Over the weekend of the 11th-13th November 1988 a conference on 'Maritime Celts, Frisians and Saxons' was held in the Department for External Studies, University of Oxford. The conference attracted 90 participants from countries bordering the North Sea and the Channel, from Sweden in the Baltic, from Ireland to the north of the south-west approaches, and from Switzerland at the headwaters of the Rhine. The participants included not only archaeologists and historians but also naval architects and specialists in sea-level studies.
The aim of the conference organisers was to promote discussion of the maritime and riverine aspects of the southern North Sea and Channel region from c 300 BC to c AD 800. During the earlier centuries of this period, the Atlantic seaboard routes between the Mediterranean and north-west Europe became more intensively used and were re-orientated as Iberia and Gaul, and then southern Britain, were absorbed into the Roman Empire. Although some of these western routes continued to be used in the post-Roman period, this was on a reduced scale, and the focus for maritime commercial activity appears to have shifted from the Channel region to the southern North Sea, in particular to the lower reaches of the Rhine and adjacent waters. But traders were not the only seafarers in the thousand years or so covered by this volume - raiders, pirates, migrants, missionaries and fishermen also sailed these waters and those of the Channel and the Irish Sea.
Author(s): Seán McGrail (ed.)
Series: Council for British Archaeology. CBA Research Reports, 71
Publisher: Council for British Archaeology
Year: 1990
Language: English
Pages: 150
City: London
List of illustrations vi
List of tables vii
Contributors vii
Editor's introduction viii
1. Sea-level and coastline changes during the last 5000 years / M. J. Tooley (pp 1-16)
2. Controls on coastal and sea-level changes and the application of archaeological-historical records to understanding recent patterns of sea-level movement / J. J. N. Devoy (pp 17-26)
3. Hengistbury Head: a late prehistoric haven / B. Cunliffe (pp 27-31)
4. Boats and boatmanship in the late prehistoric southern North Sea and Channel region / S. McGrail (pp 32-48)
5. The Romano-Celtic ship excavated at St. Peter Port, Guernsey / M. Rule (pp 49-56)
6. The heritage of logboats and Gallo-Roman boats of Lake Neuchâtel: technology and typology / B. Arnold (pp 57-65)
7. A re-assessment of Blackfriars 1 / P. Marsden (pp 66-74)
8. Barges of the Zwammerdam type and their building procedures / M. D. de Weerd (pp 75-76)
9. The Romano-Celtic boats from Druten and Kapel Avezaath / L. Th. Lehmann (pp 77-81)
10. Maritime traffic between the Rhine and Roman Britain: a preliminary note / G. Milne (pp 82-84)
11. On the use of the word Frisian in the 6th-10th centuries written sources: some interpretations / S. Lebecq (pp 85-90)
12. The Frisian monopoly of coastal transport in the 6th-8th centuries AD / D. Ellmers (pp 91-92)
13. The Channel from the 4th to the 7th centuries AD / I. Wood (pp 93-97)
14. Boats and ships of the Angles and Jutes / O. Crumlin-Pedersen (pp 98-116)
15. Pre-Viking traffic in the North Sea / M. O. H. Carver (pp 117-125)
16. A new boat burial from the Snape Anglo-Saxon cemetery, Suffolk / W. Filmer-Sankey (pp 126-134)
Index (pp 135-140)
