La production d'ETAIN en G. Bretagne romaine

Suite à l'envoi concernant le plomb :

"* I.A RICHMOND : Roman Britain. Penguin Books. 1955. Édition 1973

p. 156-157 :

"Much the most famed of British metals in the days before the Roman occupation was tin. The vivid accounts by Diodorus Siculus, of overland pack-horse transport of Cornish tin from the Gallic coast to Narbo (Narbonne) in the first century B.C., and of the island emporium on the British coast, from which merchants obtained it, all speak of a brisk and flourishing early trade, monopolized in Caesar's day by the Veneti of Brittany. But in the Augustan age, when the conquest of north-western Spain made the Spanish tin deposits available, commercial interest in British tin ceased, while the anti-Roman refugee warriors from Gaul who were crowding into south-west Britain cannot have encouraged adventurers. Even when the island became a province and the Dumnonii one of the philo-Roman allied communities, it does not appear that the Roman government took much interest in developing the tin. There is slight evidence for activity in the first century A.D. : somewhat later the best evidence is the occurrence of two stationes, or Treasury Offices, in the area, presumably connected with the working or leasing of stannaries. The source which mentions them used for Britain material of the second century A.D. But only in the third century A.D., and particularly after the ruin of the Spanish mines in its last quarter, does Government interest in the area begin. Milestones from Gordian III (A.D. 244-9) onwards, with a special outburst of activity under Gonstantine and his house, attest new efforts in development. It is significant that now commences a very wide distribution of pewter table services; later in the century blocks of pewter with official stamps from the Thames at Battersea attest cargoes of this valuable metal being concentrated in London, the seat of the provincial Treasury administration. How late the development continued is not known. But it is a remarkable fact that in the sixth century A.D. a storm-blown Byzantine ship could unload its corn and relieve a famine in Exeter and return with a cargo of tin, as if the merchant adventurers of the Dark Ages were repeating the expeiences of prehistoric man".

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page où il est question :

- d'un monopole des Vénètes avant la conquête romaine,

- d'une perte d'intérêt des mines britanniques après la mise en exploitation de mines en Espagne,

- d'un regain d'intérêt après l'effondrement des mines espagnoles dans le dernier quart du IIIè siècle.

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Avis aux amateurs de l'Histoire de l'économie.

(Mêmes réserves quant à l'utilisation du texte et aux citations).

JC Even