Session: #521

Content:

Contact between the relatively two distant regions – the Mediterranean and northern Europe – stretches back to later prehistory (e.g. the amber trade) and Antiquity. Well known is the incorporation of Britannia into the Roman Empire, as is the archaeologically well-documented interaction between Romans and the northern barbarians. The same cannot be said about the late medieval and early modern periods. Although there are some specialist studies on the distribution of Italian and Iberian pottery, less has been published on other kinds of information, such as the archaeological evidence for pilgrimages, the trade in foodstuffs, textiles and raw materials, to name a few aspects of the multifaceted connection between southern and northern Europe. Yet there is a considerable amount of new archaeological data, collected in the last two or three decades of extensive rescue archaeological research around the North and Baltic seas that can illuminate how complex were the links those living in the North and the Mediterranean.

This session welcomes contributions that discuss the archaeological evidence of Mediterranean material culture in medieval and early modern northern Europe. Our main aim is to consider the impact it had on the communities living around the North and Baltic seas: how extensive is the artefactual and ecofactual evidence collected from urban or rural sites, how well were “all things Mediterranean” socially distributed, what might be the reasons behind their use and how may they have influenced local societies?

Session: #521

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