The Movement of People and Things between Britain and France

Abstract

Archaeological evidence for the economic links between Britain and France in the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries suggests that networks of exchange were dramatically reordered during this period. A close examination of material evidence suggests that the networks of exchange, which bound Britain, northern Gaul, and the Rhineland together during the late-Roman period into a single economic zone, collapsed in the early fifth century. By the second half of the fifth century, however, archaeological evidence suggests that new trans-sea networks of exchange were beginning to emerge, which stretched across the Channel and the North Sea and from western Francia to the Irish Sea. The people, places, and goods entangled in these new networks were different from those of the Roman period, and the scale of exchange was much smaller. Franks would be important players in both western Britain and eastern lowland Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries, but their roles in the two zones were very different.