The pottery that did manage to survive was very interesting, and Gill’s pottery specialist, Paul Blinkhorn, made the most of what little he had to work on.37 Perhaps the most remarkable result actually took very little analysis: the features of the Saxon settlement contained more Iron Age and Roman pottery (3.5 kg) than Saxon. This was material that was lying around on the surface when the Saxon houses were built, ditches were dug and so forth, a strange inversion of what one might normally expect. During the life of the settlement this earlier debris slipped into the various ditches, pits, wells and post-holes, along with fragments of the few contemporary Saxon pots.
The Saxon pottery included nine sherds of Ipswich Ware, and Yarnton is so far the most westerly site to have revealed this early form of mass-produced pottery. Paul Blinkhorn has pioneered a sophisticated form of chemical analysis, known as ICP-AES (or Inductively-Coupled Plasma Atomic Emission Spectroscopy), which has shown that all the Ipswich Ware we currently know about was made from clays occurring in Ipswich. It can therefore be considered a very reliable indicator of Middle Saxon trade. Ipswich Ware was made between about 720 and 850, but was not traded outside East Anglia until about 730. At the height of its popularity it was traded as far north as York and as far south as Kent. Huge quantities have been found in the emporium at London, and it is assumed that Yarnton would have been within its trading area. Recently other sites in the Thames Valley have revealed Ipswich Ware, so it would seem reasonable to suggest that Yarnton was part of this trading network. As at other non-East Anglian sites, the Ipswich Ware from Yarnton included just a few vessels (around seven), the majority of which were large jars that probably originally contained some traded commodity such as salt or oil. It is always a problem, when it comes to pottery, to determine whether the vessels were bought for themselves, or for what they may once have contained.
FIG 6 The Middle Saxon settlement in the Thames Valley at Yarnton, Oxfordshire (AD 700–900).
There have been relatively few recent excavations of Middle Saxon settlements, so Gill Hey’s work at Yarnton is most important. A series of radiocarbon dates has indicated that occupation began in the late seventh century and lasted through the ninth (say 700–900). There was occupation in and around Yarnton in the Early Saxon period, but Gill is keen to emphasise the contrast between that and what followed: ‘The contrast between the Early and Middle Saxon settlements at Yarnton is strong. There are radical differences in the size of the settlement area, in the degree of organisation within it, in building type and in the variety of structural remains and other features … but the coherence of the [Middle Saxon] settlement plan suggests that it was organised on this large scale from the beginning.’38
The settlement involved, for the first time, substantial timber buildings in addition to the more traditional building form of the Early Saxon period, the SFB or sunken feature building, which essentially consisted of a single-storey structure with a wooden floor over a cellar-like space beneath.39 This space probably served to keep the floor dry and would have helped the floor joists resist wet-rot.
The large buildings were a series of post-built rectangular halls and their outbuildings, including an impressive circular poultry house. These buildings were set within enclosures that were defined by ditches, and perhaps by hedges too. Gill notes that from the eighth to the tenth centuries the use of space within the settlement became increasingly formalised. She suggests that this may have been a reflection of two things: greater social control and authority, coupled with a growing shortage of land.
The changes visible in the layout of the settlement are mirrored in the surrounding countryside, where analysis of botanical samples suggests that farming was changing quite rapidly. Hay meadows were being laid out, major boundaries between larger holdings were being constructed, and manuring (using manure from farms and settlement) was introduced as a regular part of the farming cycle. Farming, in other words, was becoming more organised and intensive, yet at the same time it was also more diverse, with a greater variety of crops being grown. Technological improvements included the probable introduction of the mouldboard or heavy plough, which allowed soil to be cast to one side to form a true furrow.
The new form of plough was invented sometime in the mid-first millennium AD, and was one of the great unsung technological developments of the early medieval world. Suddenly proper ploughing became possible: the soil was cut, lifted and folded back on itself. This had all sorts of beneficial effects. The top growth of weeds was denied light beneath the surface, and died. Any manure spread on the surface was taken down into the ground, where the earthworms could give it their undivided attention. Earlier, non-mouldboard ploughs were known as ‘ards’ or scratch-ploughs. They were invented in the Near East in the fifth millennium BC, and were most effective if used in two directions, a pattern known as ‘cross-ploughing’. The best British example of the marks left by cross-ploughing with an ard was found below the mound of the South Street long barrow, just outside Avebury in Wiltshire, and dating to the fourth millennium BC.40 I once had the doubtful pleasure of actually using an ard. It was pulled by two oxen, took all my strength and weight to keep it in the ground, and I only managed to make it penetrate about four inches deep. It really was a struggle, despite the fact that the two oxen were remarkably tame and behaved themselves excellently. I concede that ancient farmers would have had generations of skill and practice to guide them, but even so, I found it extraordinarily difficult. These earlier ploughs acted more like a huge hoe or a modern tractor-towed sub-soiler, which simply breaks up and lifts the soil as it passes through. All the effort goes into encountering the soil’s initial friction and resistance; less attention is paid to what happens as the ploughshare passes through. It’s a subtly different way of looking at the problem and the process of ploughing.
This pattern of intensification coupled with new technology is also seen at other Middle Saxon sites in the Thames Valley. It echoes, too, what we saw in the Fens of the Norfolk Marshland – and there are many other examples that show how the Middle Saxon period was one of stability, increasing social control and rapid economic development, at home and abroad. These changes in the countryside were combined with the growth of the first towns and the spread of international trade. It must have been a remarkably dynamic time in which to have lived.
Michael McCormick’s view of early medieval Europe accords well with what we now know about the Middle and Late Saxon period in southern Britain. Increasingly archaeological evidence is revealing this as a time of vigorous change, trade and development, with regular communication over long distances. It seems no exaggeration to say that in the four centuries before the Norman Conquest, Later Saxon southern Britain was very much a part of Europe, and not just as a matter of economic convenience. The ties were also cultural, scholarly and ecclesiastical. Perhaps rather surprisingly, given the fact that William the Conqueror was a Norman with Viking family ties, the close relationship between Saxon England and its Continental neighbours failed to develop much further under him or his offspring. If anything, the Plantagenets and other high medieval monarchs took England in a more insular direction – whatever they might have claimed by way of territory across the Channel.
There is now no doubt that close links existed between Later Saxon southern Britain and its neighbours around the southern North Sea basin. Further north and west the situation was rather different. As we have seen, development here was slower and less affected by outside influences, a situation which was soon to be exploited by those remarkable entrepreneurs the Vikings. Our understanding of the period has changed in two important respects. First, we now see the Middle Saxon period in southern Britain as altogether more dynamic and cosmopolitan than hitherto. Second, we no longer see the Vikings as just being a force for evil – a view, as we will see, that was fostered by King Alfred,