London, also lying on a major tidal river opposite the Continent, started out its life as a home to traders and commerce. Not surprisingly, it has produced unparalleled evidence for trade in the Roman period in Britain. A sensational discovery at Southwark in 2002 could not have been more appropriate. This was a dedication to the Spirits of the Emperors and the god Mars Camulos by one Tiberinius Celerianus, who came from a north Gaulish tribe called the Bellovaci [173].” He tells us that he was a moritixyor mon/CA:,and a Londoner. Monf/xseems to be the colloquial Celtic term for a merchant seafarer, where Celtic and Latin both used the same root for the word for 'sea’ (in Latin, mare and in Welsh, mor).
Lucius Viducius Placidus was a negotiator, or merchant, from Rouen. In 221, he paid for an arch at York that was probably an entrance to a temple precinct, and possibly a shrine. Placidus also left a dedication at the shrine of the goddess Nehalennia at Colijnsplaat, near the mouth of the Scheldt across the North Sea.” What Placidus was trading in can only be guessed at, although pottery is likely, but he evidently dealt in goods that came from the Rhineland. Marcus Secundinius Silvanus also left a dedication to Nehalennia on the other side of the Scheldt estuary, at Domburg, recording his occupation as a negotiator cretarius Britanni-nVjm<5,‘pottery merchant on the Britannia trade’.Another variant was the negotiator Britannicianus moriteXy Gaius Aurelius Verus, who made a dedication to Apollo at Cologne.” Cologne is known to have been a source of goods that ended up in Britain. Pottery was certainly among them, along with glass and pipeclay figurines, some stamped by the manufacturer Servandus of Cologne.”
At Vindolanda, Gavo was responsible for supplying some of the food and textiles used at the fort. He is recorded on an account that lists the goods and their prices. Atrectus worked as a brewer (cervesarius). He was probably a civilian trader who serviced the market for beer in the fort.” Such individuals are freak survivals from what must have once been a very large number of men who made a living out of the cross-Channel and North Sea trade, or who serviced demand on a more local scale. The sea merchants took financial risks in shipping goods across waters that were not only susceptible to major storms, but also to piracy. The results of their collective efforts are clear from the large quantities of ceramic material in particular that was shipped into Britain. The Vindolanda tablets exemplify how impossible it is to have any really meaningful idea of trade and commerce in Roman Britain. Gavo’s account includes wool, beans and honey - substances that have virtually no chance of surviving in the archaeological record.
World History
