Sublime

As barbarians by definition, their traders may have been forced to queue at the entrance to the empire. Intriguing concentrations of finds from the Northumberland village of Great Whittington, just a mile or so north of the Wall, suggest that here was a sort of caravanserai where drovers, traders, petitioners, embassies and wannabe citizens had to

For these empire-builders, the vast grassy steppe that stretched across Eurasia from Manchuria to Hungary was an open road to commercial wealth and almost limitless power. The trading cities of the Near and Middle East were a natural target.

Some chieftains took substantial diplomatic gifts – or bribes – to stay neutral or act as buffers. Raiding parties of Scotti and Attacotti from Ireland or Argyll, and Picti from Caledonia increased in scale and sophistication to the point where, in 367, frontier scouts – the areani – were comprehensively bribed into complicity. Channel pirates, car

Subjected to many programmes of piecemeal excavation over the last two centuries – a sort of death by a thousand cuts – Castor has nevertheless produced evidence of a huge complex, far grander than a mere villa. Its status as a possible administrative centre for imperial estates in the Fens, perhaps as a successor to the imposing establishment at S

More than a dozen villas flank the river immediately to the west while across the river to the north substantial pottery kilns – the centre of a thriving industry between the second and fourth centuries – produced high-quality Nene Valley ‘colour-coated’ wares: beakers, flagons and bowls, often decorated in relief and sometimes in imitation of fine

the early seventh-century princely burial at Sutton Hoo, the royal township of Yeavering in Northumbria or the fortress of Dunadd in Argyll.

An agrarian surplus sustained urban elites and their elaborate high culture. In the towns, an artisan class of legendary skill had sprung up to cater for these elites’ material demands.