was apparently showered with gifts by Henry IV and in return he presented the king with a priceless piece of the seamless tunic woven by the Virgin Mary for her son, which is said to have delighted the king—he subsequently divided the piece in two and gave one half to Westminster Abbey and other to Thomas Arundel, who gifted it to the high alter at Canterbury where it was placed in a silver-gilt reliquary alongside a thorn from the crown of thorns and a drop of Becket's blood.

Unfortunately, the emperor's hopes for aid were only partially realised. Whilst Henry provided Emperor Manuel with the huge sum of £2,000 in funds before he departed England, no military help appears to have materialised, despite a subsequent letter from the emperor's nephew in Constantinople, John VII, in June 1402 requesting official military aid and paying tribute to the English noblemen who were apparently then engaged in the defence of Constantinople in a personal capacity. Fortunately for the Byzantine Empire, however, such aid was not in the end required—the Turkish Sultan Bayezid I was defeated and captured by the Turco-Mongol ruler Timur at the Battle of Ankara in 1402, granting Constantinople a reprieve and postponing the final fall of the Byzantine Empire for another 51 years.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2017, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.

The fifth- to sixth-century British church in the forum at Lincoln: a brief discussion

The aim of the following brief note is simply to bring wider attention to the post-Roman British apsidal church in the centre of the Roman forum of the former Late Roman provincial capital of Lincoln. A variety of dates have been proposed over the years, but a recent reconsideration of all the available evidence, including a Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon data from the cemetery, indicates that the timber apsidal church almost certainly dates from the fifth to sixth centuries and had been demolished to make way for a cemetery by c. AD 600. The following discussion is based primarily on the analyses of the evidence found in my Britons and Anglo-Saxons and an earlier article, with additions and expansion as required.(1)

The sequence of buildings at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, showing their relationship to the Roman forum. Image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, 2012, fig, 12, copyright English Heritage.

Although the former Romano-British provincial capital of Lincoln (Lindum Colonia, British Lindon,*Lindocolonia) has produced little to no evidence for a pre-seventh-century 'Anglo-Saxon' cultural presence, there are nonetheless strong indications of activity in the city from the post-Roman period. In particular, a complex sequence of east–west orientated burials and two timber buildings were excavated from the St Paul-in-the-Bail site here—at the centre of Lincoln's former Roman forum—in the 1970s. One of these buildings is now generally agreed to have been an apsidal timber church and it cuts the foundations of an earlier structure which belonged to the same building tradition, had the same orientation, and potentially had the same function too.(2) The apsidal church is in turn overlain by complex sequence of inhumation burials, some of which cut the wall-line of the church or cut post-church layers from within its walls.(3)

The question of the date of this timber apsidal church—capable of holding around 100 worshippers—has been the subject of considerable discussion ever since its discovery, with initial reports suggesting that it could be the documented seventh-century church constructed in Lincoln by Paulinus sometime around AD 630.(4) However, there are significant issues with this idea, even before we look at the radiocarbon dating of the post-church cemetery and its implications, not least that the seventh-century church of Paulinus at Lincoln mentioned by Bede in c. 731 was still standing in his day and is clearly stated by him to have been made of stone, not wood. Likewise, the fact that the apsidal church in the forum appears to be the second in a sequence of two buildings is a further significant potential impediment to accepting it as Paulinus's church.(5) An alternative proposition is that we have here a sequence of very late and post-Roman British churches, located in the centre of the forum courtyard and orientated with reasonable precision to follow the alignment of the forum itself, with the proximity of the unexcavated west ends of the churches to the western portico of the forum implying that they were designed to be entered from between its columns. Certainly, this positioning and alignment of the buildings and their apparent relationship with the forum's western portico has been seen as highly suggestive of a late/post-Roman British origin, and it has been moreover argued that such an origin might well be supported by, for example, the building style/plan of the churches and the recovery of a coin of Arcadius (388–402) from beneath a metalled surface within the walls of the structures.(6)

Reconstruction of the fifth- to sixth-century apsidal church at St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln, located in the centre of the Roman forum and entered from the western portico. Image: Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, 2012, fig. 13, by David Vale/SLHA.

Perhaps the most telling evidence for a pre-seventh-century date for the apsidal church, however, comes from the radiocarbon dates of the graves excavated at the St Paul-in-the-Bail site. One of the most important of these appears to be a foundation deposit for the apsidal timber church, and this has a medial date of cal AD 441 within a likely date range from the very late fourth to the mid–late sixth century, which is certainly suggestive.(7) Even more important are the burials from the graveyard stage of the site, which Brian Gilmour has argued almost certainly only began after the demolition of the apsidal church had taken place, with three of the earliest of these moreover either cutting the wall-line of the apsidal church or cutting stratigraphically post-church layers from its interior.(8) Although the radiocarbon results from these graves have often been used individually (and occasionally rather dubiously) in arguments about the dating of the church, recent Bayesian modelling of the radiocarbon dates of these burials has now put things on a much sounder footing. The three burials that cut the walls and interior post-church levels together indicate that there is a very high probability (>85%) that the apsidal church was demolished before AD 600, given their relationship with this structure, and if the graveyard stage as a whole postdates this church, as it is indeed believed to, then an end to the church sequence before c. 600 becomes even more likely on the basis of the Bayesian modelling (c. 95%), although the available evidence would still just allow for a demolition as late as the early seventh century.(9)

All told, then, by far the most credible scenario—strongly supported by the radiocarbon dating and Bayesian modelling—is that we do indeed have here a sequence of two British churches set up in a significant area of the city (in the centre of the Roman forum and probably entered from its western portico), with the earlier structure rebuilt at some point perhaps around the mid–late fifth century into a larger apsidal church capable of holding around 100 worshippers, which then continued in use into the sixth century before being demolished by c. AD 600.(10) Such a sequence of very late and post-Roman churches not only makes best sense of all of the available evidence from the St Paul-in-the-Bail site, including the recent reassessment of the dating evidence, but it would also have a plausible context within late and post-Roman Britain. After all, just about the only sin that Gildas does not accuse his fellow sixth-century Britons of is paganism, indicating that he considered them to be Christians, albeit sinful ones, and Roman Lincoln moreover is known to have had its own bishop from the early fourth century, when Adelphius, Bishop of Lincoln, was sent to the Council of Arles in 314.(11) In this context, it is also worth noting that other evidence does exist for a partial survival of Romano-British Christianity in at least some areas of early medieval lowland Britain, including the numerous eccles place-names that occur right the way across to East Anglia and Kent, the apparent British cult of an unknown St Sixtus encountered by St Augustine in south-eastern England in c. 600, and Steven Bassett's case for there having been post-Roman British bishops in places such as Gloucester and Lichfield before there were Anglo-Saxon ones installed.(12)

A sequence of fifth- to sixth-century British churches in the centre of the Roman forum at Lincoln would likewise seem to have a very good local and regional context too. First, Lincoln itself seems to have remained economically vital into the very late Roman era, with not only good evidence for continuing specialist industry, cohesive central organization, considerable population and a thriving market at Lincoln right into the very late fourth century, but also indications of both continued urban activity into the early fifth century and the operation of the Romano-British pottery industry here at least partway through the fifth century, as was discussed in a previous post.(13) Second, and most importantly, there is now a reasonably substantial body of evidence to suggest that the former Roman provincial capital at Lincoln actually retained its centrality into the post-Roman period, becoming the focus of a British polity known as *Lindēs (from British-Latin Lindenses), as has been discussed at length elsewhere. This polity would eventually become the seventh-century Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindissi/Lindsey (a name which derives from Late British *Lindēs), but as a British political territory it is now thought likely to have survived right through the fifth century and at least some way into the sixth.(14) Needless to say, this is a point of considerable significance in the present context.

The Roman Mint Wall, Lincoln. This is the surviving portion of the basilica wall immediately to the north of the St Paul-in-the-Bail site; it originally stood nine metres high. It has been argued that the forum area must have remained open and maintained, with graves from the post-church inhumation cemetery marked, right through into the tenth century, when a small stone church was then built around what would seem to be one of the most important of the inhumation graves here (a late sixth- or seventh-century cist grave containing the only grave gift recovered from the whole cemetery, a Late Celtic hanging-bowl). In this light, one credible interpretation is that after the apsidal church was demolished, significant activity—be it ecclesiastical or secular—continued in this part of Lincoln, focused on the former large basilica that formed the north of the forum: certainly, this would explain not only the significant surviving elements of the basilica here, but also the presence of the graveyard in the forum (image © copyright Richard Croft, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0).

The Roman well in Lincoln's forum, located immediately to the east of the fifth- to sixth-century apsidal church and possibly used as its baptistery; the well remained in use until the seventeenth century (image © copyright Tiger, via Geograph, CC BY-SA 2.0).

Notes

1.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–9, 82–3 (based on my PhD thesis), and Green, 'The British kingdom of Lindsey', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), 1–43 at pp. 18–23, supported recently by J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550.
2.     See, for example, K. Steane, The Archaeology of the Upper City and Adjacent Suburbs (Oxford, 2006), especially p. 192; M. J. Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', in K. Painter (ed.), Churches Built in Ancient Times: Recent Studies in Early Christian Archaeology (London, 1994), pp. 325–47 at pp. 328–30 and fig. 5; M. J. Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), City  by the Pool (Oxford, 2003), at pp. 127–9, 137; M. J. Jones, Roman Lincoln: Conquest, Colony and Capital (Stroud, 2002), p. 127; Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 18–23; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–9, 82–3; pace B. Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon, pagan or Christian: who was buried in the early cemetery at St-Paul-in-the Bail, Lincoln?', in L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians – from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (Oxford, 2007), pp. 229–56.
3.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 65; Steane, The Archaeology of the Upper City and Adjacent Suburbs, especially pp. 160–1; Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', pp. 249, 252.
4.     See especially Sawyer, Anglo-Saxon Lincolnshire (Lincoln, 1998), pp. 226–30, for a championing of this theory, but beware his use of the radiocarbon data, which stretches it to the very utmost limits and beyond; this dating is also supported, far more tentatively, in A. G. Vince, 'Lincoln in the early medieval era, between the 5th and 9th centuries: the archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), The City by the Pool. Assessing the Archaeology of the City of Lincoln (Oxford, 2003), pp. 147-151.
5.     For criticisms of Sawyer's theory, see further Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', especially pp. 19–20 at fn. 85; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–9, 82. It should be noted that Alan Vince acknowledges that the theory of a seventh-century origin for the apsidal church requires both a degree of special pleading and doesn't account for the first building on the site, which Vince would (somewhat bizarrely given that the alternative interpretation of the whole site) have as a late Roman or post-Roman British church: Vince, 'Lincoln in the early medieval era', pp. 149, 150–1, and see further below.
6.     Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 19–20; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 65; M. J. Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', in K. Painter (ed.), Churches Built in Ancient Times: Recent Studies in Early Christian Archaeology (London, 1994), pp. 325–47; K. Steane, 'St Paul-in-the-Bail – a dated sequence?', Lincoln Archaeology, 3 (1990–1), 28–31; M. J. Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', in D. Stocker (ed.), City  by the Pool (Oxford, 2003), pp. 127–9, 137; M. J. Jones, Roman Lincoln: Conquest, Colony and Capital (Stroud, 2002), pp. 127–9; B. Eagles, 'Lindsey', in S. Bassett (ed.), The Origins of Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms (London, 1989), p. 207.
7.     Sample number 34, see B. Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', in L. Gilmour (ed.), Pagans and Christians (Oxford, 2007), pp. 229–56 at pp. 247–9, 252; Steane, Archaeology of the Upper City, pp. 157, 210; Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?', pp. 332–3, 344; Jones, 'The Colonia era: archaeological account', p. 129.
8.     Sample numbers 30, 29 and 26, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 65–6; Steane, Archaeology of the Upper City, especially pp. 160–1, 210; Gilmour, 'Sub-Roman or Saxon', pp. 248–50, 252–3. See also Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln', pp. 332, 344; Steane, ‘St Paul-in-the-Bail – a Dated Sequence?’, pp. 30–1.
9.     On the results of the Bayesian modelling, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–7, 83 (fn. 37), supported recently by J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550; as I note in Britons and Anglo-Saxons, my thanks are due here to Alex Bayliss, the Head of Scientific Dating at English Heritage, both for constructing a Bayesian model and for her analysis and advice with regard to the radiocarbon dates and chronology of this site.
10.     Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), pp. 65–9, 82–3; J. Hines & A. Bayliss (eds.), Anglo-Saxon Graves and Grave Goods of the 6th and 7th Centuries AD: A Chronological Framework, Society for Medieval Archaeology Monograph 33 (London, 2013), pp. 549, 550. Incidentally, it should be noted here that Gilmour's variant theory on St Paul-in-the-Bail (outlined in his 2007 paper 'Sub-Roman or Saxon'), which posits a mid-sixth-century de novo start for the church-stage of the site, is not discussed in the present post, as it both does not seem to have been widely adopted and—as was noted in Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, p. 82, and Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', p. 20, fn. 86—can be considered significantly less plausible than the scenario outlined here, lacking an obvious context and, moreover, seeming to be largely contradicted by the Bayesian modelling of the site.
11.     Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', p. 21; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 25, 67; and see further Jones, 'St Paul in the Bail, Lincoln: Britain in Europe?'; Jones, 'Colonia era: archaeological account', pp. 127–9, 137; A. C. Thomas, Christianity in Roman Britain to AD 500 (London, 1981), p. 197; K. Leahy, The Anglo-Saxon Kingdom of Lindsey (Stroud, 2007), p. 117.
12.     For eccles names, see for example K. Cameron, 'Eccles in English place-names', in K. Cameron (ed.), Place-Name Evidence for the Anglo-Saxon Invasion and Scandinavian Settlements (Nottingham, 1987), pp. 1–7; P. Sims-Williams, Religion and Literature in Western England, 600–800 (Cambridge, 1990), p. 80; C. Hough, 'Eccles in English and Scottish place-names', in E. Quinton (ed.), The Church in English Place-Names (Nottingham, 2009), pp. 109–24. For St Augustine and the British St Sixtus, see N. P. Brooks, The Early History of the Church of Canterbury (London, 1984), p. 20; P. Schaff (ed.), Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers: Second Series, Volume XIII Gregory the Great, Ephraim Syrus, Aphrahat (Edinburgh, 1898), p. 77. On British bishops, see for example S. Bassett, 'Church and diocese in the West Midlands', in J. Blair and R. Sharpe (eds.), Pastoral Care Before the Parish (London, 1992), pp. 13–40; S. Bassett, 'Medieval ecclesiastical organisation in the vicinity of Wroxeter and its British antecedents', Journal of the British Archaeological Association, 145 (1992), 1–28; B. Yorke, 'Lindsey: the lost kingdom found?', in A. Vince (ed.), Pre-Viking Lindsey (Lincoln 1993), pp. 141–50 at p. 145; Jones, ‘Colonia era: archaeological account’, p. 137. See also 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.
13.     On late fourth- and fifth-century Lincoln, see, for example, K. Dobney et al, Of Butchers and Breeds: Report on vertebrate remains from various sites in the City of Lincoln (Lincoln, 1996), pp. 2–4, 57–61; K. Dobney et al, ‘Down, but not out: biological evidence for complex economic organization in Lincoln in the late 4th century’, Antiquity, 72 (1998), 417–24; Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 25–7. On the evidence for a degree of continuity in the pottery industry here into the fifth-century and possibly even slightly beyond, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons, pp. 111–12, and Green, 'British kingdom of Lindsey', pp. 23–4, and the expanded discussion in 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.
14.     The case is fully developed in Green, 'The British kingdom of Lindsey', Cambrian Medieval Celtic Studies, 56 (2008), 1–43, and Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012).

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Were there camels in Roman Britain? A brief note on the nature and context of the London camel remains

The following note looks briefly at the question of camels in Roman Britain. Recent work has demonstrated that both dromedaries (or Arabian camels) and Bactrian camels were indeed in use across much of Europe during the Roman era and into the early medieval period, and in this context an early twentieth-century record of Roman camel remains found at Greenwich Park, London, is of considerable interest.

Sites with Roman-era camel remains in Europe. Image: C. R. Green, based on a map of the Roman Empire in the early second century AD by Tataryn/Wikimedia Commons, with the empire depicted in red and its clients during the reign of Trajan in pink; click here for a larger version of this image. The distribution of finds of camel remains in Europe is based on Pigière & Henrotay 2012, Tomczyk 2016, Bartosiewicz & Dirjec 2001, Daróczi-Szabó et al 2014, Albarella et al 1993, Maenchen-Helfen 1973, Moreno-García et al 2007, Vuković-Bogdanović & Blažić 2014, and Vuković & Bogdanović 2013.

There is now a fairly substantial body of archaeological evidence showing that both dromedaries and Bactrian camels were present in modern Spain, Italy, France, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Slovenia and the Balkans between the first and the fifth centuries AD, with the majority of finds dating from the third century AD or after. Recent surveys by both Pigière & Henrotay and Tomczyk indicate that, where identification is possible, the evidence points to dromedaries or Arabian camels being dominant in the western half of Roman Europe whilst Bactrian camels were mainly found in the east, although the split was not absolute—for example, a near-complete skeleton of a Bactrian camel is known from a Roman urban context at Saintes, France, and dromedary remains have been recovered from Kompolt-Kistér, Hungary.

As to the contexts of these finds, camel remains have been recovered from a wide variety of sites, including military settlements, rural villas, civilian urban sites, and amphitheatres, most of which were on or close to major road routes, and it has consequently been argued that camels were being primarily used as pack animals/beasts of burden for both Roman military and civilian traffic in this era. In addition, it is possible that a few of the finds of camel remains may reflect curiosities in the collections of rich landowners, whilst a small number of sites show evidence for the butchery and consumption of camel meat, and the handful of amphitheatre finds have been sometimes considered suggestive of the use of camels in public shows, although this latter notion is open to question—certainly, an investigation into the fourth-century hybrid camel skeleton from the amphitheatre at Viminacium, Serbia, shows that this dates from after the amphitheatre had ceased to be used in that way.

A large classical fountain-spout in the form of a camel's head, preserved in the Hall of Animals in the Pio Clementino Museum, Vatican City (image: Colin/Wikimedia Commons).

With regard to the camel remains from Roman Britain, Pigière & Henrotay only offer the briefest of comments on their nature, noting simply their Roman date and that they were found in Greenwich Park, London, citing for this a 1987 publication by Shimon Applebaum. Unfortunately, this reference adds no further details in terms of what was actually found at Greenwich, but the Victoria County History of Kent (London, 1932) III, p. 116, is rather more helpful on both the finds and their context:

GREENWICH PARK.—Important remains of Roman occupation have been found in the north of Greenwich Park... They came to light accidentally in 1902, and were examined by Mr. Herbert Jones and others... [M]uch building material [was found]—roof and other tiles, hypocaust pilae, wall-plaster painted (it is said) in as many as twelve patterns, tesserae both rough red cubes of brick and finer specimens in other colours, a piece of green porphyry which may have belonged to a marble wall-lining, nails with burnt wood attached, worked and moulded blocks of oolite, parts of the drums of three diminutive columns, and some window glass. These structural remains were accompanied by numerous smaller movable objects. Several pieces of inscribed and sculptured stone provide a feature unusual on these sites...
     Besides these notable pieces, there came to light much pottery in many varieties, including one cup of Samian ware... There were also bronze fibulae, nail-cleaners, box hinges, iron nails of various sizes (2-6 in. long), key, knife, rings, hooks and the like; bone pins and a carved piece showing a woman holding a shield above her head; bottle glass, and lastly, oyster shells; and many bones of horse, sheep, oxen, deer, and teeth of dogs, rabbits and (it is stated) camels. Coins abounded to the number of about 300, and ranged from Claudius to Honorius...
     To complete the description of the site, we must add that the probable line of Watling Street crosses Greenwich Park, a little to the south...

Three particular points are worthy of note here. First, it seems clear that the camel remains in question came from a high-status site, a conclusion supported by later work here which has identified the Greenwich Park site as a probable Roman temple complex. None of the other findspots studied by Pigière & Henrotay are noted as temples, but given the wide variety of sites that have produced camel remains and their apparent use for both civilian and military transport, this isn't a major issue. Second, the site was located close to a major Roman road route and just to the south-east of the main city of Roman Britain, Londinium; needless to say, such a location fits in well with the other findspots of camel remains in Europe, many of which come from urban locales and almost all were found close by major Roman roads. Third and finally, the camel remains consisted of teeth, not bones, something confirmed by the catalogue of finds contained in A. D. Webster's contemporary book on Greenwich Park: Its History and Associations (London, 1902), p. 74. However, this is again not a major obstacle—the vast majority of finds of camel remains in Europe are, in fact, not of whole or even partial skeletons, but rather 'consist mainly of one isolated bone' (Pigière & Henrotay 2012, p. 1535). As such, the small quantity of the remains is in accord with the general find pattern in Europe, and other excavated sites have likewise only produced teeth, such as Ajdovščina, Solvenia (ancient Castra).

All told, the finds from Greenwich thus seem to fit into the general pattern of Roman-era finds of camel remains across Europe, and there consequently seems little reason not to interpret them in a similar manner, that is to say as evidence of the presence and use of Roman camels, probably primarily as pack animals/beasts of burden. Certainly, if the Romans were willing to transport elephants across the Channel, as they may well have done, then there seems little reason to think that they wouldn't have done the same with camels, particularly given that camels were apparently being fairly widely employed elsewhere in north-western Europe then.(1)

The Adoration of the Magi featuring three rather happy camels, from a fourth-century AD Roman sarcophagus at Rome (image: Jastrow/Wikimedia Commons).

Notes

1     For the sake of interest, it perhaps worth noting here that the next solid evidence for the presence of camels in Britain comes from the early twelfth century, when written documentation is first encountered for their presence in royal menageries belonging to the kings of England, Scotland and Ireland. Whether there were any in Britain earlier than this is wholly unclear, although camels were certainly present in western Europe through the early medieval period, including in Germany and Poland in the tenth century, and William the Conqueror is said to have owned lions, leopards and camels.

The content of this post and page, including any original illustrations, is Copyright © Caitlin R. Green, 2017, All Rights Reserved, and should not be used without permission.