Further evidence pre-Roman Britons had wine culture

The discovery of Roman pottery in a Celtic village in southwestern England suggests ancient Britain’s trading links with mainland Europe were more extensive and that wine drinking was more common than previously thought in pre-Roman Britain.

A shard of Roman pottery uncovered by the team. Photo: University of Exeter

Archaeologists from the University of Exeter have been excavating an ancient settlement at Ipplepen in Devon this month and have discovered shards of Roman pottery, almost certainly from amphorae used for transporting wine and oil.

Since excavations have been conducted on the site since 2009, the settlement’s position within Roman Britain has been well established, with coins, part of a Roman road, enclosure ditches and a cemetery all dating to Roman times having been discovered.

The latest finds however push back the known occupation of the site by several hundred years to the 4^th century BC, and the Roman artefacts uncovered are thought to come from a time well before the emperor Claudius launched the major invasion of 43AD or even before Julius Caesar’s minor incursions in 55 and 54BC.

Professor Stephen Rippon of the University of Exeter, told the BBC: “When we started excavating we thought that the site was only used during the Roman period, but the appliance of science has shown that it was occupied for well over a thousand years.

“Our excavations have given us further insight into how people made a living too.”

The finds suggest that not only was Celtic Britain enjoying a more active trading relationship with the continent than might previously have been supposed but ancient Britons – at least the nobility – also enjoyed luxuries such as wine and olive oil; although one cannot discount the possibility that the amphorae were reaching Britain empty of their original contents, as the pottery was considered valuable in and of itself. The discovery of wine paraphernalia in what was ancient Germany and Denmark is sometimes considered to be part of a trade in or general gifting of trinkets between the empire and the peoples beyond its frontiers rather than an indication of an active wine drinking culture.

The discovery of Roman wine-related artefacts in Britain from this pre-invasion time is not entirely new. Over the years in the east and south-east of England several amphora and wine cups have been found in high status burials.

What makes these small bits of pottery so interesting is their discovery so far west. In the south and east of England before the Romans arrived there was an influx of Celtic peoples called the Belgae – who came from an area that roughly corresponds with modern Belgium and after whom the country is named.

They already had trading links with the Romans and their close links with their own people in mainland Europe makes the discovery of imported wine artefacts and goods at sites connected with them much less surprising.

Ancient Devon on the other hand was occupied by a Celtic people known as the Dumnonii, who had no such close continental links but who likely had trade connections with Europe and even further afield thanks to the tin mining industry that really took off from the 6^th century BC. Recent discoveries of coins has even begun to suggest the possibility that the great North African civilisation of Carthage had trading ties with ancient Britain. As Carthage had a sophisticated and extensive wine producing and drinking culture thanks to its Phoenician heritage, a truly exciting find would be pottery from Carthaginian storage vessels in a British hill-fort or tumulus.

Finds such as these further weaken the traditional view that Iron Age Britain was a largely remote and unconnected place with little dealings with its overseas neighbours; its inhabitants violent and suspicious of outsiders. A place even fellow Celts rarely ventured. Roman historians make great pains to stress the remoteness of Britain and how worried many Roman soldiers were about venturing there, believing it to be the end of the world and possibly not existing at all.

It may be true that the rank and file Roman soldiery with a more limited world view were sceptical about Britain’s existence and prepared to believe all manner of tales about the place, but clearly, to some Greek, Carthaginian and Roman traders and many fellow Celts Britain was very much a real place with an open and trade-disposed attitude among its people.

That is not to say that the Dumnonii had direct contact with Romans at this time, however, it is just as likely that Roman wine and oil was being traded between Celtic tribes, filtering back from points of contact between the two civilisations in southern Gaul.

This is likely the explanation behind the discovery, in 2015, of a Greek wine jug dating to the 5^th century BC which was discovered in a Celtic prince’s tomb in Champagne – the most northerly discovery of a wine-related artefact found in Europe so far.

Furthermore, whenever the people of south-west Britain began drinking wine, it did not finish once the Roman’s left. Excavations at Tintagel last year showed that the Romano-British elite of the kingdom of Dumnonia continued to import wine from as far afield as Greece and Turkey in the 5^th and 6^th centuries AD long after the withdrawal of the Roman legions.