British Archaeology, no 28, October 1997: Features

Rome saw to it that the imperial quarry workers remained happy, writes Marijke Van der Veen

Most of us regard the desert as an inhospitable landscape, and associate it with hardship and scarcity of water and food. It has therefore long been assumed that in Roman times, a posting to work in the imperial stone quarries at Mons Claudianus in the deserts of eastern Egypt must have seemed like a prison sentence with hard labour.

A number of classical authors, such as the 1st century AD Jewish writer Josephus, wrote that the forced labour of convicts and captives was used at such remote stone quarries - an implication that appeared intuitively to make sense.

However, recent archaeological work at Mons Claudianus suggests that, at this quarry at least, a quite different story can now be told. The first full-scale excavations at the site, which are just now reaching publication, have revealed that throughout the two centuries of its operation, a skilled and well-paid civilian workforce was employed in the quarries, in conditions - judging by their diet - that might well be regarded as luxurious.

The partly British-run project has underlined yet again the sheer technical and administrative achievement of the Roman Empire, and the extent to which the emperors were prepared to invest highly in bolstering their own prestige - such as in the acquisition of top-quality stone for their grand building projects in Rome.

Mons Claudianus lies roughly two-thirds of the way between the Egyptian town of Qena on the Nile, north of Luxor, and Hurghada on the Red Sea. It is in the middle of nowhere. There is no present or past settlement for miles.

From the later 1st century to the mid 3rd century AD, the surrounding mountains were exploited for grey granite (or, more precisely, granodiorite) of such high quality that entire columns could be extracted in a single piece. Examples of these remarkable objects can still be seen in the portico of the Pantheon in Rome, built by the Emperor Hadrian.

Mons Claudianus was discovered by European travellers in the 19th century. Over recent decades, however, the area has been a military zone with restricted access. The first full-scale excavations took place between 1987-1993, under the overall responsibility of the papyrologist Prof Jean Bingen of the French University in Brussels. Leading the British contingent were Prof David Peacock of the University of Southampton, a specialist in quarrying technology, and Valerie Maxfield, a Romanist at the University of Exeter. I was responsible for analysing the plant remains. Recent research by Prof Peacock suggests that the quarries were imperial property, and that prestige was conferred on the stone in antiquity simply by virtue of the remoteness of the quarries and the difficulty with which it had been obtained. It is now thought that almost all the stone from here ended up in Rome. The quarries were administered by the Roman army.

The site is some 50km, as the crow flies, from the other well-known imperial stone quarry in Egypt - the even more remote Mons Porphyrites, the world's only known source of purple porphyry - where the same team of British archaeologists is currently at work.

Surviving at Mons Claudianus now are the quarries themselves and the remains of the Roman settlement, linked to the Nile by a Roman road with way-stations at roughly one day's travel intervals. At the quarries, several columns, some basins and a bath can still be found lying broken; the largest column being 60ft high and weighing some 200 tonnes. At the Roman settlement, many buildings stand intact to roof height. The settlement was a kind of fort with walls and projecting towers, and was once home to a population of around 1,000 people, both quarrymen and soldiers. The road can still be traced in many places - a line of even width, cleared of boulders, threading its way through this arid, rocky landscape.

Stone from the quarries was shaped in the desert, probably to reduce its weight, and was taken from the quarry along slipways to loading platforms, where it is thought to have been loaded onto wagons and taken along the road to the Nile Valley for trans-shipment to Rome. Documents found on site refer to 12-wheeled and four-wheeled carts, and include a request for delivery of new axles.

The journey would have taken at least five days, and longer for the larger pieces. At the numerous way-stations along the road - the motels of the Roman world - the animals and men involved in moving the stone could rest, eat and drink. These places, also first discovered by Europeans in the 19th century, were small defended 'forts' containing many rooms, with associated stabling and a water-supply.

The arid conditions at Mons Claudianus have allowed documents and organic remains to survive in embarrassing richness. The organic remains include a complete basket, as well as shoes, cord and rope, animal bones (in some cases articulated and with the flesh still attached), fruits, seeds, chaff, and straw. The documents include some papyri, but consist largely of ostraka - sherds of pottery containing writing.

We now know from the ostraka that instead of forced labour the quarries were worked by skilled, civilian workers, many of whom earned 47 drachmas a month - about twice as much as their counterparts in the Nile valley - as well as one 'artab' (about 70 pints) of wheat. The ostraka include some personal letters similar in some ways to the Vindolanda writing tablets, but most contain spending orders for goods from the Nile Valley given to the settlement's quartermaster, which were thrown away once the goods arrived.

The food remains on site showed that far from living on a staple diet of a few cereals, pulses, dates and occasional meat, the inhabitants of Mons Claudianus had access to most of the foods that were available in the Nile valley. We found evidence for some 55 different foodplants and 20 sources of animal protein. Typical staples were wheat, barley, lentils, dates, onions, olives, wine, and donkey meat, all brought in from the Nile valley, as well as fish from the Red Sea; while the luxuries included artichoke, citron (the earliest member of the citrus fruit family to reach the Mediterranean world), pine nuts, walnuts, almonds, hazel nuts, pomegranate, watermelon, cucumber, pepper from India, in addition to game animals, snails and oysters.

Food was not only delivered to the site, it also appears to have been grown. The seeds of cabbage, leaf beet (or English spinach), cress, lettuce, chicory, mint and basil have been found - they would not have been present if vegetables had been delivered to the site ready to eat - suggesting that the civilians or soldiers at the quarry wanted to eat their green vegetables fresh, rather than transported for a week across a desert. The vitamin C and iron found in fresh green vegetables would, incidentally, have been necessary to enable the men to do the heavy manual work needed in the quarry. Similar evidence of vegetable-growing has also been found at Mons Porphyrites.

One ostrakon could possibly contain a request for seeds; another seems to ask for buckets of dung, presumably for use as a fertiliser. No evidence, however, has been found of the garden plots themselves, which presumably have been washed away by the region's periodic floods.

Germinated, carbonised barley grain has been found, suggesting the inhabitants brewed beer. The grain may have been accidentally charred during the production of malt. Imported chaff, straw and barley grain have been found in camel and donkey droppings, suggesting these materials were brought in as animal fodder. Chaff, straw and midden material were also used as temper for the making of wall plaster and mudbrick, and in addition as tinder or fuel for the ovens and fires, together with imported wood charcoal.

The results of the Mons Claudianus project clearly demonstrate that Roman emperors went to great lengths to get the stone they wanted, and that no expense was spared to keep their workers happy.

Dr Marijke van der Veen is a Lecturer in Environmental Archaeology at the University of Leicester

The full results of the project can be found in Survey and Excavations at Mons Claudianus 1987-1993, by DPS Peacock and VA Maxfield. Vol 1: Topography and Quarries, was published earlier this year. Vol 2: The Excavations, is in press. Mons Claudianus: Ostraca Graeca et Latina I and II, by J Bingen et al, were published in 1992 and 1997. All published by the Institut Français d'Archeologie Orientale de Caire.

Finds from Flixborough have shed new light on the rich Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindsey, writes Chris Loveluck

When an immensely wealthy Anglo-Saxon settlement was discovered a few years ago at Flixborough in North Lincolnshire, it was immediately regarded as one of the most important sites of the period in Britain. Thousands of luxurious artefacts were found, including a large filigree gold ring, many silver and gilded copper alloy brooches and pins, a hanging bowl mount, bronze vessels, silver coinage, and much else besides.

The settlement was originally thought to be a Middle Saxon nunnery. A number of styli (pens) were found - usually associated with religious foundations in this period - and an inscribed lead plaque was thought to contain the word nunna, or 'nuns'.

Post-excavation analysis, however, funded by English Heritage, is completely altering our interpretation of the site. The lead plaque is now known to contain a list of personal names, both male and female (but no mention of nuns), and the settlement as a whole is now regarded as an aristocratic manorial centre, possibly associated with the sub-kings of the AngloSaxon kingdom of Lindsey. It was inhabited from at least the mid-7th century to the early decades of the 10th century, by which time the whole area had passed into Viking control.

Flixborough has proved wealthy not only in luxury items, but also in pottery, craftworking tools and food remains. As a whole, the site provides the most complete picture yet available of life in a high-status rural Anglo-Saxon settlement in Britain, and throws new light on the transition of north-eastern England from Saxon control into the authority of the Danelaw.

By the 8th century, the Anglo-Saxon kingdom of Lindsey, covering northern Lincolnshire, had ceased to be an autonomous region. As a boundary zone between the great kingdoms of Mercia and Northumbria, Lindsey had long been fought over and eventually passed into Mercian control. Sub-kings of Lindsey survived, however, at least until the late 8th century and possibly beyond.

Very little is known about Lindsey, but the organisation of other Saxon kingdoms suggests that its sub-kings may have had a number of royal centres - rather than just one - with the court moving from one centre to another as the year progressed. Flixborough, as the richest site of the period known in Lincolnshire, may well have been one of these royal centres, though this cannot be proven.

The settlement was only partly revealed by the 1989-91 excavations, but the exposed area suggests that between five and seven large domestic hall buildings stood at any one time - the largest about 20m long - which were occupied presumably by the extended families of the leading aristocrat and his chief retainers. The settlement was built on a sand promontory jutting into the floodplain of the River Trent, close to where the Trent discharges into the Humber Estuary. The settlement's unstable foundations led to repeated subsidence and rebuilding, with each hall rebuilt every 30 years or so. The present village of Flixborough, which has medieval origins, sits on top of an adjacent limestone escarpment - indicating that after a few hundred years Flixborough's inhabitants learned their lesson and rebuilt their settlement on solid rock.

There was no longstanding 'church' at Flixborough, but one building seems to have served as a mortuary chapel for the leading family for about 100 years from the mid-8th century. An infant and four adults - one of them definitely a woman - were given Christian burials inside, while one further adult was buried outside. The chapel was eventually rebuilt as a domestic building.

The arrangement and type of buildings here, as well as the range of imports, suggests Flixborough was a similar type of settlement to those found at Raunds in Northamptonshire, North Elmham in Norfolk, and Wicken Bonhunt in Essex - all now interpreted as Saxon manorial centres - although Flixborough was by far the richest of the group. The presence of styli need not denote a religious settlement. Illuminated manuscripts, after all, require quills, whereas styli, used for inscribing wax tablets, are quite likely to have been used by resident clerics or a priest to help in the day-to-day management of a large aristocratic estate.

Luxury finds from other Middle Saxon sites in North Lincolnshire, such as Riby and Holton-le-Clay, suggests Lindsey was an immensely wealthy area, no doubt based on its ready access to the trade routes of the Trent and the Humber. The distance of Flixborough from the Trent - about a mile - makes it unlikely that tolls were directly levied on passing ships. It is more likely, perhaps, that the aristocrats of Flixborough controlled the area and its inhabitants, and operated a kind of protection racket in which renders or gifts were offered up in return for the lord's favour, as well as for rights of access to woodland and to coastal resources. In some ways Lindsey can be compared with Kent after the mid 7th century - wealthy because of trade, but politically weak and ultimately taken over because of a lack of manpower.

Certainly the imported goods at Flixborough came from far afield. High-quality, wheel-thrown Seine Valley pottery is found from the end of the 7th century, together with other wheel-thrown black and red burnished pottery from northern France and Belgium - perhaps imported for their own sake, rather than for their contents, as wheel-thrown pots were not made in England at the time. 'Badorf ware' also arrived from Germany during the 9th century. Other imported commodities included glass vessels, silver coinage and lava quern stones. The site has also yielded the largest collection of Middle Saxon Ipswichtype ware in northern England, no doubt reflecting purchases of goods from East Anglian ports. Precisely what goods these pots contained, however, cannot yet be told.

A wide range of industrial and craftwork activity appears to have taken place at Flixborough, as befits its status as a major estate centre - although the workshops themselves have not been found. Well preserved tools and industrial debris at the settlement relate to textile manufacture, carpentry, leatherworking, boneworking, ironworking and non-ferrous metalworking. As a whole, the iron tool collection is one of the most exceptional yet discovered from Anglo-Saxon England. Particularly notable is a set of carpentry tools which includes T-shaped adzes and axes of the same type as shown on the Bayeux tapestry and in manuscript illuminations. These tools were found as part of a hoard which had been buried in two large lead tanks.

The huge collection of animal bones and other food remains at Flixborough provide the most complete picture yet of Anglo-Saxon rural diet. They suggest the settlement subsisted in the main on a fairly unsurprising mixed agricultural diet - cereals, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, chickens and geese. However, numerous bones of crane, together with various ducks and wading birds, indicate that this diet was supplemented by wildfowling on the Trent floodplain, directly below the settlement. Remains of roe deer, hare, woodcock and hazelnut shells indicate woodland hunting and foraging; whilst oyster shells and the bones of freshwater and marine fish reflect access to the Trent, the Humber Estuary, and the open sea.

Amongst the food remains, the most surprising find was an unusually large number of porpoise or dolphin and larger whale bones dating from the 8th and 9th centuries. Dolphin and whale bones have been found on several other Saxon sites but nowhere in such large numbers as at Flixborough. Whether these marine mammals were found beached on the Humber shoreline (to which the manor may have had a preferential right of access), or were the deliberate or accidental catch of seafishing trips cannot yet be known with certainty.

In the late 9th century, Lindsey became part of the Danelaw. Whatever the case elsewhere in the country, it appears the transition at Flixborough took place with a minimum of violence and disruption.

There is no evidence of Scandinavian settlement here - in terms of metalwork or coinage - but the estate appears to have remained as wealthy in the 10th century, in terms of diet and craftwork, as it had been in the 8th and 9th. Indeed, the domestic buildings grew larger. Does this imply that the Anglo-Saxon aristocrat came to easy political terms with his new Viking masters? Or that a new Scandinavian lord took over, who rapidly became anglicised, while the rest of the estate continued to run as before?

Something, however, did change. West Saxon coins of this period (probably from the London mint), including issues of Alfred the Great, continue to be found at Flixborough, but otherwise goods from the Continent ceased altogether. Why this should have been so is something of a mystery. It is not that trade ceased within the Danelaw: imported goods are known from both York and Lincoln. It seems simply that continental imports and luxuries from further afield were no longer dispersed so readily into the countryside, perhaps reflecting a shift in the balance of power away from the great country estates and towards the towns.

Dr Chris Loveluck, of the Humber Archaeology Partnership, is Manager of the Flixborough Project for English Heritage