Looking South

This chapter explores medieval contact and trade between Britain and the Iberian Peninsula. For the pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela in north-west Spain, archaeological evidence includes coins, burials, badges, scallop shells, and souvenirs of bone, ivory, and jet as well as artistic influences on heraldry and artistic representation. The important heavy goods being transported were wool, cloth, metals, and bulk foodstuffs for which there is an emerging archaeology of production in Spain and Portugal. There was also minor trade in leather and salt as well as in foodstuffs like honey and wine, figs, and candied fruit. Pottery and tile exports from Spain are today the most telling indication of commercial contact and personal exchange but English embroideries and alabaster devotional panels are among the items of exchange which travelled south and have survived. Overall, Anglo-Iberian contact in the Middle Ages has left an oddly skewed signature in the archaeological record.