The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

The Scandinavian presence
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had developed in different sectors, reflected in street names such as Tanner Street, Fleshmonger
Street and Wheelwright Street. The south-east quarter appears to have been a royal and ecclesiastical
centre; a stone-built tower set in an enclosure on Brook Street may have been a residential
compound of an elite group, its architecture reflecting their classical aspirations (Biddle 1981;
Richards 1991).
Industry
In the towns, the Scandinavians provided one of the main catalysts for urban growth and helped
create the conditions by which England experienced what Richard Hodges describes as the First
Industrial Revolution (Hodges 1989). Pottery is a case in point. During the Middle Saxon period,
most pottery was manufactured locally by hand. By the early ninth century, only Ipswich ware
was produced on an industrial scale and traded widely. From the mid-ninth century, changes
began to occur at a number of centres. In York, there were the first steps towards a specialized
pottery industry with increased standardization of forms and fabrics (Mainman 1990). In East
Anglia, the Ipswich potters began to use a wheel to make cooking pots in what is known as the
Thetford tradition. By 900, wheel-thrown pottery was manufactured over much of eastern England.
This new pottery production was predominantly town-based: Northampton, Stamford, Stafford,
Thetford and Winchester are all examples of new wares that take their names from towns in
which kilns have been discovered. Stamford is notable for the introduction, in the late ninth
century, of yellow or green glazing on spouted pitchers made in a fine, off-white fabric. The
sudden appearance of glazing is coincidental with the Scandinavian presence in Stamford, but
the technology appears to have been introduced from northern France or the Low Countries by
potters who arrived in the wake of the Scandinavian takeover. Stamford ware was traded widely
via coastal or riverine routes throughout the Danelaw; by the eleventh century it accounts for 25
per cent of all pottery in Lincoln and York. Its spread appears to have started with specialist
industrial pottery; glazed crucibles are the first pottery to appear on tenth-century metalworking
sites in Lincoln, Thetford and York.
Industrial-scale metalworking is also a feature of the new towns. The working of copper
alloys and precious metals was hitherto restricted to high status sites such as the royal palace at
Cheddar, Somerset, and generally appears to have been carried out only under lordly or ecclesiastical
patronage. By the tenth century, it had become an urban enterprise; at Coppergate, for example,
two adjacent tenements were occupied by metalworkers, and some 1,000 crucible fragments were
found (Bayley 1992). The urban markets fuelled a large demand for mass-produced lead-alloy
disc brooches decorated in a Scandinavian style. Iron working also spread to the towns, and
whilst rural farmsteads still had their own smithies, it was in the towns that smiths experimented
with new artefacts and new techniques. In York, for example, new types of knife were introduced
and decoration proliferated (Ottaway 1992).
The urban communities are also characterized by manufacture in bone and antler, leather and
textiles. In each case, raw materials would have been available in the immediate rural hinterlands
and the urban craftsmen produced goods on a large scale for local demand. To date, the relationship
between towns and their hinterlands is best studied from the urban evidence, particularly that
provided by environmental archaeology. In York, the Middle Saxon traders occupying the
Fishergate site appear to have been dependent upon the ruling elite for the majority of their food
supply, and had little opportunity for trading with rural food-producers. The settlement at
Fishergate seems to have had a narrow subsistence base. Cattle and sheep probably arrived in
York on the hoof, although some pigs may have arrived as dressed carcasses. Minor animal
components of the diet are very under-represented, and there are few wild mammals, birds and
fish. In Viking Age York, by contrast, there was a great increase in the variety of foodstuffs