Objects: Reluctant witnesses to the past by Chris Caple

Author:Chris Caple
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub, pdf
Published: 0101-01-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Objects

Figure 4.2 Distribution of Mediterranean pottery imported to Wales in the fifth and sixth centuries AD. (From Arnold and Davies 2000)

reflect factors such as difficulties in transport, or competing producers (Peacock

1982: 168).

Identifying the provenances of materials on a site indicates the trade network

supplying the site. The stone used in the Fishbourne Palace shows the owner was of

sufficient wealth to access material through a trade network that stretched throughout the Roman Empire. A wide range of goods from different regions were found on the

wreck of the Bronze Age ship at Ulu Burun: copper from Cyprus; amphorae con-

taining ‘terebinth’ resin for incense (Pollard and Heron 1996: 250) from Syria/Palestine; glass ingots, ebony, hippopotamus and elephant ivory probably from North

Africa and Egypt; tin ingots probably from southern Anatolia, and pottery and bronze objects from Greece, Cyprus, Egypt and the Levant. This led to the interpretation that the vessel was trading around the whole of the East Mediterranean, calling at many

ports (Bass et al. 1984, 1989). Mapping the occurrences of objects, or the places from which objects or materials derive, enables us to determine trade routes, and thus likely routes of cultural as well as economic contact. The numbers and distributions of

objects can sometimes indicate the extent and nature of the trading mechanism.

4.3 Provenance: natural materials

The notion that the provenance of an object can be determined simply by ‘analysing’

it is deeply naive. Objects are not normally single entities but composites of many

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