Erom the first century BC there is confirmation in the writings of Caesar, Pliny, Strabo and Diodorus of cross-Channel routes between the Continent and Britain and Ireland suggested by contemporary and earlier distribution patterns of artefacts (Cunliffe 1982; McGrail 1983). These are (Figure 15.9):
• The Rhine to the Thames
• In the region of the Strait
Figure 15.9 Map of cross-Channel trade routes. (Institute of Archaeology, Oxford.)
• Mid-Channel routes
• Western Brittany to south-west Britain and south-east Ireland
Mediterranean maritime trade routes were linked to these Channel crossings and
Their associated coastal routes in one of three ways:
• Up the river Rhone, then portages to the upper reaches of the rivers Loire, Seine and Rhine.
• Up the river Aude, then a portage across the Carcassonne gap to the river Garonne and Gironde; thence via the coastal route to western Brittany.
• Through the strait at Gibraltar and then the Iberian coastal route to western Brittany. This Atlantic route seems to have been used by Mediterranean merchants in the late sixth century BC and also by Pytheas on his late fourth-century BC exploration of northern waters (Hawkes 1977, 1984; Murphy 1977; McGrail 1990b: 36). This would have been an arduous passage, especially outbound from the Mediterranean, with a strong eastward setting current in the Strait and generally foul winds and currents along the Iberian Atlantic seaboard.
Furthermore, there were prominent headlands to be rounded which could have caused considerable delays during the wait for favourable winds and tidal streams. That this difficult route was indeed used in Roman times seems to be confirmed by the lighthouse built at Corunna in north-west Spain (Hague 1973).
Landing Places
Vessels on cross-Channel voyages would have taken departure from, and made a landfall off, a prominent landmark such as the island of Ushant, Cap de la Hague, Pointe de Barfleur, Cap Gris Nez or the Needles, Portland Bill, Start Point and the Lizard. The beginning and end of these voyages would, however, have been natural havens such as the Gironde, the Loire estuary, the Bale de St Malo, the Seine, Rhine and Thames estuaries, the Solent, Ghristchurch and Poole harbours and Plymouth Sound. Landing places within these havens were informal ones with little, if any, man-made protection or facilities. Only on soft muddy strands, where a beached boat might stick despite a rising tide, were artificial structures (hards) needed, as at Hengistbury with its gravelled area on the foreshore (Gunliffe 1990) or at North Ferriby where Wright (1990) found light timbers and hurdles pegged to the beach in the intertidal zone.
Carts and Wagons
Boats were beached on a falling (ebb) tide or they were anchored in the shallows below low-water mark off these beaches, and goods unloaded into smaller boats (logboats?). Horse or oxen-drawn wagons or carts were also probably used to load and discharge beached and anchored boats (Ellmers 1985). Logboat i from Holme Pierrepont on the river Trent, Nottinghamshire, was found lying on a 12-spoked wheel (Musty and McGormick 1973). Fragments of wheels have also been excavated from Glastonbury (Bulleld and Gray 1911) in the vicinity of the find-spot of Glastonbury logboat i (Bulleid 1893, 1894). Timbers from the village at Glastonbury have been dated by radiocarbon to the period 80 BC to AD 150 (J. M. Goles 1989: 64) whilst the date range of Glastonbury i logboat is 340 to 30 BC. Gart or wagon wheels have also been found at similar sites in the Netherlands and in Lower Saxony (Piggott 1983; Goles and Goles 1989: 162; see also Ghapter 18).
In the first century BC Diodorus (v.22.1-4) described how the inhabitants of Belerion (the Devon/Gornwall peninsula) used wagons to take tin to an island Ictls; Pliny {Naturalis Historia 1v.16.104), quoting Timaeus of the third century BC, gives a similar account about an island Mictis which may be in the Solent region. The two places considered most likely to be Ictis are the island of St Michael’s Mount, Gornwall, and the peninsula of Mount Batten in Plymouth Sound (Gunliffe 1983; Hawkes 1984). Tin and copper could have been brought by wagon from north and central Gornwall to Mount’s Bay and thence to the island at low water. On the other hand. Mount Batten seems archaeologically more likely as there are a number of finds from there which indicate it was prominent in international trade from the fourth century BC until the first century AD (Gunliffe 1988). Tin and copper from the Dartmoor and Gallington deposits would, however, more easily have been brought to Mount Batten by boats down the rivers Tavy and Tamar, whereas wagons could have been used to take ingots from a ‘warehouse’ at Mount Batten to beached or anchored ships.
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