Byzantium and Britain: a Mediterranean perspective on Post-Roman Mediterranean Imports in Western Britain and Ireland

Abstract

THE RATIOS OF E. and W. Mediterranean pottery among groups of post-Roman imports in western Britain and Ireland are compared with those of contemporary pottery assemblages from Mediterranean sites. It is argued that the British material arrived in ships which had sailed direct from the Aegean region or from Constantinople itself The inspiration for this trade clearly lay in the NE. Mediterranean. Direct contact between the Byzantine world and the British Isles makes more sense of certain passages in Procopius's Gothic Wars and of other written sources such as the Penmachno stone.