Archaeological excavations across the North of England have uncovered rare evidence that communities living on Rome’s northern frontier were eating and trading in foods imported from across the Empire.
Archaeological excavations across the North of England have uncovered rare evidence that communities living on Rome’s northern frontier were eating and trading in foods imported from across the Empire.
This includes Britain’s earliest known pistachio and one of the northernmost finds of Spanish mackerel in Roman Britain.
Whilst broken storage jars recovered from excavations close to a Roman town in the East Riding of Yorkshire show further evidence for the extent of traded goods reaching the area during the 1st to 4th centuries AD, with the jar’s Spanish producer being clearly identified by a kiln stamp.
Excavations carried out by archaeologists at Cura Terrae ahead of two separate infrastructure projects in Yorkshire – a new Yorkshire Water pipeline near Stamford Bridge in the hinterland of the major Roman settlement at York, and the Highways England A1 Leeming to Barton motorway upgrade in North Yorkshire, which followed the main north-south Roman road known today as Dere Street – have uncovered striking evidence that Roman communities in this part of the country were eating and trading in goods shipped in from across the Empire, two thousand years before modern supply chains existed.
At Cataractonium, modern-day Catterick, North Yorkshire, a single charred pistachio nut was recovered from a waterlogged Roman well. Carbon dating places it in the Trajanic period, around AD 24–128 making it the earliest known evidence for pistachio nuts in Britain. Pistachios are thought to have reached Italy itself from the Middle East only a generation or two earlier, making their appearance in a Yorkshire garrison town striking evidence for the reach of Roman-era trade networks.
The Archaeology team also found fish bones identified as Spanish mackerel, a marine fish that would have arrived preserved as salsamenta, a salted fish condiment shipped north from Iberia. This is thought to represent the northernmost occurrence of the species recorded in Roman Britain.
Further south at Stamford Bridge, East Riding of Yorkshire, Cura Terrae archaeologists excavating along the route of Derventio’s Roman road recovered the broken handle of a Dressel 20 amphora – the standard olive-oil shipping container of the Roman world – stamped with the name VITAL(IS). The stamp has been linked to kilns in the Guadalquivir Valley of southern Spain and identifies the exact producer of the jar, the type of which were used for the storage and transportation of olive oil produced in the Spanish province of Baetica during the Roman period. Other amphora forms were also found, which were used to transport wine produced throughout the Empire, showing oil and wine would have been frequently shipped 2,000 miles or more to reach this corner of Yorkshire.
These three finds together reveal a great deal about supply networks reaching Rome’s northern frontier, which were undoubtedly driven initially by the presence of the Roman military, made up of units from across the Empire. A single stamped handle names an actual amphora producer and represents the import of olive oil from Spain and other fragments would have contained wine. A pistachio, although unopened, must have been intentionally imported along trade routes that stretched across the Empire from the Middle East. These are the physical traces of the Roman dining table, with these goods carried along routes that reached the North of England from the edges of Empire. It’s a stark reminder that far reaching supply chains aren’t just a modern phenomenon; Roman Britain was plugged into a Mediterranean economy, and Yorkshire, of all places, was in receipt of its delicious goods.
Stuart Ross Senior Post-Excavation Manager at Cura Terrae
Together, the three finds add to a growing picture of Roman-period Yorkshire as a well-connected frontier of the Empire, with everyday goods and foodstuffs, seafood, cooking oil and wine, arriving via long-distance trade routes stretching to Iberia, the wider Mediterranean, and the Middle East.
