IoA/BM seminar Maria Duggan

Maria Duggan: Britain in the early medieval Atlantic: the ceramic evidence for international connections

Pottery of Mediterranean origin has been identified at sites in southwestern Britain since the publication of finds from Tintagel in the 1950s. These imports have typically been used to demonstrate some sort of direct connection between western Britain and the Byzantine World in the fifth and sixth century. New discoveries in Britain have increased the scale and diversity of this material, while recently published finds from Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal have suggested a more complex picture of distribution. This talk will discuss recent research to assess the presence of this pottery on the Western Seaboard, which has revealed new understandings of contact and exchange in the early medieval Atlantic.