A trading county
From the earliest times the people of what is now Buckinghamshire have been
bartering and trading with distant parts of Britain and with far-flung places
overseas. Use this exercise to start off the topic. You may need to discuss what
the materials are.
Sort this list of materials into what was available in Britain the past and
what is only available today:
Stone, plastic, glass, gold, silk, aluminium, silver, diamonds, pottery, flint,
wood, iron, bronze, wool, Perspex, amber, garnet, nylon, leather, paper,
rubber, ivory, jet, brick
Once you have sorted them, think about where these materials can be
found. Which ones can be found in Britain and which come from abroad?
You could end up with tables that look like this (or you could sort by using mindmaps – see www.mind-mapping.co.uk):
Old
New
Stone
Wool
Bronze
Plastic
Glass
Amber
Silver
Aluminium
Gold
Garnet
Silk
Perspex
Leather
Paper
Wood
Nylon
Rubber
Pottery
Ivory
Flint
Brick
Iron
To refine this and give some idea of when these materials were used from in
Britain you could do a table like this and see if you can find any other materials:
Neolithic Bronze Iron
Age
Age
Wood
Bronze Iron
Stone
Wool
Gold
Silver
Amber
Jet
Pottery
Flint
Leather
Roman Saxon
Medieval Postmedieval
Garnet
Diamonds
Rubber
Paper
Modern
Silk
Glass
Ivory
Brick
Plastic
Aluminium
Perspex
Nylon
A trading county
Do a similar table looking at which of the old items are from abroad and which
are from Britain:
Britain
Abroad
Wood
Stone
Gold
Stone (some
types)
Pottery
Flint
Bronze
Amber
Silver
Silk
Paper
Plastic
Wool
Garnet
Rubber
Pottery (some
types)
Leather
Iron
Glass
Ivory
Brick
Again, this could be refined into which older items can be found or made in
Buckinghamshire and what has to come from outside the county:
Buckinghamshire
Wood
Stone
Pottery
Flint
Leather
Wool
Iron
Paper
Brick
Rest of Britain
Stone (some types)
Gold
Bronze
Glass
Pottery (some types)
Jet
By sorting these, it will give your pupils a head-start in finding materials and
artefacts in Buckinghamshire that have come from abroad in the past.
Neolithic
In prehistory the earliest tools were made from stone. While many of these were
made from flint that was available locally, some were made from stone that could
be polished to a high sheen and was often an attractive colour. The stone came
from Cornwall, the Lake District or Scotland as well as the continent and was
transported, either in roughed-out or finished form, around the UK and European
mainland in the Neolithic period (c. 4000 – 2300 BC). These polished stone axeheads were probably little used but were prized as items of great symbolism. A
A trading county
polished greenstone axe from Cornwall was found in Bledlow Cop, a possible
Early Bronze Age barrow. An axe-head found near End Cottage, Whiteleaf, was
made of a type of stone called tuff, which seems to come from the Lake District.
Another material that was prized in the Neolithic was amber. This came from the
Baltic Sea where there are marine deposits of the fossilised tree resin. It is
thought that some of the amber in Britain may have been washed up on the east
coast rather than traded all the way from Scandinavia. A Neolithic amber bead
was found in a pit in excavations at Coldharbour Farm before the Fairford Leys
housing estate in Aylesbury was constructed.
Figure 1: Neolithic polished stone axe possibly found in Wingrave
Bronze Age
Gold occurs naturally; you don’t have to smelt it from an ore. It is soft and
workable at relatively low temperatures and it does not tarnish and lose its shine.
It is only to be found in certain areas. There are gold mines, for instance, in
Wales, Ireland and Central Europe. For all these reasons it was used in
prehistory, mainly from the Neolithic onwards, as a status symbol. It was made
into rings, bracelets and other jewellery, cups and other artefacts. The earliest
gold artefacts in Buckinghamshire date to the Late Bronze Age, c.1000 – 700
BC. There are several rings, what archaeologists suggest may be ring-money, an
early form of currency. These have been found in High Wycombe and
Cublington. Late Bronze Age gold bracelets have been found at The Lee and in
Waddesdon. In the Iron Age gold starts to be used for coins. These may not have
been currency as we know it, but used to pay British mercenaries fighting against
Caesar in Gaul, or given as gifts by chiefs to keep people loyal. Later gold coins
from the Roman, Saxon and medieval periods were probably used much like we
use coins today, though ours no longer have a lot of gold in them.
A trading county
Figure 2: Late Bronze Age socketed axes
People started making and using lots of metal objects in the Bronze Age (c.
2300-800 BC). Bronze is made of two metals, copper and tin. There are no
sources of either in Buckinghamshire. The main source of tin for much of Europe
was Cornwall, and copper came from mines in Wales and Ireland. Some Irish
metalwork seems to have been exported in a finished state, such as the
socketed axe-head found in Akeley. Bronze Age boats are also known from
Britain, attesting to movements of people and artefacts, and a dugout log-boat
was found in the nineteenth century in the Thames at Bourne End. Unfortunately
it was lost in 1880, so it is difficult to say whether it dated to the Bronze Age.
Iron Age
Iron was first used on a large scale in the Iron Age, hence its name. Iron ore is
much more widespread than copper, so it means that iron artefacts can be
produced locally. Gold coins arrived in Britain in the Iron Age. The earliest coin
found in Buckinghamshire was Philip II of Macedon example found at
Desborough Castle in High Wycombe. This type of coin was the prototype for
Late Iron Age coins made in Gaul (France) and Britain. Amphorae were used to
transport oil and wine from Rome governed Italy and Spain from the Late Iron
Age, before Britain was brought into the Roman Empire. Several amphorae were
found in a Late Iron Age burial at Vetches Farm in Aston Clinton and fragments
have been found in excavations of villas at Yewden and Latimer.
A trading county
Figure 3: Late Iron Age gold coins found on Whaddon Chase
Roman period
The Roman period brought a new wave of trading. Samian ware, a type of
pottery with a tough orange coating, was imported from central and southern
Gaul (France). If you look on the Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past website, you
will see just how much of this there is in the county. Part of a jet bowl and a jet
spindle-whorl were found at Thorney in Iver and Wing Park respectively, at either
end of the county. Jet came from Whitby in Yorkshire, so is another exotic import!
The Romans also used ivory made of tusks from African or Indian elephants or
from walruses to make pins, such as those found at the villa at Church Farm,
Saunderton. A faience bead was found in a pit near a Roman pottery kiln at
Fulmer in excavation in the 1960s. Faience is a type of opaque glass that was
first made in Egypt, part of the Roman Empire. The bead from Fulmer may not
have come all the way from Egypt, but the technology to make it did.
Figure 4: Samian ware base (orange sherd)
Figure 5: Roman Isis figurine from outside
Buckingham
A trading county
The Romans also used special stone to make querns for grinding corn. Lava
stone was very useful as it was quite rough and hard, as well as being lighter
than the other common type used, millstone grit from Yorkshire. Lava stone was
imported from northern Germany or the Mediterranean. We have fragments of
Roman lava stone querns in Buckinghamshire, at Church Farm, Bierton, and
Aylesbury High School in Walton. Lave stone was also imported later and there
is a medieval specimen from the excavations at Main Street, Ashendon. The
Romans didn’t only bring artefacts and materials from abroad with them, but also
ideas. The native religion was merged with the Roman and later in the Roman
period new cults from the Near East and Egypt started to arrive in Britain. A
bronze figurine of the goddess Isis, the Egyptian goddess of fertility, was found at
the Roman temple near Thornborough.
Saxon period
We always think of the Saxon period as the Dark Ages, where there is little
evidence of what people were doing with their lives. This leads us to think that
people living in the country at this date were very insular and had little to do with
foreign cultures and didn’t travel very far. This is not the case. The Saxon burial
in Taplow barrow was accompanied by a large number of very rich artefacts.
Before Sutton Hoo (Suffolk) was excavated, or the Prittlewell burial (Essex) more
recently, Taplow barrow was the richest Saxon burial found in Britain. One of the
most spectacular artefacts found there was a bronze bowl, in a style often called
a Coptic bowl, which would have come from either Byzantium, what is now
Istanbul in Turkey, or from Egypt. Early Christians made Coptic bowls for ritual
washing, but it is possible that they were used for something else entirely once
they got to Britain.
Figure 6: Gold clasp from Saxon burial at Taplow
A trading county
A buckle found in this burial was inlaid with garnets. Garnets were very popular in
the Saxon period. They had to come a long way, though, from India or Sri Lanka.
Garnets have also been found in Saxon brooches from Ashendon and Ivinghoe
Beacon. Another Saxon burial at Ellesborough was found during the construction
of the golf course. A cowrie shell that had been made into a pendant for a
necklace was buried in the grave. This type of cowrie shell, a panther cowrie,
comes from the Red Sea, between Africa and Asia (the Red Sea is bordered by
Egypt and the Sudan on the west and Saudi Arabia on the east). A Merovingian
style gold ring was found by a metal-detectorist in Cublington. The Merovingians
were the ruling family of large parts of what is now France. Maybe this ring was
brought over by someone from France or someone from Britain travelled on the
continent and brought it back with them.
Figure 7: Merovingian coin found in Cublington
Medieval period
A medieval amber rosary bead was found in a pit at Dorney. We have already
seen how amber probably came from the Baltic Sea in Scandinavia. It was still
popular in the medieval period too. Medieval people did much more travelling
than we realise. It was relatively common to make a pilgrimage to a holy site to
find a cure for a disease or to do penance for committing a sin. In fact, this
practice started in the Roman and Saxon periods. By the medieval period,
A trading county
many people would buy lead or pewter pilgrim badges from the pilgrimage sites
they visited to prove they had been there. Each site had its own symbol. One
fourteenth to fifteenth century pilgrim badge in the shape of a crown was found at
Walton Court. This may represent the crown of St Edward the Confessor, a
Saxon king, whose shrine was at Westminster Cathedral. Another pilgrim token
was an ampulla, a miniature phial possibly containing holy water that was worn
round the neck. One of these was found in the grounds of Dinton Hall. It had an
arrow on one side, suggesting that it came from Our Lady of Walsingham.
Figure 8: Robert II of Scotland gold penny found on George Street, Aylesbury
Medieval Scottish coins have been found in Buckinghamshire. One of Alexander
III of Scotland was found on Mentmore village green and a Robert II penny was
found on George Street, Aylesbury. Alexander III was king from 1249 to 1286. He
married an English princess but refused to give tribute to England, maintaining
Scotland was an equal kingdom. Robert II was the High Steward and often
Regent of David II of Scotland before succeeding to the throne himself in 1371
after David II had threatened to make Edward III of England his heir. He was king
until 1390. Scottish coins may have ended up in England when Scottish travellers
came here, or when English men took part in the frequent wars with and raids on
Scotland that happened over much of the medieval period.
Post-medieval period
A seventeenth century ivory comb was found on Hunter Street in Buckingham.
The origins of ivory have been discussed above. It became very popular in this
post-medieval period and many elephants were killed for their ivory. It is now
illegal to do this. Seventeenth century Irish coins were found at Great
Cockshoots wood High Wycombe and nineteenth century ones near the Plough
Inn at Cadsden. It is possible that this represents an influx of Irish immigrants
A trading county
coming into England during very difficult times in Ireland when there were very
bad famines and not much work.
Rich people started to collect many artefacts from around the world in the
seventeenth century. Chinese porcelain was very popular. Fragments of broken
porcelain have been found in excavation in Boarstall and at Salden House Farm
in Mursley. By the nineteenth century many of the collections were the basis of
museums, such as the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford, the British Museum in
London and our own Buckinghamshire County Museum. You can see
Buckinghamshire County Museum’s Egyptian collection online at
www.buckscc.gov.uk/museum/exhibitions/egyptians.htm.
Explore later periods of trade on the National Archives Learning Curve website:
www.learningcurve.gov.uk. You can also see some later artefacts that have been
collected for the museum at www.buckscc.gov.uk/museum/m2e/index.htm. Some
of the artefacts in the social history collection in particular are made of exotic
materials like mahogany or were made abroad for export to Britain, like the
Japanese bracelet or the Chinese fan.
For the next activity you will need several maps of Buckinghamshire, which can
be found on the Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past website. Using the finished
map you could then explore how trade contacts change through prehistory and
history.
A trading county
Your teacher will split the class into research groups to look for artefacts
made of exotic materials from different periods that have been found in
Buckinghamshire on the Unlocking Buckinghamshire’s Past website. Each
group will research different periods:

Prehistory (500,000 BC to AD 43)

Roman (AD 43 to AD410)

Saxon (AD 410 to AD 1066)

Medieval (AD 1066 to AD 1539)

Post-medieval (AD 1540 onwards)
Your teacher will give you blank maps of Buckinghamshire for each
research group. Each group has to mark what exotic materials they find
on their maps.
Then your teacher will print off a large map of the world and you have to
draw a line linking the sites your group has marked on your
Buckinghamshire map to the places the items came from in the world.
Each period use a different coloured line.
To finish the topic, you could have a discussion on why certain artefacts were
seen as valuable and how they were moved about.
How and why did these artefacts get moved about?

Why would a garnet be so prestigious in the Saxon period?

Why would people in the Roman period take so much effort to
get the right type of stone for querns?

Would there be merchants importing and exporting copper in
prehistory?

Or did artefacts get moved around as gifts from one person to
another?
www.buckscc.gov.uk/archaeology