Recomendaciones para futuras investigaciones

Whilst this previous work provides the important framework for some of the courses of past spatial action, many of the important implications of this research have yet to receive specific treatment in current literature. The abiding omission is a reluctance to entertain a discussion of the interplay between action and structure. Following Giddens (1981; 1984), social change is a result of the forces o f people’s subjective experience and the way these experiences shape both their practice and stmggles. Social power in this perspective can be seen as the outcome of stmggle over the allocative and authoritative resources, such as material wealth or decision­ making power; resources which have both a spatial and socially uneven distribution. In this work, a comparison between inter-regional and local trade, as well as an investigation of the local processes o f redistribution from a specific micro-economic perspective, is utilised to attempt a more flexible understanding of the spatial and social processes o f marginalisation, dominance and reproduction. Although imported goods, such as those discussed by Huggett, are generally identifiable, further understanding of the local responses to trade require an investigation into the precise direction of regional diffusion and the loci of consumption. Such an endeavour, and the wider implications of this research, form the basis of Chapter 2.

A second area o f investigation is also evident however. Specific past interest in the social context of inter-regional trade and the concomitant focus on patterns o f consumption, has to some extent, avoided the issue of the spatial network o f this inferred commerce. Whilst some links have been drawn between the historical references to trade and material culture with respect to the media o f exchange (e.g. Arnold 1980, 91; Gaimster 1992) and the identification o f specific trading-centres (e.g. Hodges 1982; 1989), little attempt has been made to assess the shape o f mercantile activity itself from an archaeological point o f view.

In this respect, analogous work into the nature o f contemporary trading connections o f Celtic Britain and Ireland may offer certain insights. In a number o f recent papers Jonathan Wooding has characterised trade along the western seaboard o f Britain during the post-Roman period in terms o f a ‘tramp steamer’ trade pattern (Wooding 1996). As such, archaeologically recognised Irish links with Western Gaul in this suggestion are seen, not in terms o f a specific wine trade, but more along the lines o f “non-specific trade, probably with ships carrying a variety o f goods

as well as offering an explanation for the appearance o f fairly coarse imported E-wares around the Irish Sea, which, as low value/high bulk commodities would not have justified independent commerce. This trade. Wooding argues, formed the western extension of an eastern Mediterranean trade network and was therefore subject to uncertain risk, prohibitively high transaction costs and dangerous shipping patterns, which contributed to its sporadic and discontinuous nature. Such fragmentary links, he goes on to assert, are better characterised as traffic rather than trade, as the latter implies a continuous and reciprocal relationship not visible in the Irish Sea context.

In some respects, Wooding’s interpretation offers a number o f helpful guidelines for the interpretation of contemporary exchange along the eastern seaboard. Indeed, given this view o f traffic, both of Huggett’s regression models could be accommodated within the same distribution system. Monopolistic trade between Frankia and Kent may represent only part of a sequence in a global economic system. Given Kent’s strategic position at the head o f the entire eastern coastal trading network, it is in fact unsurprising that most foreign trade is concentrated in this region. Moreover, from a continental merchant’s point o f view, the Kent market offers the highest returns for the least risk, and it is possible that this translated both into increased mercantile interaction and a higher volume of trade in high bulk/low value commodities. The inferred link between wheel-thrown pottery, and possibly even glass vessels, with a nascent wine trade (cf. Evison 1979) could hypothetically be interpreted in this light. Once in Kent, the ‘tramp steamer’ model suggests that traders may have occasionally traded further up the coast, weather and mercantile opportunities permitting, before returning to their home ports. Given that it is uneconomic to continue shipping high bulk goods further than is required, the objects o f this trade are more likely to have been o f low bulk and high value, as well as being specifically targeted at local patterns o f consumption and taste. The widespread distribution o f peaks for Group II artefacts, such as amber and crystal beads, could indicate a number o f such specific trading places or individuals. Importantly, East Kent remains the highest consumer in both types o f regression model, arguing that, even in the case of such directional trade, Kent was always the primary trading partner.

Wooding’s characterisation o f ‘tramp steamers’ offers a subtle addition to the model of early medieval trade, which, with the evidence for migration and exogamy, suggests a number of different artefact displacement schemata. Whilst such a model admirably takes into

consideration documentary and archaeological evidence for contemporary levels of social and political violence and their impact on mercantile rationale, this very environment must however also be recognised as an important mode of material transference. Certainly, close political relations between the kingdom of Kent and the ‘Jutish’ settlement o f the Isle of Wight and southern Hampshire, as well as the continental homelands, could only have been realised through maritime connections. As such, the well-documented historical references for Saxon raiding may allow us to postulate an environment of Kentish entrepreneurial maritime opportunism in which Kentish communities profited from fishing, piracy, as well as trade with their Frankish, Frisian and Saxon neighbours (Brookes 1998, 50).