Were there Huns in Anglo-Saxon England? Some thoughts on Bede, Priscus & Attila

The following post offers a little idle speculation to help pass the time on the question of whether there was any Hunnic influence on fifth-century Britain and whether the 'Anglo-Saxons' were, in part, descended from Huns. Needless to say, at first glance the idea seems ludicrous! After all, in Book I, chapter 15, of his Historia Ecclesiastica of 731, Bede famously wrote of the mid-fifth century that:

At that time the race of the Angles or Saxons, invited by Vortigern, came to Britain... They came from three very powerful Germanic tribes, the Saxons, Angles and Jutes.(1)

There are, of course, no Huns mentioned here. Instead, the Germanic immigrants to post-Roman Britain are identified as having come from three pre-existing tribes who seem to have lived in northern Germany and Denmark, with Bede going on to identify the people of Kent, the Isle of Wight and parts of modern Hampshire in his day as Jutes; those of the kingdoms of Essex, Sussex and Wessex as Saxons; and those of East Anglia, Middle Anglia, Mercia and Northumbria as Angles. However, whilst Bede's account has undoubtedly proven influential and may well, in part, have a significant basis in reality, caution is also needed. Indeed, with specific regards to the potential continental origins of the post-Roman immigrants to Britain, it is likely that things were somewhat more complicated in the immediate post-Roman era than the above passage might indicate, with Bede's insular Anglian and Saxon identities now often thought to have resulted, to some degree, from a blending and reconstruction of immigrant material cultures and identities in the early Anglo-Saxon period, most especially the sixth century.(2)

One example of this potential complexity can be had from the archaeology of 'Anglian' Britain. Whilst John Hines has rightly observed that 'the core of the Germanic culture that appears in East Anglia', forming the basis of the Anglo-Saxon material culture there, points towards 'the Anglian homelands... primarily in what is now Schleswig-Holstein', he also argues that the archaeology of this region exhibits additional strong cultural links with western Scandinavia right up to Sogn og Fjordan, Norway, which are most credibly explained via a degree of immigration from that area too in the post-Roman period.(3) Equally, Vera Evison once made the case for a significant Frankish element in the archaeology of post-Roman Britain south of the Thames, and whilst this is no longer accepted in its entirety, there does seem to be sufficient material to suggest at least some Frankish immigration to this region in the 'early Anglo-Saxon' period. Less certainly, other archaeological material has also been cited as possible evidence for the presence of small numbers of Thuringians and even potentially Visigoths in post-Roman southern Britain.(4)

A probable late fifth- or early sixth-century buckle tongue, which has its best parallels in finds from Norway and Estonia; found Thimbleby, Lincolnshire (image: PAS)

Other, non-archaeological evidence similarly hints at the presence of ethnic groups in early Anglo-Saxon England that were not mentioned by Bede in HE I.15. For example, not only has it been suggested that the East Anglian royal Wuffingas were potentially either of Swedish/Geatish origin or claimed to be so, but Barbara Yorke has also observed that the Kentish ruling dynasty, the Oiscingas, appears to have claimed Gothic descent for themselves. So, the name of their dynastic progenitor, Oisc, would seem to be cognate with that of the Ostrogothic demigods, the Ansis; the father of King Æthelberht of Kent, Irminric/Eormenric, bore the name of one of the most renowned early Gothic heroes; and Asser in the ninth-century seems to be aware that the Jutes claimed a Gothic identity when identifying King Alfred's maternal grandfather, who was apparently of the Jutish royal line of the Isle of Wight, as 'a Goth by race'.(5) Likewise, the sixth-century Byzantine historian Procopius reported that Britain was inhabited by Britons, Angles and Frisians—rather than Saxons or Jutes—when he wrote in the 550s, a statement that continues to be the source of some controversy.(6)

Finally, there are a variety of early English place-names that are thought to make reference to the presence of continental tribal-groups and identities in pre-Viking Britain other than those Bede lists. So, the Swaffhams in Norfolk and Cambridgeshire appear to be early names that mean 'the estate of the Suebi or Swabians' (an ethnonym that is incidentally also found in Suebdæg, a personal name that occurs in the royal genealogy of the Anglian kings of Deira). Similarly, Elm in Cambridgeshire might potentially reflect a settlement of the continental Elvecones and Tealby in Lincolnshire is now generally agreed to have originally indicated a settlement of a group of Taifali, a continental tribal-grouping that has been variously identified as East Germanic—linked to the Goths—or even Asiatic in origin. Moreover, yet other place-names have been thought to be indicative of the presence of Burgundians, Danes and Thuringians in England during the early Anglo-Saxon period.(7)

In sum, whilst Bede's account in HE I.15 of Angles and Saxons in eastern Britain may well have a significant basis in reality—as Hines, Williamson and others suggest—the situation in the fifth and earlier sixth centuries was nonetheless clearly rather more complex than Bede's account implies. 'Migration Period' Britain also appears to have included individuals and groups drawn from continental tribes and confederations that Bede omits to mention in that chapter, including potentially some of East Germanic origin, and the recorded insular Anglian and Saxon identities are thought, in part, to have resulted from a post-migration blending and reconstruction of cultures and identities. In such a light, it seems clear that the absence of Huns from the famous account of the post-Roman continental immigrants in Historia Ecclesiastica I.15 cannot be actively used to disprove the notion that there were Huns present in fifth-century Britain. However, this is by no means the same as saying that they were definitely here then! So the question becomes, is there any actual positive evidence which might support the idea that there was a degree of Hunnic presence in and/or influence on post-Roman eastern Britain?

A late fifth- or early sixth-century Visigothic iron bow-brooch, found Springhead, Kent (image: Wessex Archaeology, used under their CC BY-NC 3.0 license).  

Perhaps surprisingly, the most important potential piece of evidence in favour of a Hunnic presence in early Anglo-Saxon England comes, once again, from Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica, in this case Book V, chapter 9. In this chapter, Bede returns to the question of the tribal origins of the Anglo-Saxons during a discussion of the missionary activity of Egbert, offering what reads like a rather more nuanced and complex version of his earlier statements on the topic:

He knew that there were very many peoples in Germany from whom the Angles and the Saxons, who now live in Britain, derive their origin... Now these people are the Frisians, Rugians, Danes, Huns, Old Saxons, and Boruhtware (Bructeri); there are also many other nations in the same land who are still practising heathen rites to whom the soldier of Christ proposed to go... (8)

Needless to say, this is a passage of considerable interest in the present context! It is, however, also a section of Bede's text that has caused some difficulties and controversy in the past, sometimes being ignored entirely, mentioned only in passing, or treated as merely a list of peoples Egbert intended to visit and preach to in eighth-century Germany, rather than a list of peoples that the Angles and Saxons had their origins in (with the mention of 'Huns' being thus interpreted as an allusion to the eighth-century Avars).(9) The first two responses are, of course, not really solutions at all, whilst the third is open to serious question. Thus James Campbell has argued forcibly that Bede was not saying that the list in HE V.9 was made up of peoples who lived in Germany that Egbert wished to convert; rather, he states that 'the sense of the Latin is that these were the peoples from whom the Anglo-Saxons living in Britain were derived.' It may be surprising or even inconvenient, 'but it is what he [Bede] says; and he does not generally write carelessly.' In other words, Campbell considers that Bede—a notoriously careful writer and historian—clearly believed that the Anglo-Saxons of his day derived somehow from the peoples that he listed, and that these peoples included the Huns.(10)

If the text of HE V.9 does indeed mean what it says, then it would provide a significant degree of confirmation for the position outlined above—that whilst Bede's division of post-Roman eastern Britain into 'Anglian' and 'Saxon' areas may well have had a significant basis in reality, so too was the situation in the fifth and earlier sixth centuries probably rather more complex than can sometimes be assumed. Certainly, Bede's second passage has often been understood and used in just this way by those studying the post-Roman period, and it would moreover even seem to support some of the specific suggestions made above as to other continental tribal groups potentially present in post-Roman Britain, with Frisians and Danes both mentioned previously and the Boruhtware (Bructeri) of Bede's passage being usually considered a Frankish group.(11) Furthermore, it has also been argued that a genuine early tradition or even source could well lie behind what Bede says in HE V.9, on the basis that 'these names belong to a fifth rather than eighth century context', with not only Huns and Bructeri being referenced—both names from the 'Migration Period'—but also the Rugini/Rugii, a tribal group that seems to have only really came close to Britain in the mid-fifth century, when they are said to have taken part in Attila's Hunnic invasion of Gaul in 451 alongside the Bructeri.(12)

We would therefore seem to have at least some potential positive evidence in favour of a Hunnic presence in post-Roman eastern Britain, on the basis of the above understanding of Historia Ecclesiastica V.9. However, even if a genuine tradition or even an early source does lie behind Bede's statement, we still need to ask what exactly this might imply with regard to fifth-century individuals and groups in eastern Britain. Ian Wood has, for example, considered that the claim that the Anglo-Saxons in part 'derive their origin' from Huns may, in reality, have resulted from there having been an Alan contingent amongst the post-Roman migrants to Britain (they were certainly present in northern Gaul in the first half of the fifth century), with the ethnic-term 'Hun' being used broadly for any 'Asiatic' people present here then, rather than being used specifically for Huns alone.(13) As such, the question necessarily becomes, is there any other evidence which might support the idea that Huns were specifically present in and/or had a degree of influence upon post-Roman eastern Britain?

The Roman Empire and the Hunnic Empire of Attila in c. 450; click image for a larger version (image: W. Shepard, Historical Atlas (New York, 1911), p. 48, Public Domain).

The second piece of evidence that might potentially indicate a degree of Hunnic involvement with fifth-century Britain actually derives from a mid-fifth-century and very well-placed source. The text in question was written by Priscus of Panium, an Eastern Roman diplomat who visited the court of Attila the Hun as part of an official delegation in AD 448/9. The account that he subsequently wrote only survives through fragments and excerpts but it nonetheless offers an enormously valuable, first-hand description of Attila's court and the Roman diplomatic contacts with this. In the course of relating his experiences, Priscus tells of how his party met up with an embassy from the Western Roman Empire and cites what one of the western ambassadors, Romulus, had to say on the topic of Attila's character:

When we expressed amazement at the unreasonableness of the barbarian, Romulus, an ambassador of long experience, replied that his very great good fortune and the power which it had given him had made him so arrogant that he would not entertain just proposals unless he thought that they were to his advantage. No previous ruler of Scythia or of any other land had ever achieved so much in so short a time. He ruled the islands of the Ocean and, in addition to the whole of Scythia, forced the Romans to pay tribute. He was aiming at more than his present achievements and, in order to increase his empire further, he now wanted to attack the Persians.(14)

The Western Roman ambassador's comments on the extent of Attila's empire in 449 are, of course, of considerable interest in the present context, in particular his statement that Attila 'ruled the islands of the Ocean'. The exact import of this statement is, of course, crucial. Although E. A. Thompson wrote in 1948 that 'historians now agree that the islands ruled by Attila were those of the Baltic Sea' (a statement that has been borrowed and repeated by some later commentators), this is not actually true. In the early twentieth century, for example, both Theodor Mommsen and J. B. Bury regarded an identification of these island dominions of Attila with the British Isles to be probable, and such an identification has been more recently supported by C. E. Stevens, James Campbell and now Peter Heather. Indeed, the latter's identification (without qualification) of Attila's 'islands of the Ocean' as being those of 'the Atlantic, or west', rather than the Baltic, in his 2005 Fall of the Roman Empire is of particular interest here—given that Heather edited and wrote the new afterword to the 1996 reissue of Thompson's book cited above, his subsequent comments must be read as a clear rejection of Thompson's opinion as to the identity of Attila's islands.(15)

Certainly, an identification of Attila's oceanic possessions with Britain and its associated islands would seem to be a more than credible interpretation of the above passage. First, Orosius, St Augustine, and other writers of Late Antiquity are clear that the British Isles were considered among the 'islands of the Ocean', and Britain was moreover by far the best known and most significant of these islands to the Roman world, having been a Roman province for several hundred years through until the early fifth century. Indeed, the probably fourth-century Tabula Peutingeriana, an important Late Roman itinerary map, shows little interest in or knowledge of lands lying beyond the northern Roman borders in Europe—whilst the Ocean is depicted as encircling the known world, there are no islands shown to the north of Europe at all, only to the west, where the British Isles and probably originally Thule were depicted.(16) In light of all of this, it might well be expected that the Western Roman ambassador, Romulus, would have offered a clarification of his reference to 'islands of the Ocean' if Britain and its associated islands were not meant, and the fact that he does not is something that is at the very least worth noting. Second, and perhaps more importantly, it is clear that Romulus was making a forceful point in his remarks to the Eastern Roman delegation about how exceptional Attila's achievements had been—no previous ruler of Scythia (Central Eurasia) had ever achieved so much as Attila, who had managed to both establish dominion over 'the islands of the Ocean' and force the Romans to pay him tribute! Needless to say, the thrust of his argument at this point does rather depend on Attila's dominion over these islands being a remarkable, surprising and perhaps even shocking thing to a Roman diplomatic audience; something that was equivalent in its exceptionalness to his forcing the Romans to pay him tribute. In this context, it seems far more plausible that the 'islands of the Ocean' were indeed meant as the well-known and important British Isles, rather than some barely-known (to a Roman audience) islands in the far north.

In sum, given the cultural background of the time and the textual context of the passage in question, the most credible solution is arguably that the Western Roman ambassador to the Huns did indeed believe that Attila ruled in parts of Britain and its associated islands in the late 440s, as Peter Heather, C. E. Stevens and others have indicated in the past. Needless to say, if so, we would thus have two very interesting references to a Hunnic influence on and/or presence in fifth-century eastern Britain: one a contemporary, respected and well-placed Roman ambassador who thought that Attila ruled there (at least for a brief period), and the other a notoriously careful Anglo-Saxon historian who appears to have believed—possibly on the basis of an early tradition or even a written source—that the Anglo-Saxons of the eighth century counted Huns amongst their ancestors. Taken together, these two sources offer a rather intriguing and different perspective on the history of eastern Britain in the mid-fifth century, potentially involving a Hunnic presence in Britain and at least a nominal overlordship of some sort by Attila over parts of this region by the late 440s.

Extract from the probably fourth-century Tabula Peutingeriana, showing Britain at the top left of the map in the Ocean and Gaul across from it, via the nineteenth-century facsimile edition of Konrad Miller; full version available on Wikimedia (image: Wikimedia Commons)

With regard to the general plausibility and context of such suggestions of Hunnic influence on fifth-century Britain, three final points can be made. First, it needs to be emphasised that modern perspectives on the Adventus Saxonum now generally reject the traditional date of 449 for the start of continental immigrant activity in eastern and southern Britain, a point of some significance given that any nominal overlordship exercised by Attila is perhaps most easily envisaged as having been over these immigrants. It is clear from the archaeological evidence that 'Anglo-Saxon' groups were established in parts of eastern Britain within the first half of the fifth century, probably by the 430s, and it is furthermore often thought that at least parts of southern Britain were under the direct control of 'Saxon' immigrants from c. 441 on the basis of the Gallic Chronicle of 452.(17) As such, any concerns over a possible conflict between the date by which Attila is said to have possessed rule over the 'islands of the Ocean' in Priscus—by c. 448—and the date of the Adventus Saxonum can be easily disposed of.

Second, Lotte Hedeager has recently argued at length that a variety of archaeological and literary evidence indicates that the main 'Anglo-Saxon' homelands of northern Germany and southern Scandinavia were actually conquered and made a part of the Hunnic Empire during the first half of the fifth century, with a Hunnic presence maintained in this region for a period.(18) Needless to say this is a conclusion of considerable interest to both the present post and the study of the Adventus Saxonum in general. Certainly, if Hedeager is right, then the idea that the continental immigrants to eastern and southern Britain included Huns amongst their number and that there was a degree of Hunnic overlordship for at least the areas of Britain that had fallen under the immigrants' sway by the 440s would seem rather less surprising than might otherwise perhaps be the case.

Third and finally, it should be noted that there is a small amount of additional archaeological, literary and linguistic evidence that may, just possibly, offer support for any theory of a Hunnic presence and overlordship in fifth-century Britain. On the archaeological front, for example, it can be observed that the small number of gold open-ended earrings that Hedeager identifies as Hunnic in origin and indicative of the presence of Huns in Denmark are not confined to this part of north-western Europe alone. At least one gold earring of a very similar design and size is known from Britain too, and if Hedeager's identification of such items as Hunnic is upheld for the Danish examples, then there seems no obvious a priori reason why it should not be applied to any British examples too.(19) Likewise, a Dyerkan-type cicada brooch that was found in Suffolk and now housed in the Ashmolean Museum, Oxford, may be of some potential interest in the present context, given that this type of dress-accessory is believed to have its origins in the early to mid-fifth century and is found primarily in the Middle Danube, the Black Sea area and the Northern Caucasus.(20)

On the literary and linguistic front, Hedeager has argued for southern Scandinavia that the royal sagas of the Skjoldunge–Skilfinger tradition preserve the memory of a period of Hunnic rule in that region, with the early Norse rulers Haldan, Roo, Ottar and Adils corresponding in name and details to the fifth-century Hunnic kings Huldin, Roas, Octar and Attila.(21) Whilst England lacks such a neat set of apparent correspondences, there are nonetheless a few hints which might point in a similar or related direction. Perhaps the most interesting of these occurs in the genealogy of the kings of Kent—the Oiscingas—preserved by Bede in his Historia Ecclesiastica II.5, where we find the name Octa recorded as that of the son of the probably divine dynastic progenitor Oisc, with Octa being both a name that seems not to have been otherwise used in Anglo-Saxon England and one that is very close in form to the Hunnic name Octar (Attila's uncle and one of his predecessors as ruler of the Hunnic Empire). Needless to say, in light of Hedeager's discussion of the Norse names, this is most intriguing, and it is worth noting here that Old English Octa is indeed generally linked by researchers with the Norse name Ottar mentioned above. Quite what this all means is open to debate, but one wonders whether it might not reflect at least some sort of early claim to either Hunnic descent or links on the part of the Oiscingas dynasty, to put alongside their potential claim to Gothic ancestry that was noted above?(22)

This is probably as far as we can sensibly go at present. On the whole, it would seem that there is at least a case to be made for a degree of Hunnic involvement in fifth-century Britain. Not only does the simplest and most common interpretation of Bede's Historia Ecclesiastica V.9 imply that the latter believed that the Anglo-Saxons partly derived their origins from Huns, but a mid-fifth-century Roman ambassador also arguably thought that Attila ruled over the British Isles in the late 440s. Taken together, these two sources are certainly suggestive, and a small number of finds and names from pre-Viking England may offer some additional support here too. Furthermore, such a scenario may actually have a reasonable potential context. On the one hand, it is now generally agreed that the situation in the fifth and earlier sixth centuries in eastern Britain was rather more ethnically complex than has been sometimes assumed, with the post-Roman immigrants to Britain including individuals and groups drawn from a number of continental tribes and confederations, including potentially Danes, Swabians and Goths. On the other hand, Lotte Hedeager has recently argued that the main Anglo-Saxon homelands in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia were, in fact, under Hunnic rule in the first half of the fifth century and saw a Hunnic presence then, something that, if true, would clearly offer a credible context for any contention that there were Huns amongst the mid-fifth-century 'Anglo-Saxon' immigrants to Britain and that those parts of the island under 'Saxon' control after c. 441 were at least nominally also under Hunnic overlordship by the late 440s. As such, whilst the case cannot be said to be proven and is perhaps surprising, it does deserve at least some serious consideration.


Notes

1     Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, I.15, trans. B. Colgrave, in J. McClure & R. Collins (edd.), Bede: the Ecclesiastical History of the English People (Oxford, 1994), p. 27. Bede similarly describes the immigrants as 'The people of the Angles or of the Saxons' in his Greater Chronicle of 725 (sa. 4410: McClure & Collins, Bede, p. 326).
2     For example, J. Hines, 'The origins of East Anglia in a North Sea Zone', in D. Bates & R. Liddiard (edd.), East Anglia and its North Sea World in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2013), pp. 16–43, esp. pp. 38–9; B. A. E. Yorke, 'Anglo-Saxon gentes and regna', in H-W. Goetz, J. Jarnut & W. Pohl (edd.), Regna and Gentes: The Relationship Between Late Antique and Early Medieval Peoples and Kingdoms in the Transformation of the Roman World (Leiden, 2003), pp. 381–408, esp. pp. 385–90; C. Scull, 'Approaches to the material culture and social dynamics of the migration period in eastern England', in J. Bintliff and H. Hamerow (edd.), Europe Between Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1995), pp. 71–83; H. Hamerow, 'The earliest Anglo-Saxon kingdoms', in P. Fouracre (ed.), The New Cambridge Medieval History, I: c.500–c.700 (Cambridge, 2005), pp. 263–88, esp. pp. 268–70; H. Härke, 'Anglo-Saxon immigration and ethnogenesis', Medieval Archaeology, 55 (2011), 1–28 at p. 11; T. Williamson, 'The environmental contexts of Anglo-Saxon settlement', in N. J. Higham & M. J. Ryan (edd.), The Landscape Archaeology of Anglo-Saxon England (Manchester, 2010), pp. 133–56 at pp. 147–52; S. Lucy, The Anglo-Saxon Way of Death (Stroud, 2000), p. 4; and also T. Martin, Identity and the Cruciform Brooch in Early Anglo-Saxon England: An Investigation of Style, Mortuary Context, and Use, 4 vols. (University of Sheffield PhD Thesis, 2011), I.152–91. Note, with regard to Angles and Saxons, it should be remembered that contemporary sources do indeed mention both groups as present in fifth- to sixth-century Britain—Angles are mentioned as a major immigrant group in Britain by Procopius in the 550s (History of the Wars, VIII.xx), whilst Saxons are mentioned in the Gallic Chronicle of 452 and by Gildas in his De Excidio Britanniae of c. 540 or before.
3     See J. Hines, The Scandinavian Character of Anglian England in the Pre-Viking Period, BAR British Series 124 (Oxford, 1984), and J. Hines, 'The Scandinavian character of Anglian England: an update', in M. O. H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo: the Seventh Century in North-western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 315–29; see also now Hines, 'The origins of East Anglia', from which the quotation given above is taken (p. 39). Note, with regard to the 'Anglian' material that forms the 'core' of the immigrant culture in this region, as per Hines, see Green, Britons and Anglo-Saxons: Lincolnshire AD 400–650 (Lincoln, 2012), fig. 21a & pp. 93–5, and Williamson, 'Environmental contexts of Anglo-Saxon settlement', pp. 147–52, for two arguably complementary explanations for its distribution in early Anglo-Saxon England.
4     V. I. Evison, The Fifth-Century Invasions South of the Thames (London, 1965); J. Soulet, 'Between Frankish and Merovingian influences in Early Anglo-Saxon Sussex (fifth–seventh centuries)', in S. Brookes et al (edd.), Studies in Early Anglo-Saxon Art and Archaeology: Papers in Honour of Martin G. Welch (Oxford, 2011), pp. 62–71; and S. Harrington & M. Welch, The Early Anglo-Saxon Kingdoms of Southern Britain AD 450–650: Beneath the Tribal Hidage (Oxford, 2014), especially pp. 174–210. On Thuringians, see I. N. Wood, 'Before and after the migration to Britain', in J. Hines (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons From the Migration Period to the Eighth Century: an Ethnographic Perspective (Woodbridge, 1997), pp. 41–64 at pp. 42, 44, 45. On Visigoths, see the cautious remarks in J. Schuster, P. Andrews & R. Seager-Smith, 'A late 5th–early 6th century context from Springhead, Kent', Lucerna, 31 (2006), 2–3.
5     S. Newton, 'Beowulf and the East Anglian royal pedigree', in M. O. H. Carver (ed.), The Age of Sutton Hoo: the Seventh Century in North-western Europe (Woodbridge, 1992), pp. 65–74; S. Newton, The Origins of Beowulf and the Pre-Viking Kingdom of East Anglia (Woodbridge, 1993); B. Yorke, 'Political and ethnic identity: a case study of Anglo-Saxon practice', in W. O. Frazer & A. Tyrell (edd.), Social Organisation in Early Medieval Britain (London, 2000), pp. 69–89 at pp. 80–1. On an Anglo-Saxon knowledge of and interest in the Goths pre-dating the ninth-century, see for example L. Neidorf, 'The dating of Widsið and the study of Germanic antiquity', Neophilologus, 97 (2013), 165–83, esp. pp. 172–3. On the name Oisc < *Anskiz/*Anschis, see P. Sims-Williams, 'The settlement of England in Bede and the Chronicle', Anglo-Saxon England, 12 (1983), 1–41 at pp. 22–3 and fn. 94. With regard to a Gothic element in Kent, see also perhaps the Visigothic brooch from Springhead, Kent, discussed in Schuster et al, 'A late 5th–early 6th century context from Springhead, Kent', 2–3.
6     Procopius, History of the Wars, VIII.xx: 'Angíloi, Frísonnes kaì Brítannes', see E. A. Thompson, 'Procopius on Brittia and Britannia', Classical Quarterly, 30 (1980), 498–507.
7     See E. Ekwall, 'Tribal Names in English Place-Names', Namn Och Bygd, 41 (1953), 129–77 at p. 150; V. E. Watts, The Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names (Cambridge, 2004), pp. 213 [Elm], 592 [Swaffhams], 602 [Tealby]; Green, 'Tealby, the Taifali, and the End of Roman Lincolnshire', Lincolnshire History and Archaeology, 46 (2011), 5–10; F. W. Moorman, 'English Place-Names and Teutonic Sagas', Essays and Studies, 5 (1914), 75–103 at pp. 95–9 [Burgundian Volsungs may lie behind the early Norfolk place-name Walsingham]; M. Gelling & A. Cole, The Landscape of Place-Names (Stamford, 2000), p. 70 [Denver, Norfolk, a 'very early' place-name meaning 'the Danes' crossing', reflecting the presence of Danes 'much earlier than the Viking period']; H. F. Nielsen, The Germanic Languages: Origins and Early Dialectal Interrelations (Tuscaloosa, 1989), p. 62 [Tyringham, Buckinghamshire, and related names may reflect settlements of Thuringians]. On the name Suebdæg, see Neidorf, 'The dating of Widsið', p. 176, and H. Ström, Old English Personal Names in Bede's History: An Etymological-phonological Investigation (Lund, 1939), p. 35; a name in the East Saxon royal genealogy, Swæppa, may similarly derive from the Old English form of the ethnonym Swabian, see Ström, Old English Personal Names in Bede's History, p. 35, and M. Redin, Studies on Uncompounded Personal Names in Old English (Uppsala, 1919), pp. 69, 109.
8     Bede, Historia Ecclesiastica, V.9, trans. Colgrave, in McClure & Collins (edd.), Ecclesiastical History, p. 247.
9     For example, D. Gary Miller, External Influences on English (Oxford, 2012), p. 29, and especially R. H. Bremmer Jr, 'The nature of the evidence for a Frisian participation in the Adventus Saxonum', in A. Bammesberger & A. Wollmann (eds.), Britain 400–600: Language and History (Heidelberg, 1990), pp. 353–71 at pp. 356–9.
10     J. Campbell, 'The first century of Christianity in England', in J. Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), pp. 49-67 at p. 53 and fn. 25 [first quotation]; J. Campbell, 'The lost centuries: 400–600', in J. Campbell (ed.), The Anglo-Saxons (London, 1982), p. 31 [second quotation]. See also J. Campbell, 'The Age of Arthur [review article]', Studia Hibernica, 15 (1975), 177–85 at p. 179.
11     See, for example, Yorke, 'Anglo-Saxon gentes and regna', p. 387; J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, Bede's Ecclesiastical History of the English People: A Historical Commentary (Oxford, 1988), p. 181; D. P. Kirby, The Earliest English Kings, revised edition (London, 2000), p. 13; and Campbell, 'The lost centuries: 400–600', p. 31. See also Wood, 'Before and after the migration to Britain', pp. 41–5.
12     Campbell, 'Age of Arthur', quotation at p. 179; Campbell, 'The lost centuries: 400–600', p. 31. On the Rugii and Bructeri taking part in Attila's invasion of Gaul in 451, see for example Sidonius Apollinaris's contemporary Carmina, VII.321–5.
13     Wood, 'Before and after the migration to Britain', p. 41.
14     Priscus, Fragments 11.2: R.C. Blockley The Classicising Historians of the Later Roman Empire: Eunapius, Olympiodorus, Priscus and Malchus 2 vols. (Liverpool, 1983), vol. II, p. 277.
15     E. A. Thompson, A History of Attila and the Huns (Oxford, 1948), quotation at p. 75, repeated by Lotte Hedeager in her recent Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400–1000 (London, 2011), p. 193, with a reference to the 1996 largely-unchanged reissue of Thompson's 1948 book; note, the 1996 reissue was edited by Peter Heather and contained an afterword by him, with a new shortened title of The Huns (Oxford, 1996). The other works referenced here are: T. Mommsen, Gesammelte Schriften (Berlin, 1906), vol. IV, p. 539 fn. 5; J. B. Bury, History of the Later Roman Empire, 2 vols. (London, 1923), vol. I, p. 277 fn. 4; C. E. Stevens, 'Gildas Sapiens', English Historical Review, 56 (1941), 353–73 at p. 363 fn. 7; Campbell, 'Age of Arthur', p. 179; J. Campbell, 'Observations on the Conversion of England', in J. Campbell, Essays in Anglo-Saxon History (London, 1986), pp. 69–84 at p. 70 fn. 5; P. Heather, The Fall of the Roman Empire: A New History (London, 2005), p. 334.
16     S. F. Johnson, 'Travel, Cartography, and Cosmology', in S. F. Johnson (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Late Antiquity (Oxford, 2012), pp. 562–94; R. Talbert, Rome's World: The Peutinger Map Reconsidered (Cambridge, 2010). A. D. Lee, Information and Frontiers: Roman Foreign Relations in Late Antiquity (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 89–90, comments usefully on the Romans lacking a conceptual framework for Europe north of the Danube and the Rhine, noting that the Tabula Peutingeriana offers barely any topographical information for these regions.
17     See, for example, N. J. Higham & M. J. Ryan, The Anglo-Saxon World (New Haven & London, 2013), pp. 59, 76, 104, 114–15.
18     L. Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality: An Archaeology of Scandinavia AD 400–1000 (London, 2011), especially pp. 191–228, and L. Hedeager, 'Scandinavia and the Huns: an interdisciplinary approach to the Migration Era', Norwegian Archaeological Review, 40 (2007), 42–58; see also perhaps M. Görman, 'Influences from the Huns on Scandinavian Sacrificial Customs during 300-500 AD', in T. Ahlbäck (ed.), The Problem of Ritual (Åbo, 1993), pp. 275–98, especially pp. 295–6. It should be noted that one piece of her evidence for this interpretation is explicitly rejected in the above discussion (Thompson's 1948 claim that 'he islands of the Ocean' are universally agreed to be the Baltic islands, see above and fn. 15), but she marshals much other evidence too in support of a period of Hunnic dominion over southern Scandinavia which isn't contradicted by the analysis offered here.
19     Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality, pp. 198, 200, fig. 9.2; Hedeager, 'Scandinavia and the Huns', pp. 7, 9, fig. 5. See also the debate in U. Näsman, 'Scandinavia and the Huns: a source-critical approach to an old question', Fornvännen, 103 (2008), 111–18, and especially L. Hedeager, 'Paradigm exposed: reply to Ulf Näsman', Fornvännen, 103 (2008), 279–83. Compare the earrings illustrated by Hedeager in Iron Age Myth and Materiality, fig. 9.2, and 'Scandinavia and the Huns', fig. 5, with, for example, Portable Antiquities Scheme NCL-ADA2E4, found in Yorkshire.
20     I. Gavritukhin & M. Kazanski, 'Bosporus, the Tetraxite Goths and the Northern Caucasus region during the second half of the fifth and the sixth centuries', in F. Curta (ed.), Neglected Barbarians, Studies in the Early Middle Ages vol. 32 (Turnhout, 2010), pp. 83–136 at pp. 132–3 and fig. 4.29; A. MacGregor, A Summary Catalogue of the Continental Archaeological Collections in the Ashmolean Museum (Oxford, 1997), pp. 267–8.
21     Hedeager, Iron Age Myth and Materiality, pp. 189–90, 224–8.
22     On Octa and Ottar, see Ström, Old English Personal Names in Bede's History, p. 72; Redin, Studies on Uncompounded Personal Names in Old English, p. 77. On the Gothic links of the Oiscingas of Kent, see further above and fn. 5, along with Yorke, 'Political and ethnic identity: a case study of Anglo-Saxon practice', pp. 80–1; it is perhaps interesting to note that both Octa's father and his son in Bede's genealogy bear names with Gothic links, given the close association between the Goths and the Huns in the early to mid-fifth century. Other intriguing linguistic and literary hints from England include the possibility that a number of Anglo-Saxon personal names derive from the Old English ethnonym Hunas/Hune, 'the Huns', something which would be very suggestive if true: Ström, Old English Personal Names in Bede's History, p. 25; D. Rollason & L. Rollason (eds.), The Durham Liber Vitae. II: Linguistic Commentary (London, 2007), p. 130; and cf. above and fn. 7 on Old English personal names such as Suebdæg. Also of potential interest are the medieval East Anglian tales that appear to treat Attila the Hun as an early medieval ruler of Norfolk with a base at Attleborough, a place-name that is Old English for 'fortified place belonging to Ætla (< Attila)', particularly as one of these is thought to preserve an otherwise lost 'heroic' tale of a fight between Attila and Hunuil/Unwen: see further C. E. Wright, The Cultivation of Saga in Anglo-Saxon England (Edinburgh and London, 1939), pp. 121–2; A. Bell, ‘Gaimar’s early “Danish” kings’, Proceedings of the Modern Language Association, 65 (1950), 601–40 at pp. 608–10; C. Brett, 'Hunuil-Unwine-Unwen', Modern Language Review, 15 (1920), 77; R. W. Chambers, Widsith: A Study in Old English Heroic Legend (Cambridge, 1912), p. 219 on Hunuil/Unwen; and Watts, Cambridge Dictionary of English Place-Names, p. 26 on Attleborough.

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

The prehistoric evolution of the coastline of north-eastern Lincolnshire

The following post offers a brief look at the evolution of the coastline of north-eastern Lincolnshire and Spurn Head from the Mesolithic through until the start of the Roman era, a period that saw dramatic changes as an inland forested region was gradually flooded by the rising tide to become the new coastal zone. Included below are a series of palaeogeographic maps that offer reconstructions of the coastline at various points in prehistory, along with some brief commentary on the changes and developments that each map shows.

The extent of Doggerland in around 10,000 BC, towards the end of the last glacial era, along with suggested reindeer migration routes in that period (drawn by C. R. Green for Origins of Louth, based on Barton, 2005 and Shennan et al, 2000, with permission). Ahrensburgian tanged points, or arrow tips, of this period have been found in north Lincolnshire, which are identical to finds associated with reindeer hunting in northern Germany then. 

The Mesolithic landscape of Doggerland, now the floor of the North Sea, as revealed by 3D seismic data collected by the North Sea oil and gas industry (image source: Vincent Gaffney).

The landscape and outlook of the present-day Lincolnshire coast was dramatically different in the Mesolithic period (9600 BC onwards). The formation of massive ice sheets during the last 'Ice Age' led to global sea-levels dropping to -120 metres OD, with the bottom of the North Sea consequently becoming dry land as far north as Shetland. Although this exposed landscape, known as Doggerland, began to be submerged once more as the ice melted and sea-levels rose, this process took millennia. As a result, the modern Lincolnshire coast was covered by a mixed deciduous forest that extended out over what is now the floor of the North Sea for much of the Mesolithic, with the actual coastline lying 50 km or more to the north-east at the start of this period and eastern Lincolnshire representing part of an upland district rather than a coastal zone. Such a situation appears to have persisted throughout the earlier Mesolithic, with the coastal zone still lying well outside this region in c. 7000 BC:

A reconstruction of the Mesolithic coastline as it existed around 7000 BC, with Louth in eastern Lincolnshire marked to aid with location (image drawn by C. R. Green, based on data from Shennan et al, 2000). 

The landscape of north-eastern Lincolnshire and south-eastern Holderness in around 6500 BC; at this point in the Mesolithic, the coastline still lay outside the region under consideration in the present post (image drawn by C. R. Green, after Berridge & Pattison, 1994). Note, the present-day coastline from approximately Saltfleet in Lincolnshire to Easington in the East Riding of Yorkshire is shown in grey.

From about 8,000 years ago, this situation began to change. Sometime around 6200 BC, the land bridge connecting Britain to the continent was severed, perhaps being finally destroyed by the Storegga Slide tsunami, and by approximately 6000 BC the flooding of what remained of Doggerland had advanced sufficiently that the coastline probably lay just to the east of edge of our study area. The next 500 years saw continued flooding, with the result that the coastal zone moved decisively into this region, as can be seen in the following maps:

A reconstruction of the Mesolithic coastline as it existed sometime around 6000–5500 BC, with Louth in eastern Lincolnshire marked to aid with location (image drawn by C. R. Green, based on data from Shennan et al, 2000, with modifications). Note, the marine flooding had reached Theddlethorpe by c. 6000 BC; it also created offshore islands from former higher ground to the east and north of the modern Lincolnshire and Norfolk coastlines in approximately this period — these islands are thought to have persisted until the later thirteenth century AD, before they were finally destroyed by storms and flooding.

The coastline of north-eastern Lincolnshire and south-eastern Holderness sometime around 5000 BC (image drawn by C. R. Green, based on underlying till-surface contour data reported in Berridge & Pattison, 1994, with additions and modifications). As before, the present-day coastline from approximately Saltfleet in Lincolnshire to Easington in the East Riding of Yorkshire is shown in grey. By this point, the coastal zone lay well within our region, with the Lincolnshire coast being protected by offshore islands; the sand body that underlies the North Somercotes–Saltfleet storm beach appears to have first formed in this period too, based on borehole records, and a very notional representation of this is included above.

This flooding had a dramatic effect on the vegetation of the region, with the mature mixed deciduous forest that had once stretched out onto the North Sea plain being replaced by wetlands and a coastal landscape. The tree stumps and trunks that are revealed at very low tides and in excavations all along the Lincolnshire coast from Immingham to Ingoldmells have their origins in this lost prehistoric forest, which was first subject to waterlogging as the water-table rose and was then submerged by the rising tide. The date of this death and submersion varies from site to site depending on the elevation of the land on which the forest grew, but at Immingham and Theddlethorpe the waterlogging has been dated to 5772–5346 BC (recalibrated) and 6174–5961 BC respectively.

With regard to the resultant Late Mesolithic coastal landscape of northern Lincolnshire and Holderness, several features need noting. First, a comparison of both of the above maps with the preceding pair show that it was in this period that the peninsula of Holderness began to take on a recognizable form, although its south-eastern tip had a rather different profile to that which it has today. Second, the higher ground that had previously lain to the east and north of the present-day coastlines of Lincolnshire and Norfolk is thought to have been gradually surrounded by the rising tide, becoming coastal barrier islands that seem to have persisted through until their final destruction by the sea in the late thirteenth century AD. Initially, at least, this high ground off the Lincolnshire coast may have become a single island, and it is shown as such on the above reconstruction, before later splitting into a number of smaller islands as the sea-level continued to climb. Third and finally, a cross-section of the Lincolnshire Outmarsh running east–west through Marshchapel and Donna Nook (North Somercotes) created from borehole records indicates that the coastal sand body that underlies the current storm beach on the Lincolnshire coast from Donna Nook to Saltfleet formed directly on top of the Mesolithic land surface and must have been in existence from the first arrival of the sea in this area; as such, a notional representation of it is included on the above map.

A very small, partially polished Neolithic axe, found at Grainthorpe, Lincolnshire (image: PAS).

The coastline of north-eastern Lincolnshire and south-eastern Holderness in the Neolithic era, sometime around 3000 BC (image drawn by C. R. Green, based on underlying till-surface contour data reported in Berridge & Pattison, 1994, with additions and modifications). As before, the present-day coastline from approximately Saltfleet in Lincolnshire to Easington in the East Riding of Yorkshire is shown in grey.

The coastline of north-eastern Lincolnshire and south-eastern Holderness in the Early Bronze Age, sometime around 2000 BC (image drawn by C. R. Green, after a map in Berridge & Pattison, 1994, with some modifications). As before, the present-day coastline from approximately Saltfleet in Lincolnshire to Easington in the East Riding of Yorkshire is shown in grey.

The next two maps offer possible reconstructions of the coastline of north-eastern Lincolnshire and south-eastern Holderness in the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age. Continued—albeit now significantly slower—sea-level rise is thought to have a led to further coastal areas being submerged by the rising tide, with the result that by around 2000 BC or so the Lincolnshire coastline lay significantly inland of its current position. It is also possible that the offshore coastal barrier had been divided up into several smaller islands by this point. Whether these offshore islands were inhabited or visited by people in this era is entirely unclear due to their subsequent destruction by the sea in the medieval period, although it seems inherently likely that they were. Certainly there may well have been some activity within the coastal zone on areas of dryer land closer to shore, such as the small island of glacial till that was probably surrounded by coastal marshes visible on the Neolithic map at Grainthorpe. For example, not only is a Mesolithic axe or pick known from Grainthorpe, testifying to an earlier human presence, but there are also a number of Neolithic flint objects (including a knife and a possible votive axe) from the area of this island, and beaker sherds have been found from a spot to the north that have been seen as indicative of the presence of a Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age barrow here in the coastal zone.

Other features of note on these maps include the continued development and definition of the south-eastern tip of Holderness, although as yet there was nothing approximating Spurn Head, with the profile of the peninsula still instead following the lines first set down by the Mesolithic course of the River Humber as it flowed north-eastwards across Doggerland. Also significant is the development of a second major sand body/sand bank off the coast of Lincolnshire, running from the peninsula of glacial till at Cleethorpes down to the Marshchapel/Grainthorpe area, as evidenced once again in borehole records from this region. This sand bank seems to have developed sometime around 3000 BC (perhaps above an earlier Late Mesolithic/Early Neolithic coastline and after a period of marine flooding, to judge from the borehole data and underlying till surface contours), with tidal flat or lagoonal conditions on its landward side. It is likely that similar conditions now prevailed on the landward side of the North Somercotes–Saltfleet sand body and bank too, with the former dry land to its west having been submerged by the rising sea-level and becoming coastal marshes or the like whilst the sand body itself continued to persist and build up. Another less well-evidenced sand body on the southern coast of Holderness may similarly have its origins in this era, running south-eastwards from the islands of glacial till and gravels near Paull (not mapped).

In terms of the vegetation of the region, the continued sea-level rise led to further water-logging and submersion of the coastal woodland on sites that had been too elevated to be affected by this during the Later Mesolithic, with the drowned trees preserved at Cleethorpes and Chapel St Leonards dying off sometime around 2950–2250 BC and 3370–3020 BC respectively. The Mesolithic forest inland of the coastal zone also saw significant losses in this era. These losses appear to have begun on the high ground of the Lincolnshire Wolds, with the Mesolithic deciduous oak and hazel woodland of the Wolds cleared at Skendleby by c. 3500 BC and an open grassy landscape with indications of at least local arable agriculture having developed at Swinhope by c. 3900–3650 BC. On the lower ground, just inland of the coastal zone, the wooded landscape may well have survived a little longer, but it too was eventually lost. For example, at Butterbump (Willoughby), on the eastern edge of the dry Lincolnshire Middle Marsh, the available pollen cores indicate that the Mesolithic forest there survived the Early Neolithic through until perhaps 2900 BC, but was apparently largely cleared in the Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age, with subsequent eras then having low levels of tree and shrub pollens and high levels of herb and cereal. Similarly, in Holderness a degree of sustained clearance began around 3600 BC, but the landscape of this area also wasn't properly opened up until the end of the Neolithic (c. 2500 BC), and only from the end of the Bronze Age (around 800 BC) did agricultural land start to dominate.

Sherds of Roman Nene Valley colour-coated pottery and imported Samian ware, found at Grainthorpe, Lincolnshire (image: PAS).

The coastline of north-eastern Lincolnshire and south-eastern Holderness at the start of the first century AD (image drawn by C. R. Green, after a map in Berridge & Pattison, 1994, with some modifications). As before, the present-day coastline from approximately Saltfleet in Lincolnshire to Easington in the East Riding of Yorkshire is shown in grey. Note, all of these maps show the approximate position of the coastline in this period; however, there would also have been an extensive zone of coastal marshes, inter-tidal flats and the like too on the seaward side of this coastline; these are not mapped here, but they clearly saw a significant degree activity in the Roman period.

The final map offers a suggested reconstruction of the coastline of this region at the start of the first century AD. As before, there are several features and points worth noting with regard to the coastal landscape in this era. First, a degree of marine regression by the Early Roman period probably led to the coastal zone moving back eastwards from its earlier westward maximum extension in the Lincolnshire Marshes area. Second, the coastal marshes that continued to lie behind and close to the two major sand bodies in north-eastern Lincolnshire—despite the marine regression—saw a significant degree of activity in this era. Quantities of Roman material have been found from the Roman-era coastal marshes and margins at, for example, Marshchapel, Grainthorpe, South Cockerington, Scupholme (South Somercotes) and Saltfleetby St Peter, with some of the finds including imported pottery and box-flue tiles. With regard to the nature of this activity, the relatively substantial structure indicated by finds of pottery and building materials at Marshchapel has been interpreted as one situated within the coastal zone, perhaps on the saltmarsh itself, and probably involved in the end-stage processing and transportation of salt produced at nearby salterns.

With regard to other aspects of the first-century AD landscape, the development of the south-eastern tip of the Holderness peninsula had probably by now continued to the point where it was finally starting to take on something approaching its modern form and with a proto-Spurn Head starting to form, although the coast of Holderness and the tip of the peninsula still lay well to the east of their current position, which is the result of a further 2,000 years of coastal erosion by the North Sea. Similarly, the peninsula of glacial till at Cleethorpes that extended out into the Humber estuary had by now started to be seriously eroded away back towards its modern position, although it too continued to extend out some way beyond the current coastline. It has been suggested that this peninsula and its low cliffs were home to a Roman-era signal station or fort that stood on some of the subsequently lost land here, although it has to be admitted that the evidence is uncertain and weak—a more convincing candidate for a Late Roman fortification in this part of Lincolnshire is perhaps to be had from the area of the former Toote Hill, nr Grimsby.

The north-eastern part of the Lincolnshire Marshes in the Late Roman and post-Roman eras, taken from a map created for a previous post; note, the light blue area represents a possible reconstruction of the extent of the coastal wetlands/saltmarsh during this period of maximum marine transgression (image: C. R. Green). 

The later evolution of the coastline of Lincolnshire after the Early Roman era largely lies beyond the scope of this post, being discussed and mapped in two previous pieces on this site, one dealing with the Late Roman and pre-Viking coastline (reproduced above) and the other with the situation in the medieval era. Two points are worth noting here, however. The first is that the fourth- to sixth-centuries AD appear to have seen a significant marine transgression in the Lincoln region. This led to Romano-British sites on the Lincolnshire Outmarsh being submerged and subsequently buried under several metres of marine alluvium—for example, the Romano-British site at Scupholme, mentioned above, was found beneath more than three metres of alluvium deposited by the sea, whilst Romano-British salterns at Ingoldmells to the south were smothered by two to three metres of silt. This Late/post-Roman marine transgression also seems to have largely swamped the prehistoric Cleethorpes–Marshchapel sand body and covered it over with a thin layer of marine silt (around a metre thick at North Cotes and rather less than this at Marshchapel), to judge from borehole records, with only a few sections of the former sand bank probably being left exposed to the east of Marshchapel. The second is that the North Somercotes–Saltfleet sand body seems to have survived and remained above this marine transgression, although it too appears to have been later partly buried, in this case by storm beach deposits that are often thought to have their origin in debris thrown up on the coastline by the destruction of the offshore coastal barrier islands in the thirteenth century AD, an event discussed in more detail elsewhere.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The medieval 'New England': a forgotten Anglo-Saxon colony on the north-eastern Black Sea coast

Although the name 'New England' is now firmly associated with the east coast of America, this is not the first place to be called that. In the medieval period there was another Nova Anglia, 'New England', and it lay far to the east of England, rather than to the west, in the area of the Crimean peninsula. The following post examines some of the evidence relating to this colony, which was said to have been established by Anglo-Saxon exiles after the Norman conquest of 1066 and seems to have survived at least as late as the thirteenth century.

The location of the medieval 'New England' and the route taken by the Anglo-Saxon exiles in around AD 1075 (image: C. R. Green).

The evidence for a significant English element in the Varangian Guard of the medieval Byzantine emperors has been discussed on a number of occasions. The Varangian Guard was the personal bodyguard of the Byzantine emperor from the time of Basil II (976–1025), founded to provide the emperor with a trustworthy force that was uninvolved in the internal politics of the Byzantine Empire and thus could be relied on in times of civil unrest. Whilst initially made up of Rus' from Kiev, with Scandinavian warriors subsequently forming an important part of the guard through the eleventh century, from the late eleventh century onwards it had a significant English component too. Indeed, the 'English Varangians' appear to have continued to constitute a high proportion of the Varangian Guard right through the twelfth century and up until the siege of Constantinople in 1204, during the Fourth Crusade.(1) This is, in itself, of considerable interest, but even more intriguing is the question of why substantial numbers of English warriors entered the Varangian Guard in the later eleventh century, for the answer to this is thought to lie in a number of sources that indicate that there was, in fact, a sizeable emigration of Anglo-Saxons from England to Constantinople in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of 1066.

Key references to this post-1066 emigration from England to the Byzantine Empire include a brief account by Goscelin of Canterbury, written in the 1090s; another by the Anglo-Norman historian Ordericus Vitalis (b. 1075), written in the first half of the twelfth century; a more detailed narrative included in the Latin Chronicon universale anonymi Laudunensis, written by an English monk at Laon in the early thirteenth century; and a related, but probably not directly derivative, account in the Edwardsaga, or 'Icelandic Saga of Edward the Confessor' (Saga Játvarðar konungs hins helga), which is thought to have been composed in the fourteenth century but drew on an earlier text that may well have had its origins in the early twelfth century and be the source of the Chronicon Laudunensis too. Although a number of minor details—such as the name of the leader of the exiles and the exact route that they took to get to Constantinople—vary between the latter two accounts in particular, in general the available sources all paint a complementary and consistent picture.

The church of Bogdan Serai, Istanbul, often identified as the church of St Nicholas and St Augustine of Canterbury that was built and used by the English Varangians in Constantinople (image: Project Gutenberg)

According to these sources, what seems to have occurred is that, in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, a group of English lords who hated William the Conqueror's rule but had lost all hope of overthrowing it decided to sell up their land and leave England forever. Led by an 'earl of Gloucester' named Sigurðr (Stanardus in the Chronicon Laudunensis), they set out with 350 ships—235 in the CL—for the Mediterranean via the Straits of Gibraltar. Once there, they voyaged around raiding and adventuring for a period, before learning that Constantinople was being besieged (either whilst they were in Sicily, according to the Edwardsaga, or in Sardinia, as the CL). Hearing this, they decided to set sail for Constantinople to assist the Byzantine emperor. When they reached there, they fought victoriously for the emperor and so earned his gratitude, with the result that they were offered a place of honour in his Varangian Guard.

This sequence of events appears to underlie all four of the sources mentioned above and is moreover supported by contemporary Byzantine sources too, as Jonathan Shepard has convincingly argued.(2) As to the date of this emigration of disgruntled Anglo-Saxon lords and their followers, Christine Fell makes a good case for it having taken place in the mid- to late 1070s, after the death of King Sweyn of Denmark in c. 1074 (who the English had hoped would come to their aid), with the Chronicon Laudunensis actually assigning a date of 1075 to the arrival of the English in Constantinople. If so, then they arrived in the reign of Michael VII (1071–78) and the siege that they helped relieve was that of the Seljuk Turks, which occurred in his reign and would makes sense of the fact that the Edwardsaga states that Constantinople was being besieged by a 'heathen folk'. The main objection to this is that both the Edwardsaga and the Chronicon Laudunensis both claim that the English arrived early in the reign of Alexius I Comnenus (1081–1118); however, as Fell points out, this does not fit with their description of the besieging of Constantinople by 'heathen folk' nor the Chronicon's stated date for their arrival. The simplest explanation is probably that the English emigrants arrived in the mid-1070s under Michael VII, relieving the siege by the Turks then, but their later extensive use by the more famous Alexius I Comnenus—as documented in Byzantine sources—led to the wrong name becoming attached to the reign in which they arrived.(3) With regard to their leader, the English form of the Edwardsaga's name Sigurðr was Siward/Sigeweard and is usually considered to be the original name attached to the tale, not least because the name Siward was borne by a number of high-status men in mid-eleventh-century England, unlike the Chronicon Laudunensis's Stanardus. Indeed, there were two English lords called Siward who are known to have joined Hereward the Wake's rebellion in 1071, and it is by no means impossible that 'Sigurðr, earl of Gloucester' was one of these two, as a number of commentators have suggested, especially as one of them owned extensive lands in Gloucestershire.(4)

A twelfth-century depiction of the Varangian Guard, from the Madrid Skylitzes (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Thus far the story, as outlined above, is clearly intriguing, and moreover largely supported by all of the available sources, both northern and Byzantine. However, perhaps the most remarkable and interesting part of the tale is found only in the Chronicon Laudunensis and the Edwardsaga, both of which may derive from a lost early twelfth century account, according to Fell. The Edwardsaga states that whilst some of the exiled Anglo-Saxons accepted the offer of joining the Varangian Guard, some members of the group asked instead for a place to settle and rule themselves:

[I]t seemed to earl Sigurd and the other chiefs that it was too small a career to grow old there in that fashion, that they had not a realm to rule over; and they begged the king to give them some towns or cities which they might own and their heirs after them. But the king thought he could not strip other men of their estates. And when they came to talk of this, king Kirjalax [Alexius I Comnenus] tells them that he knew of a land lying north in the sea, which had lain of old under the emperor of Micklegarth [Constantinople], but in after days the heathen had won it and abode in it. And when the Englishmen heard that they took a title from king Kirjalax that that land should be their own and their heirs after them if they could get it won under them from the heathen men free from tax and toll. The king granted them this. After that the Englishmen fared away out of Micklegarth and north into the sea, but some chiefs stayed behind in Micklegarth, and went into service there.
     Earl Sigurd and his men came to this land and had many battles there, and got the land won, but drove away all the folk that abode there before. After that they took that land into possession and gave it a name, and called it England [Nova Anglia, 'New England', in the Chronicon Laudunensis]. To the towns that were in the land and to those which they built they gave the names of the towns in England. They called them both London and York, and by the names of other great towns in England. They would not have St. Paul's law, which passes current in Micklegarth, but sought bishops and other clergymen from Hungary. The land lies six days' and nights' sail across the sea in the east and north-east from Micklegarth; and there is the best of land there: and that folk has abode there ever since.(5)

Needless to say, the description of New England as lying 'across the sea in the east and north-east from Micklegarth' suggests that the lands that Alexius gave to the English exiles lay somewhere in the region of the Crimean peninsula. This is supported by the sailing time specified too, as the fourth-century AD 'Periplus of Pseudo-Scylax' estimates six days' and nights' sail as the length of the sea-journey from Constantinople to the western tip of the Crimean peninsula. Such agreement in these incidental details is, of course, interesting. So the question becomes, is there any other supporting evidence for the establishment of a 'New England' in the region of the Crimea by the Anglo-Saxon exiles who travelled to the Byzantine Empire in the late eleventh century?

Perhaps surprisingly, the answer to this question is a 'yes', as Jonathan Shepard has demonstrated in another important article.(6) First, there is evidence that the Byzantine Empire did indeed see a restoration of its authority in the Crimean peninsula and Sea of Azov area at the turn of the eleventh century, possibly after a brief period of Turkish influence there. Such certainly seems to be implied in the letters of Theophylact of Ohrid (d. c. 1107) to Gregory Taronites, and a contemporary eulogy of Manuel Straboromanus to Alexius I Comnenus alludes to his restoration of Byzantine influence in the north-east of the Black Sea by the Cimmerian Bosporus (the modern Kerch Strait on the east of the Crimean peninsula, leading to the Sea of Azov).(7)

Extract from an Italian portolan atlas of 1553, showing the Crimean peninsula, the Cimmerian Bosporus (Kerch Strait) leading to the Sea of Azov, and the north-east coast of the Black Sea; forms of the names Susaco, Londina and Vagropolis are included on this portolan (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Second, there is actually place-name evidence from the Crimea and the north-eastern Black Sea coast that can be cited in support of the narrative offered in the Edwardsaga and Chronicon Laudunensis. This takes the form of five place-names that appear on fourteenth- to sixteenth-century portolans (coastal charts made by Italian, Catalan and Greek navigators) in the north and north-eastern portions of the Black Sea. Two of these names, Susaco and Londina, are of particular importance. Susaco—or Porto di Susacho—is found on the earliest charts, from the fourteenth century onwards, and is thought to involve the name 'Saxons', perhaps deriving from the Anglo-Saxon folk- and region-name 'Sussex' (the 'South Saxons').(8) Londina is found close to Susaco on the fuller, more detailed charts of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, and has been plausibly viewed as being just what it looks like, a version of the English place-name 'London' (with this probably being applied originally to a city on the Black Sea coast and then transferred to an associated river—as sometimes occurs in with English place-names and river-names—hence the fact that the name Londina is frequently preceded by flume or flumen on the portolans). It need hardly be said that this evidence is of considerable interest in the present context, with these two names seeming to offer a significant degree of confirmation of both the Edwardsaga/Chronicon's general narrative of an Anglo-Saxon settlement of this area and the specific claim that:

To the towns that were in the land and to those which they built they gave the names of the towns in England. They called them both London and York, and by the names of other great towns in England.

As to the locations of both Susaco/Porto di Susacho and Londina, the portolans clearly map them on the north-east coast of the Black Sea, east of the Cimmerian Bosporus (Kerch Strait).(9) In contrast, two of the other three relevant place-names to be discussed here were located to the west of this strait, on the Crimean peninsula, and at least one other was located to the north on the Sea of Azov. All of these other names seem to ultimately have Varang- as their first element, taking the forms Varangolimen, Vagropoli, and Varangido agaria. The first of these, Varangolimen, contains the Greek word for a harbour and seems to indicate a port belonging to Varangians, and both it and the second, Vagropoli, are mapped on the Crimean peninsula itself, whilst Varangido agaria lay on the Sea of Azov, just to the south of the mouth of the Don river. Although all three of these Greek names refer only to Varangians and don't replicate English place- or region-names, Shepard has argued persuasively that these three names are most plausibly linked to the 'English Varangians', rather than Scandinavian Varangians or Russians.(10) The implication of all this would thus seem to be that the Nova Anglia, 'New England', of the Edwardsaga/Chronicon Laudunensis did indeed exist and that it encompassed at least a number of cities stretching from the Crimean peninsula through to the southern shore of the Sea of Azov (described as 'the Warang Sea' in a Syrian map of c. 1150) and down the Black Sea coast east of the modern Kerch Strait.

The Vulan River in Arkhipo-Osipovka, on the north-eastern Black Sea coast, which is sometimes suggested to be the location of the portolans' Londina (image: Wikimedia Commons).

Third and finally, there are independent historical references to a 'land of the Saxi' (terram Saxorum) being in this part of the world in the thirteenth century, with the Saxi stated to be Christians and portrayed as dwelling in well-fortified cities. These references are found in the accounts of the Franciscan friars who were sent on a mission to the Mongols by Pope Innocent IV in 1246–7, and the consistent name of the Saxi in these accounts, the fact they are said to be Christians (rather than Muslims or pagans), and the implication that they lived in the area of the Crimea and/or around the Sea of Azov, combine to strongly suggest that the Saxi were, in fact, the Anglo-Saxons of 'New England', rather than any other people. Needless to say, this is again important. Not only does the presence of the Christian Saxi in the area of the Crimean peninsula/Sea of Azov offer further support for the historicity of the Edwardsaga/Chronicon narrative, but it also suggests that the Anglo-Saxon exiles who reportedly founded 'New England' in c. 1100 continued to be identifiable as a separate people with their own 'land' as late as the mid-thirteenth century, which is interesting in itself. Indeed, they seem to have still been a military force to be reckoned with, to judge from the friars account of the Saxi's resistance to an attempted conquest of them by the Tartars:

When we were there we were told that the Tartars besieged a certain city of these Saxi and tried to subdue it. The inhabitants however made engines to match those of the Tartars, all of which they broke, and the Tartars were not able to get near the city to fight owing to these engines and missiles. At last they made an underground passage and bursting forth into the city they tried to set fire to it, while others fought, but the inhabitants posted a group to put out the fire, and the rest fought valiantly with those who had penetrated into the city and, killing many of them and wounding others, they forced them to retire to their own army. The Tartars, realising that they could do nothing against them and that many of their men were dying, withdrew from the city.(11)

Of course, such a survival of 'New England' into the thirteenth century is perhaps not entirely surprising if it did indeed exist, as 'English Varangians' were still identifiable as a distinct group at Constantinople into the thirteenth century. In fact, the continued existence of English settlements on the Black Sea coast might well help explain the continued presence of English Varangians at Constantinople, with this force perhaps being renewed in each generation from Nova Anglia. Indeed, the author of the Edwardsaga clearly thought that the descendants of the English exiles still lived there in the fourteenth century ('that folk has abode there ever since'), and the mid-fourteenth-century De Officiis of Pseudo-Codinus related that the Varangians who existed then still constituted a separate people and that, at Christmas, they wished the emperor length of life 'in their native tongue, that is, English'!(12)

In conclusion, the above points would seem to add some considerable weight to the case for the existence of a 'New England' on the northern and north-eastern coast of the Black Sea in the medieval period. Not only does it seem that the Byzantine Empire regained control of that portion of the Black Sea coast in this period, just as the Edwardsaga/Chronicon Laudunensis claim, but there also exists a quantity of medieval place-name evidence from this region that offers significant support for the establishment of English Varangian settlements there and a thirteenth-century account that appears to refer to the continued existence of a Christian people named the Saxi in this area, who occupied defended cities and were militarily sophisticated. In such circumstances, the most credible solution is surely that the medieval tales of a Nova Anglia, 'New England', in the area of the Crimean peninsula and north-eastern Black Sea coast do indeed have a basis in reality. This territory would appear to have been established by the late eleventh-century Anglo-Saxon exiles who had left England after the Norman Conquest and joined the Byzantine emperor's Varangian Guard, and their control of at least some land and cities here apparently persisted for several centuries, perhaps thus providing a regular supply of 'English Varangians' to the Byzantine Empire that helps to explain why the 'native tongue' of the Varangian Guard continued to be English as late as the mid-fourteenth century.


Notes

1    See, for example, C. Fell, 'The Icelandic saga of Edward the Confessor: its version of the Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', Anglo-Saxon England, 3 (1974), 179–96; J. Shepard, 'The English and Byzantium: a study of their role in the Byzantine army in the later eleventh century', Traditio, 29 (1973), 53–92; and J. Godfrey, 'The defeated Anglo-Saxons take service with the Byzantine Emperor', Anglo-Norman Studies, 1 (1979), 63–74.
2    Shepard, 'The English and Byzantium', especially pp. 60–77; Fell, 'The Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', 192–3.
3    Fell, 'The Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', 193–4; Godfrey, 'The defeated Anglo-Saxons take service with the Byzantine Emperor', 69–70. Shepard,  'The English and Byzantium', 81–4, suggests an alternative scenario involving a feared, but never actually realised, siege of Constantinople by the Pechenegs, a Turkic people, in 1090–1. This has, however, failed to find much favour as a candidate for the siege that the English exiles relieved, not least because not only was it not an actual siege, but it also took place so long after the Norman conquest and the period of significant English resistance to the Normans (as Godfrey, for example, notes, pp. 69–70).
4    See further Fell, 'The Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', 184–5, and especially p. 185, fn. 3, on the identification of Siward/Sigurðr and the potential solution to some of the issues with this.
5    G. W. Dasent (trans.), Icelandic Sagas: Vol. III. The Orkneyingers Saga (London, 1894), Appendix F, pp. 427–8. See Fell, 'The Anglo-Saxon emigration to Byzantium', 189–90, for the relationship between the Edwardsaga and the Chronicon Laudunensis and the suggestion that both derive from a lost early twelfth-century source.
6    J. Shepard, 'Another New England? — Anglo-Saxon settlement on the Black Sea', Byzantine Studies, 1 (1978), 18–39. Much of what follows is based on this important but somewhat difficult to obtain article, which offers a convincing and in-depth analysis of the evidence for a medieval 'New England' in the region of the Crimean peninsula and the north-eastern Black Sea coast.
7    Shepard, 'Another New England?, 21–6.
8    Shepard, 'Another New England?', 27–8; G. A. F. Rojas, "The English Exodus to Ionia": the Identity of the Anglo-Saxon Varangians in the Service of Alexios Comnenos I (Marymount University MA Thesis, 2012), p. 50.
9    More exact locations are difficult: it has been suggested that the river that took on the name Londina was the modern Vulan and this is probably the most plausible solution, with Susaco then necessarily lying to the south-east of this on the basis of the portolan charts. On the other hand, one early nineteenth-century traveller seemed clear that, so far as he knew, the early eighteenth-century Turkish fortress of Sudschuk-ckala'h—Sujuk-Qale, built in 1722 and now the site of Novorossiysk, Russia's main port on the Black Sea until 2014—was the modern descendant of the portolans' Porto di Susacho. If so, then Londina can't have been on the Vulan, as Sudschuk-ckala'h/Novorossiysk is located to the north-west of this river. See further Shepard, 'Another New England?', 27–8, and J. von Klaproth (trans. F. Shoberl), Travels in the Caucasus and Georgia, Performed in the Years 1806 and 1808, by Command of the Russian Government (London, 1814), pp. 264–5. Note, Susaco continued to be marked on maps of the region well into the eighteenth century; see, for example, Io Baptista Homann's 1715–24 map Imperii Persici in Omnes Suas Provincias and Johann Gottlieb Facius's 1769 map Carte exacte d'une Partie de l'Empire de Russie &c.
10    Shepard, 'Another New England?', 30–1.
11    C. Dawson (ed. and trans.), Mission to Asia: Narratives and Letters of the Franciscan Missionaries in Mongolia and China in the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries (New York, 1966), pp. 42 (quotation), 80. There is an extensive discussion of the various suggestions that have been made as to the identity of the Saxi in Shepard, 'Another New England?', 34–8, who demonstrates that none of the other candidates are really credible, given the name, faith, location and character of the Saxi in the friars' accounts.
12    S. Blöndal & B. S. Benedikz, The Varangians of Byzantium (Cambridge, 1978), p. 180; Shepard, 'Another New England?', 39.

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