Chapter 5
Wales and south-west Britain
In Wales we have a traditional area of immigration where the Deisi from south-western Ireland were supposed to have arrived some time during the later Roman period. They settled in Dyfed, the Roman Demetia in south-west Wales which, until the tenth century, was to be ruled by a dynasty that claimed to have Irish ancestry. Ruling dynasties in this part of the world were long-lasting. The little mountain enclave of Brycheiniog in south central Wales was governed by a family that survived until the tenth century while Builth on the upper Wye and Gwerthrynion to its north also came to be ruled for centuries by the same families. To the south-east, the most Romanised part of the country, leaders continued to remember their territory’s previous incarnation as the Roman canton of Venta Silurum and retained the name of Caerwent.
Powys, in east-central Wales, may have had its origin as an independent kingdom in the ancient land of the Cornovii which became a Roman canton and retained some of that territory west of the later Offa’s Dyke. The origin of its dynasty is not known but the last king was Cyngen whose death is listed in the Annales Cambriae for 852. This curious compilation of Welsh material is written in Latin, covering over 500 years of entries and was probably put together about 970.
In the north of Wales the land of Gwynedd is identified with a dynasty that descends from Maelgwn Gwynedd in the fifth century. It includes some striking individuals. Apart from Maelgwn, a great warrior, there is Cadfan, ‘most renowned and cultured of kings’ and Cadwallon, enemy of those across the border, who was killed at Hexham by the Northumbrian king, Oswald, in 633. Rhodri Mawr was another, who ruled from 844 to 855 but his reign was a continual struggle against external aggression from Merca in the east and the Danes in the west.
Dinas Powys, perhaps the chief royal seat in the kingdom of Glywysing, has been thoroughly investigated (Alcock). Wooden buildings, a hall with a nearby structure that was identified as a barn, lie within an enclosure of about 55m diameter surrounded by rock-cut ditches and a bank of clay and rubble. Although the wooden buildings of the time do not seem very impressive, evidence of metalworking, jewellery, glass and imported pottery demonstrate the prosperity of the high-profile inhabitants. Pottery found on the site was imported from as far away as Aquitaine, north Africa and the Byzantine eastern Mediterranean. Some of this pottery, the amphorae, contained wine that must have been landed fairly close to the site and we should expect to find a Dark Age landing-place in the Cardiff area. From there some exotic goods could have been transhipped and carried up the Severn where imported pottery and cone beakers have been found at an excavated site near Welshpool (Denison) which also produced dateable coins from abroad and evidence of metalworking. Again, this suggests a high-status site. An imported beaker has been found not far away at Much Wenlock Priory in Shropshire.
Underwater archaeology in the Mediterranean is one of the fastest growing branches of the discipline and the great variety of trading activities and vessels of the fifth to seventh centuries are now being explored. Ships capable of making deep-sea voyages were active by around 400, carrying wheat and pottery from Carthage to Rome across the stormy breadth of the Mediterranean Sea, for example, and would have been perfectly able to voyage to Britain either under a square or lateen sail. Some were equipped with galleys in the stern like the Yassi Ada ship (van Doornick) which had a capacity of some 60 tonnes. They carried a variety of goods ranging from wine through fish and olive oil to materials like nails and wheat in cylindrical cargo jars usually referred to as amphorae. The type known as Late Roman I is found in western Britain but only as sherds and it is impossible to know what they contained although the best guess is wine and perhaps olive oil for Roman-style meals. This type of amphora was probably made in the Western Mediterranean. These traders not only visited south-west Britain and South Wales for finds of imported pottery have been made at various places in both but also on both shores of the Irish Sea at places like Anglesey in north Wales and sites like Dalkey Island close to modern Dublin in Ireland and even further north in Scotland where imported pottery and glass has been found at Dunadd as described above. Exactly what these merchants exchanged for their goods in the Irish Sea littoral and beyond is still not known. (Campbell)
In the fertile lowlands of South Wales where there were at least three Romano-British villas in the vicinity of Dinas Powy one can understand how the area could have continued a reasonable prosperity during the post-Roman period but this does not explain why traders from overseas would want to continue to visit the area. An explanation can be offered by another reference to the Roman period. At Draethen in Gwent was a gallery mine that still exists and which extends at least some 120m underground and was used for the extraction of lead by the Romano-Britons. (Phillips) Lead was a metal with capacities that were not possessed by other metals at the time so was always in demand. It is not likely that mining activity ceased at the end of the Romano-British period if there were still customers for the product and this could explain both the prosperity of Dinas Powys and Hen Gastell (Wales SMR) on the estuary of the River Neath further along the coast and also the presence of wine and oil containers which would have been supplied by the purchasers of the lead and give us some clue as to the whereabouts of their home ports, perhaps Carthage and Marseilles.
In the east of England where we have similar ‘royal’ sites or courts like Yeavering, it is understood that a leader of the time moved from one court to another with his entourage, providing a local presence and consuming the provisions collected at the sites against his coming. One wonders whether the same system prevailed in fertile South Wales or whether the leader could sustain himself from the profits of trade in metal in one place. If not then there must be a number of llys still to be discovered in the south.
A site similar to Dynas Powys in Gwynedd in North Wales stands on a rocky hillside at Dinas Emrys (Savory). It was occupied during the 5th and 6th centuries. Debris of the occupation included Mediterranean amphorae, red-slip dishes from the same area and a pottery lamp roundel featuring a Chi-Rho Christian symbol. There was also evidence of iron-working and, taken together, these suggest a high-class site, the residence of a personage who could rank with the owner of Dinas Powys. On the north coast is the twin peaked site of Degannwy which was excavated (Alcock) and also produced a dozen sherds of Mediterranean amphorae which presumably at one time had been part of a cargo. This is not very impressive evidence but the location of the site itself suggests that it could well have been a stronghold of a ruler. Other possible llys sites that have occupation at the right time are Garn Boduan and Dinorben (Gardner and Savory) all in North Wales.
Apart from Anglesey, North Wales does not have the agricultural advantages of the south but there are metal deposits which could well have continued to be exploited during the post-Roman period and which could help to explain exotic finds on sites in the region. On the Great Orme behind Llandudno copper was mined in Roman times. In Anglesey, also, there was copper in the Parys Mountain. Anglesey was an area which unlike a good deal of North Wales, does contain productive agricultural land and farming sites of the period exist. Llanbedrgoch, an agricultural settlement that originated in the sixth century, seems to have had connections with Northumbria since a Yorkshire bird-headed brooch of the period was discovered. Later, in the 7/8th centuries a timber hall was built and alongside it a wattle-and-daub roundhouse but links with Northumbria were still maintained apparently since ninth-century pennies struck there have been found on the site. At Llangefni, a settlement dating to the sixth and seventh centuries, a Byzantine jewel was found. At Cefn Cwmwd, close by, a pennanular brooch of the sixth century was discovered and another found at Pant-y-Saer. These places can be seen as the homes of ‘middling’ folk, farmers who prospered as a result of the agricultural potential of their countryside although the presence of the jewel is puzzling.
Back on the mainland Carreg-y-llam has signs of occupation in the sixth century. It was a small site with the appearance of a farmstead of folk like those on Anglesey and is evidence of a modest prosperity that may have depended to some extent on the sea but fish bones do not survive at all well in archaeological contexts so this can only be a hypothesis.
In Wales it is possible to say something of the sort of people who inhabited this post-Roman world which was probably little different from what it had been before. They were Christian and their memorial stones tell us something about them. They commemorate people who have names such as Martin and Paulinus that were popular in Gaul at this time and use formulae current in that area. A stone from close to Carreg-y-llam is that of a doctor which informs us in Latin that it was erected as ‘The stone of Melus the doctor, son of Martin’. At Penmachno parish church in Caernarfonshire is a stone which is inscribed with a chi-rho symbol followed by CARAVSIUS HIC IACIT IN HOC CONGERIES LAPIDUM, a statement about the departed Carusius which translation is still in dispute. Another example of a good many others dates from the seventh century and is in the parish church of Llangadwaladr in Anglesey and reads CATAMANUS REX SAPIENTISIMUS OPINATISIMUS OMNIUM REGUM, recording the death of Cadfan, who perhaps was ‘King’ of Anglesey. One fifth- or sixth-century stone from Pentrefoelas in Denbighshire was probably erected as part of a Christian cemetery but most are found unassociated in open burial sites like those in Dyfed But down in the south-west of Wales in Llandeilo churchyard a stone commemorates Andagellus, son of Cavetus, in both ogam and Latin script; another pillar-stone tells us in Latin of Coimagnus, a second son of Cavetus while at Maenchlochog an inscription was put up in memory of Curcagnus, son of Andagellus. Three generations recorded from the same family!
Most of the early stones were unshaped natural boulders of the right dimensions and are inscribed very roughly; the Latin ones sometimes beginning with the formula ‘Hic iacit’ and a few are decorated. Earliest stones, dating from the sixth-century, include the stone from near Fowey in Cornwall which bears the inscription ‘Here lies Drusta(n) (or Cirusius) the son of Cunomorus’ .Stones with crosses usually date from the seventh to ninth centuries. The most elaborate have all-over decoration of Celtic art which is done to a much higher standard of competence than the lettering and occasionally include human figures and animals on the lowest panels. Some have ogam inscriptions but the majority are written in Latin capitals.
In Cornwall later crosses of the wheel-head variety date from the tenth century and are similar to those from South Wales. At Bodmin on the Moor is the Cardinham Cross and at Sancreed the cross, of the same, date has a crucifixion scene.
Melius, the doctor, mentioned above, may have been familiar with three books from which he could have learnt his trade. They would have been a Leechbook (the word ‘leech’ (līċ) means ‘body’), a medical compendium apparently coming from Glastonbury Abbey and originally copied from Greek and Latin texts with a distinct Christian gloss as were the documents that made up ‘The Old English Herbarium’, a translation from Apuleius. The third was the ‘Lacnunga’ whose orginal source again was the Mediterranean world but whose collection of prescriptions, charms and prayers were amplified by a Christian doctor in Britain, someone perhaps very like Melius.
Doctors (or leeches) were battling against venoms, some of which flew around in the air; worms, venomous creatures; and dwarves and elves who were powerful supernatural creatures living in dark places who would shoot the unwary with arrows of disease. All the cures described in these works were cures for symptoms not the disease, vague ideas of which were only described in the later notion of ‘humours’. Most cures like singing psalms into a facial orifice were completely useless, but herbs could produce efficacious treatments like horehound for bronchitis, coughs and skin diseases or rue for skin disease, stomach cramps and colic. Yarrow was used to treat wounds while birch-bark soaked in water and bound round a fracture after bone-setting would harden to form a light, rigid cast. Some treatments that were successful were garlic for bacterial infection, iron salts for iron deficiency and lichens for tuberculosis, although the doctors would have had no idea why they were so.
It may be that it was the monasteries that put leechcraft on some sort of organised basis, combining the ancient classical lore with British practices and enclosing the whole within a Christian package. The following instructions are given (from the Leechbook of Bald who may have been King Alfred’s doctor) for treatment of one unfortunate who was elf-shot:
‘Go on Thursday evening after sunset to the helenium (elecampane). Sing the Benedicite and Pater Noster and a litany and stick your knife into the herb. Then go away. Come again at the time for Matins; cross yourself and ask for God’s protection and go in silence and if any sort of supernatural being or frightening creature meets you don’t say a word to him until you come to the herb. Then sing the Benedicite, Pater Noster and litany again, dig up the herb with the knife still in it and go straight and quickly to church. Put the herb with the knife still in it under the altar. When the sun rises take it out, wash and make into a drink with bishopwort and lichen off a crucifix. Boil in milk three times. Sing over it the Pater Noster, Credo, Gloria and Excelsis Deo! and a litany. Mark it with the cross on three sides using a sword then let the man drink it. Soon he will be well’.
Surgery was also practised although no notions of infections arising from dirty equipment or needles were current. Amputations as the result of gangrene, lancing of abcesses and sutures for hare-lip were amongst the procedures carried out.
The use of Latin is one indication of the survival of Roman culture in the west right through the so-called ‘Dark Ages’ and this must be down to the work of the monks of the Celtic Church who were the only individuals who had the necessary knowledge to act as teachers but, nowadays, their monasteries are as difficult to locate in south-western Britain as they are in Wales. However, we are in a better position with regard to secular sites in the area which, like those in Wales, fall into both ‘high-class’ and ‘middle-class’ categories but with the added bonus of sites on the coast which were probably landing places for traders from overseas.
Bantham (Sylvester) at the mouth of the River Avon is a midden where rubbish accumulated and is identified as a landing site with evidence of hearths and food debris which is thought to be where trading ships from the Mediterranean made landfall and, presumably where they were welcomed by local traders and entertained with feasts. Hundreds of sherds of sixth-century Mediterranean amphorae jars, Byzantine tableware and 43 ingots of tin mined up-country in Cornwall and collected for exchange with the foreign merchants were uncovered in the middens. Other similar sites within easy reach of the metalliferous area are likely to be found around the coasts of the south-western peninsula. One, further west, is at Gwithian (Thomas) on the north coast of Cornwall where similar imported pottery has been found together with the native ‘grass-marked’ war. It lies close to the area where both tin and copper were mined during the Roman period.
The Mediterranean trade depended on the skill and daring of the Mediterranean merchants who had been using sail as a means of propulsion for hundreds of years and, with its aid, dared the uncertain waters of the Bay of Biscay.. In later terms they might be described as ‘tramp steamers’ going wherever a cargo was to be had or, in the case of these people, simply speculating that they could obtain a cargo that would yield a profit back home and carrying along with them the luxuries that they knew would appeal to the northern barbarians. Wine was always a good bet, and glass beakers to drink it from, fine red ware to decorate a chieftain’s household, mortaria for the Roman-style meals prepared in his kitchen and Byzantine trinkets to give to his wife and family made up the rest of the cargo.
It is probable that the tin trade was still active in late post-Roman times for ‘bar-lip’ pottery, characteristic of the Frisian sea-trading settlements that handled the trade between the wics and industrial centres of the Rhineland and England and Scandinavia and operated despite the Vikings, has been excavated at Mawgan Porth on the north Cornish coast, a settlement that was occupied between 850 and 1050 (Bruce-Mitford).
Chieftain sites (llys or courts) in the south-west are found in Cornwall and the best excavated is Tintagel (Glasgow University) on the north coast where rectilinear buildings have been discovered together with a considerable amount of imported Mediterranean pottery. Castle Dore (Radford and later Quinnell and Harris) lies a few miles inland from Fowey and excavations inside the pre-Roman defences found a large hall, a smaller one and a third building that could not be fully explored. Pottery dates the site to between the fifth and seventh centuries, although so far no imported pottery has been found. A site that rates further down the social scale is the ‘round’ at Trethurgy (Quinnell) near St Austell that produced a fourth-to seventh-century sequence of occupation. Further east in north Somerset is Cadbury-Congresbury (Rahtz) with evidence of fifth- and sixth-century occupation and imported pottery with its most convenient links to the Mediterranean across the Bristol Channel to the unknown landing that supplied Dinas Powys but it is not clear what it had to trade with unless it was lead from the erstwhile Roman mining sites on Mendip.
The most substantial evidence of this period has been found at South Cadbury (Alcock) in the same county where the site was re-fortified during the fifth century with a timber and stone wall at least a kilometre long pierced by a fortified gateway crowned with an upper chamber. Through the gateway ran a cobbled roadway over three metres wide. The remains of a large hall, presumably used for assemblies and feasting with an internal wall that might have been partitioned off from the rest of the site as a private chamber was found together with smaller buildings and a possible kitchen. Some dozens of metres away were the foundations of a later cruciform church. Quantities of imported Mediterranean amphorae were retrieved.
In the West we seem to have at least two social horizons represented which are probably reflections of what had existed in Romano-British times. The upper one was that of the so-called ‘chieftain sites’, presumably belonging to an aristocratic group, wealthy enough to be able to afford imported pottery and its contents, and a lower strata of society whose members were content to live a less sophisticated way of life. But this is certainly a too simplistic a view and there are almost certainly gradations in each horizon for which we have not yet retrieved the evidence. Some evidence for this idea is provided by the mention of a doctor and priests, members of professions who could form what we might anachronistically call a middle class while the evidence for overseas trade might mean that the merchants who were concerned with it should be added to this group. What we have no knowledge of is the nationality of those who made the voyages. The assumption at the moment seems to be that they were Mediterranean folk who seized the initiative and brought trading goods to tempt the bovine folk who were sitting on the metals that could fetch a good profit back home. Is it not possible that those who possessed the mineral wealth might have had the gumption to carry it to the market places on the Continent? Or to have carried exotic cargoes further north to western Scotland? After all, this had almost certainly happened during the Roman period and there is no reason why it should not have continued.
Prosperous farmers might also be added to the list of the ‘middle class’ but whether the volume of trade in the home market for locally produced goods was large enough to lift them into the category above is impossible to say. It could have been so if they had specialized in products like horses and perhaps in wool.
The rest of the population were the small producers: potters, iron-makers in Exeter and elsewhere, and various artisans as well as farmers and the landless and slaves who would form the largest population horizon. How well they lived is the big question that faces the archaeologist of most periods. Very often they are simply invisible, both in terms of life-style/housing and their death. What we can say about them is that their way of life changed not a jot from the Romano-British period to the post-Roman. The only people who suffered much change, for good or ill, were the top people. One might say with some truth that our archaeology in the main is the archaeology of the prosperous.
From Roman times the normal containers for alcoholic drinks in the north of Europe was barrels, not usually amphorae. In Gaul, amphorae shipped from the Mediterranean containing wine were being emptied into barrels at Toulouse and Chalons-sur-Saône for onward shipment to the north, perhaps because a good deal of the journey would have been overland. So, if this practice was still being carried on in post-Roman times the few amphorae found on eastern British sites are likely to have held olive oil or garum or raisins and the evidence for wine would have entirely decayed away with the barrels. In the west, however, wine could be shipped in amphorae since it could come directly by sea from the Mediterranean.
At Carhampton (Webster and Croft) on the north Somerset coast imported pottery has been found and the excavation of a small cemetery has turned up evidence of the existence of an early monastic site. At Stoneage Bargate near Bishop’s Lydeard, several Roman graves were surrounded by rectangular enclosure ditches with entrance gaps to the east. Radiocarbon dates show that the site was still in use in the seventh century. Work on Glastonbury Tor revealed evidence of fifth- and sixth- century occupation and imported pottery but the excavator was unable to decide whether it was a chieftain site or a monastic one (Rahtz). Certainly, a later monastery was established on top of the hill during the eighth century.
Good evidence in the West Country for continuity from the Roman period are the post-Roman Christian cemeteries like Cannington (mid-C4-late-C7AD), Henley Wood (C5-C7AD) both in Somerset and Llandough in South Glamorgan where the earliest burials date from the late-Roman period. But when we look for continuity in pottery manufacturing we find no evidence of Romano-British pottery at all The only native pottery recognisable in western Britain is a crude hand-made variety. There is very little of it and the best-known type appears about AD500 and is referred to as grass-marked ware. Similar pottery was made in Northern Ireland in the seventh and eighth centuries. This lack of respectable pottery-making in the West Country has puzzled archaeologists for thirty years.
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