During the Viking and medieval periods, a number of trading centres emerged along the densely populated coastal areas of the countries around the North Sea. Many of them had evolved from older trading ports, others were newly established. During this period, many developed into proto-urban and eventually urban centres. The economic success of these sites depended not only on the geographical position and their local political power structures. Social preconditions such as the existence of trade and transport-related crafts were equally important. This paper attempts to follow the traces left behind by a group of people little known from either the written or the archaeological record. It focuses on the stakeholders involved in the physical part of trade, the largely forgotten group of people involved in the different stages of marine transport. Rope and sail makers, coopers, ship builders, anchor smiths, crane operators and other craftsmen providing harbour services, some of whom will be discussed in greater detail here, formed the structure upon which trade by water operated, providing both the packaging and the logistics for the transport of goods. Such crafts remain largely unexplored, both from and archaeological and historical point of view (e.g. Deggim 2007, 191). Moreover, it was probably this group of people that Heiko Steuer had in mind when he listed the five parameters defining a network of trade and trade-related crafts for the Viking period (Steuer 1987, 118–123). These parameters included the stakeholders (craftsmen, traders and customers), the actual transport of goods, the goods themselves (raw materials or products), marketplaces and producing sites, and the methods of payment. He pointed out that all but the first parameter can often be detected by archaeological means, but that the stakeholders – craftsmen, merchants and customers – are especially hard to identify. The same applies, of course, to the following centuries, i.e. the Middle Ages and the post-medieval period.
The stakeholders in trade and transport are frequently mentioned in written sources, but very hard to identify in the field. Many of their products were made of organic materials (e.g. ropes, sails, packaging) very little of which has survived in the ground. Where such objects did survive, at water-logged harbour sites for instance, the material has rarely been analysed or identified because they are simple everyday objects and not very prestigious items. Other harbour service providers, e.g. crane operators or small rowing boat owners and operators, remain completely obscure, because they did not produce artefacts and, furthermore, cannot be associated with either crafts or commercial businesses (Deggim 2007, 191, 216) (Figure 21.1).
In 1982, the anthropologist Erich Robert Wolf published a book called ‘Europe and the People without History’ which quickly became a milestone in anthropological theory. The book discussed the European expansion and global spread of capitalism after 1400 and the impact of European nations upon pre-industrial cultures across the globe. Wolf concluded that the world was ‘versatile allness’ where all processes were connected, and all cultures – including non-Europeans – were active participants in the progress of history. Previously, scholars had taken the view that some non-European cultures were static and as a consequence those without literality fell out of Eurocentric historical narratives (Wolf 1982, 385–391; Wolf 2010). Thus, Wolf coined the term ‘people without history’; the book title was, however, also meant ironically, since people do, of course, have their history even if they are not part of a literate culture. Soon afterwards, the term was introduced into Historical Archaeology but gradually changed its meaning to literally mean ‘undocumented’ people who can only be brought back to history by archaeological means (Little 1994; Orser 2004, 43–44).