It’s hard not to conclude that it was this pattern of trading essentially rural products that was taken forward into the eighth and ninth centuries. In other words, by the mid-seventh century exchange and commerce were an integral part of rural life, and provided the goods that were traded from the emporia and ‘productive’ sites – many of which would have housed people who were also making and producing things.
If the economy at West Stow seems to have been mainly centred around wool, cloth and hides, other later sites show signs of greater specialisation. Sometimes the specialised production was encouraged by a local church; in other instances it seems to have been private enterprise by landowners and farmers. I’ve already mentioned Keith Wade’s site at Wicken Bonhunt in Essex, which produced many pig bones, suggesting that it specialised in the production of pork. Very close to where I am currently writing, a group of Fenland sites on the silty banks of tidal creeks surrounding the Wash were most probably cattle farms specialising in beef.
These cattle stations, as they might be called in Australia, were first revealed by Bob Sylvester and his colleagues of the Fenland Survey around 1984 when they spotted scatters of Ipswich Ware lying on the surface (being dark, it shows up quite well in dry weather, when the silty soil turns pale).33 Contrary to popular opinion, the Fens are not all boggy areas, and the so-called ‘Marshland’ soils around the Wash are naturally well-drained; they mainly consist of Iron Age tidal silts, which are actually quite porous because the individual particles of silt are halfway in size between sand and clay, so there are spaces for the water to pass through. This silty soil is very fertile – my vegetable garden grows sprouting broccoli the size of small trees – and it also makes excellent cattle pasture, being sufficiently dry on the surface to prevent foot problems in most animals.
Bob’s work was particularly important because it shows how archaeology can be used to extend and amplify the historical record. It has long been known from documentary sources that the silty marshland west of King’s Lynn was a very wealthy area. This wealth derived mainly from livestock, especially sheep, but salt was also extracted from the creeks around the Wash, and the proximity of the prosperous and growing port of King’s Lynn certainly aided this process. If we rely on documentary sources alone, it would seem that the wealth of the region began to increase from the time of Domesday (1086) until the thirteenth century, by when it was a very prosperous area indeed. There were, however, no reasons to suppose that Marshland was particularly important in Saxon times until Bob Sylvester and Andrew Rogerson started methodically to survey the Norfolk parish of Terrington St Clement.
I first met Andrew when I was working at North Elmham in 1970, and I knew him to be an imaginative but essentially hard-nosed specialist in early medieval archaeology. He was never one to jump onto bandwagons, and he scrupulously avoided exaggerated claims, which is why I well remember his huge enthusiasm about discoveries at a site named Hay Green, just outside the village. It was the scale that was so extraordinary. Andrew and Bob revealed a vast scatter of about a thousand Ipswich Ware sherds along the banks of an extinct tidal creek, or roddon. From the air you can see a network of pale, silt-filled roddons snaking their way across the landscape. At ground level they show up as low silty mounds which would have been where Middle Saxon communities placed their homes, their farms and their stockyards. This was the land that rarely flooded, even after the heaviest rains.
Bob and Andrew found Ipswich Ware across thirteen fields, covering about seven hectares (over seventeen acres) and extending along the roddon for a distance of 1.5 kilometres. This was a truly massive spread, but what was even more interesting was that Hay Green was almost entirely Middle Saxon – there was only very little later material, probably because by then Late Saxon and Norman settlement had moved to Terrington, just north of the fine medieval church. On the face of it, this might suggest that the life of the Middle Saxon farming settlement was short and sharp. The scatter was large, but it was difficult to say any more about it without digging some selective holes. This happened a few years later, when some of the most important sites revealed in the Fenland Survey were given a closer look.34
It would now seem that Hay Green was not alone. The Fenland Survey revealed six other comparable sites that were evenly spaced out across the Marshland silts. This arrangement strongly suggested that these farms or settlements were part of a Middle Saxon planned development. It was also suggested, in line with what we know happened somewhat later, that the individual farms or settlements could have been linked to upland estates on the higher ground of ‘mainland’ Norfolk, to the east.
Like all good surveys, the ‘field-walking’ was more than just a pot-pick-up.* Metal detectors were also used, but to everyone’s surprise they failed to find significant quantities of coins (sceattas) or any other metalwork. This was most peculiar, given the huge quantities of quite high-quality pottery. The surface survey also revealed a number of animal bones, many of which had been burnt. It was all rather mysterious. Everyone was agreed: trenches must be dug.
They decided to excavate at Hay Green and two other sites of the remaining six. All three sites produced a number of archaeological features, which was a relief to the excavators, who had feared that most would have been destroyed by modern farming. Big ditches had been dug along the roddon, and at Hay Green these ended in a series of large pits which were filled with quantities of animal bone and debris. Much of the animal bone showed obvious signs of butchery (butchery marks are now well-studied in archaeology), and it was clear that this had happened in situ. It therefore appears that meat was being exported from the site as joints or sides, rather than ‘on the hoof’.
So far no clear evidence for settlement has been found, but this probably reflects the fact that larger, ‘open area’ excavation was not possible. The excavators believe it is likely that the six sites were only occupied in the summer months, when the grazing was at its best and the risk of flooding was minimal. So this livestock enterprise represents the planned exploitation of an underused natural resource at a time when conventional history might have us believe that the economy was still largely underdeveloped. It shows not only that these farmers had the wealth to buy in quantities of pottery, but that their products could be distributed efficiently to markets that were sufficiently rich to justify such a large-scale enterprise. The more we look at the Middle Saxon period in southern Britain, the more we realise that it was about far, far more than mere subsistence farming.
Ben Palmer is of the opinion that some rural sites may have had access to traded goods because of their location close to one or more roads or rivers. Laying aside the fact that the same can be said for most settlements, he points to rural sites such as Lake End Road near Maidenhead which do not seem to have anything special to offer, but which contain traded goods. This site lies close to the Thames, and has produced imported pottery, lava quernstones and Ipswich Ware from filled-in pits. So far, and despite extensive excavation, there is no clear evidence for metalwork or for permanent settlement. Whoever frequented this rather enigmatic site could also ‘tap in’ to passing trade. That is the theory. Palmer also suggests a nearby Thames-side site at Yarnton in Oxfordshire as a place that benefited from the passing trade along the river. But in this particular case I think it was rather more than that.
I first came across Gill Hey’s complex multi-period project at Yarnton when I found my wife Maisie, a specialist in ancient woodworking, standing at the kitchen sink examining a waterlogged Bronze Age notched-log ladder. She had collected it the week before from the store at the Oxford Archaeological Unit, and was working indoors because it was bitterly cold in our barn, where she normally did such things. The ladder had been excavated by Gill Hey at Yarnton, which had also revealed a large Iron Age community, Roman settlement, Early Saxon and now Middle and Late Saxon occupation. Most of these important sites were later destroyed, either by gravel quarries or road schemes.
Maisie had known Gill as a student when Gill was doing research into Peruvian pottery, of all things. Subsequently she quit South America for
