A Parallel History: The Archaeology of Hanseatic Urban Culture in the Baltic c.

1200-1600
Author(s): David Gaimster
Source: World Archaeology, Vol. 37, No. 3, Historical Archaeology (Sep., 2005), pp. 408-423
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
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A parallel history: the archaeology of
Hanseatic urban culture in the Baltic
c. 1200-1 600

David Gaimster

Abstract

The Hansa formed the principal agent of trade and cultural exchange in northern Europe and the
Baltic during the late medieval to early modern periods. Hanseatic urban settlements in northern
Europe shared many things in common. Their cultural 'signature' was articulated physically through
a shared vocabulary of step-gabled brick architecture and domestic goods. Although the Hansa
remains a monolith in the popular historical imagination, it is rapidly becoming a multidisciplinary
field of study juxtaposing often-contradictory material and documentary sources. The redevelop-
ment of towns on the Baltic littoral, particularly of those formerly behind the Iron Curtain, offers
archaeological opportunities to create parallel biographies of medieval mercantile communities that
avoid tautology but bring a new texturing to the reconstruction of cultural development in the
region. The archaeology of the Hansa in the Baltic - as a case study in historical archaeology - offers
the prospect of investigating some of the key attributes of pre-industrial European society on the
macro-regional scale. Such attributes include the development of mercantile capitalism, Europea-
nization, colonialism, acculturation and resistance. Ceramic distributions are particularlysensitive to
reflecting levels of adoption and resistance to Hanseatic cultural influences among diverse
communities, notably in the spheres of dining practice and domestic comfort. The paper begins
with a review of historical perceptions of Hansa culture in the region and how rescue excavation is
now redefining a sense of identity among local communities in a changing geo-political environment.

Keywords

Hansa; historical archaeology; public archaeology; identity; mercantilism; acculturation; resistance;

proto-colonialism; domestic ceramics: redware, stoneware, maiolica, tile-stoves.

Introduction

Although the Hansa remains, even today, a monolith in the popular historical
imagination of northern and western Europe, the rapid redevelopment of towns in the

I) Routledqe WorldArchaeology Vol. 37(3): 408^23 HistoricalArchaeology

IV TayioraFrandscroup © 2005 Taylor & Francis ISSN 0043-8243 print/ 1470- 1375 online
DOI: 10.1080/00438240500168483

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 A parallel history 409

Baltic Sea region following the fall of the Iron Curtain is rapidly transforming it into a
multidisciplinary field of study, juxtaposing the results of recent excavation against the
established documentary, iconographic and architectural record (Plate 1). The
archaeology of the Hanseatic trading town in the Baltic, with its prodigious and well-
preserved artefact sequences, offers the prospect of investigating some key attributes of
pre-industrial European society on the macro-regional scale. Such attributes include the
development of mercantilism, Europeanization, colonialism, adoption and resistance.
Taking domestic ceramics as a case study, this paper will explore the transfer of western
European or 'Hanseatic' lifestyles into the region between c.1200 and 1600 and the
extent to which some communities resisted them, notably in the spheres of dining
practice and domestic heating technology. This analysis of the Hanseatic urban culture
in the Baltic provides a potential model for study of European cultural and
technological networks in the New World.

Plate1 Rescuearchaeologyin advanceof majorinfrastructure

developments.Szczecinharbourarea,
Poland.Photographby author.

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410 David Gaimster

This artefact-based approach is essentially complementary in character to the primary

historical sources and concerns itself with profiling the emergence of a German-style
'Hanseatic' mercantile culture on the Baltic littoral during the late Middle Ages. Through
the record of ceramic consumption, it seeks to establish the degree to which geographically
disparate urban communities became culturally and technologically homologous in the
home, at various social levels, through the medium of long-distance commercial contact,
irrespective of Hanseatic League membership or official corporate status. Thus the term
'Hanseatic' is used here for its value as an index of acculturation, not in its traditional
political sense (Gaimster 1993). Following in the tradition of European historical
archaeology, the paper will explore the active role of artefacts in creating a 'parallel'
cultural history for the region, which may generate conclusions of historical interest
independent of the established written narrative (Andren 1997: 25-36). For northern
Europe the surviving documents are notoriously deficient in socially sensitive cultural
information. This complementary approach to the history of the Hanseatic town is already
well established in the art-historical sphere (Schildhauer 1985; Zaske and Zaske 1986; von
Bonsdorff 1993).
In addition to creating a new understanding of culture contact in the Baltic during the
late Middle Ages and its immediate aftermath, urban rescue archaeology is also helping to
reshape cultural identity in the region. Previously, with its strong Teutonic overtones and
association with the rise of the western European capitalist bourgeoisie, the Hansa was
largely censored from the historical record in the former East, as new studies of former
public archaeological policy in the region are revealing. This paper begins by assessing
past perceptions and the impact of recent excavations on local communities and their
collective sense of place in the New European framework.

Public archaeology and reshaping cultural identity in the Baltic

Every age, it seems, appropriates the Hansa for its own ends (Hackmann 1996). German
imperialists of the 1870s emphasized their claim to maritime hegemony through reference
to the might of the German Hansa. Pre-World War 1 German commentators spoke of the
moral virtues of a Hanseatic-Prussian Germany and considered the Hohenzollen-Prussian
Germany as having inherited the Hansa. In the inter-war and war periods the connections
between the Hansa and the German ethnic settlements in Poland and the Baltic States
provided a motivation for the National Socialists to resist Sovietization and justify re-
conquest and Lebensraum to the East. The message was captured in an iconic history
painting executed in 1942 by Fritz Grotemeyer in which a wagon train of Hanseatic
merchants in the style of a classic Hollywood Western scene treks to a promised land in the
East (Jaacks 1989).
From the end of World War II to the fall of the Iron Curtain, the Hansa, with its strong
Teutonic undertones and association with the development of the urban bourgeoisie, was
largely censored from the historical record in the former East, particularly in the sphere of
public heritage, as new studies of state archaeological policy in the region are revealing. By
way of illustration, in former areas of central Soviet authority, such as in Konigsberg
(Kaliningrad, which is still part of the modern Russian Federation), iconic monuments of

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 A parallel history 41 1

the Hanseatic trading city, such as the city's fortifications, were ruthlessly demolished as
late as 1968 (Lange 2001). Today empty scrubland marks the site of the former town castle
and historic urban core.
A negative response has also been experienced in other areas of post-war Soviet
influence. Excavations on the town hall square in the centre of Tallinn, Estonia, during
the early 1950s were undertaken with the express intention (it now emerges, thanks to
new research by Jaak Mall and Erki Russow (2003)), of denying 'bourgeois theories on
the foundation of the city by Danish and German settlers in the thirteenth century in
favour of "the ancient and deep cultural relationship between the Estonian and Russian
nations'". According to the original excavators, Tallinn emerged as a settlement in the
tenth century and developed into a town in the twelfth century, before the arrival of the
colonists. Recent re-analysis of the finds from the site revealed no evidence of pre-
thirteenth-century occupation and detected the full Hanseatic 'signature' among the site
finds assemblage.
Despite almost slavish reconstruction of the Gdansk Altstadt in the immediate post-war
period, until the early 1990s Polish urban histories were imbued with the popular view that
the German Hansa exploited native populations in a colonial manner (e.g. Cieslak and
Biernat 1988: 39). However, increasingly today, the legacy of the Hansa provides a
motivation for economic regeneration of former trading towns on the Pomeranian Baltic
coast. In the Elblag Altstadt, apart from the churches, a hospital and six houses, World
War II left behind a black hole in the centre of the modern city. Here an innovative
partnership between developers, town planners, historic buildings conservators and local
archaeologists is enabling modern Hanseatic 'merchant houses' to be built precisely on the
foundations of the former tenements in order to recreate the medieval townscape, in plan,
elevation and in panorama (Lubocka-Hoflmann 1997). Facade, internal configuration and
use are carefully prescribed by the local authority, which, in turn, postpones development
for up to three years for the purpose of full archaeological investigation. Since the 1980s 5
per cent of the total area of the Altstadt has been investigated archaeologically. The
emerging silhouette is forming a model for reconstruction in the neighbouring Hansa ports
of Szczecin and Kolobrzeg. The entire neighbourhood near to the harbour at Szczecin,
with its recently restored medieval town hall, is being entirely reconstructed from World
War II dereliction.
Acknowledgement of the importance of the Hanseatic built heritage can perhaps be best
seen in the award in 2002 of World Heritage status to the North German trading ports of
Wismar and Stralsund, as exemplars of the secular brick Gothic architecture in the Baltic
and in recognition of their contribution to global culture of the seafaring Hanseatic
League. The development typifies the profound transformation in local public perceptions
of the Hansa. Previously, under the DDR regime, the Hansa port Mecklenburg-Lower
Pomerania was neglected to the point of dereliction (only Rostock was significantly
damaged in World War II), mainly for lack of economic resources, and due to an
institutional preference for (politically correct) rural prehistoric archaeology. In
Greifswald we see what was done when resources were available to the State. Here,
between the late 1970s and late 1980s, entire quarters of its well-preserved 50ha Altstadt
were flattened in order to make way for public housing. In fact, 10 per cent of the historic
fabric of the town was lost.

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412 David Gaimster

The Hansa in the Baltic: economic, cultural and technological networks

The Hansa was a loose confederation of German cities acting as principal agents of trade
and exchange in northern Europe and the Baltic during the medieval to early modern
period. Lubeck, founded in 1158, became an important member of the association. In the
wake of conquest by the Teutonic Order, German merchants rapidly colonized the lands
to the east during the course of the following century and founded such towns as Rostock,
Stralsund, Gdansk and Riga. The Hanseatic trading system reached its zenith during the
fourteenth to fifteenth centuries with the foundation of permanent trading posts or
Kontoreconnecting the periphery of northern Europe to the western and central European
core. It drew the west, the east and the north of the continent together by acting as an
intermediaryfor the exchange of goods between two very different patterns of production:
raw materials from the east and finished/semi-finished products from the west, and by
stimulating the wider long-distance market. Despite their dispersed geographical position,
a new type of ship, the cog, which developed around 1250, enabled the Hanseatic
merchants to maintain economic superiority over much of the continent for centuries. This
ship was more capacious and more stable than previous models and, at around 200-300
tons, could carry two to three times the cargo.
As influential in the growing economic dominance of the Hanseatic League in the north,
perhaps more so than geographical advantage or technological superiority, were the social
and genealogical links which developed between trading partnersand towns and families the
length and breadth of northern Europe. Merchants' reciprocal enterprises, networks based
on kinship and council organization, clearly boosted long-distance trade in comparison to
previous centuries. Literacy, primarily for the recording of transactions, was introduced by
the Hansa merchants across the urban trading populations of northern Europe.
The movement of raw and processed material and finished goods inevitably also
necessitated the journeying to and fro of people. In addition to traders, wholesalers and
retailers, members of the aristocracy, administrators, soldiers, churchmen and, crucially,
craftsmen - shipbuilders, altarpiece-carversand potters - were prepared to migrate long
distances, with the prospect of exploiting new markets for their products. Thus, perhaps as
influential as the growing economic and technological dominance of the Hansa were the
'horizontal' cultural networks, which developed between trading partners, towns and
families the length and breadth of the Baltic region. By being part of the Hansa trade
network, communities on the periphery became more closely linked to the core. The
Hansa formed a major vehicle of Europeanizaton in the north during the late medieval to
early modern periods.
Hanseatic urban settlements in northern Europe shared many things in common, not
only in their commercial function, but also in their use of lower German dialect and their
cultural and ethnic identity. Recently, art historians have begun to talk in defining terms of
a cosmopolitan Hanseatic signature, which was articulated physically through a shared
vocabulary of town plan (characterized by narrow alleys running from the waterfront to
the central marketplace), commercial public buildings, a distinctive architectural style of
step-gabled brick secular buildings (Backsteingotik)that survive today in merchant houses
(Figure 1), town halls, cloth halls and town gates, church layout (designed as much for
business meetings as for the veneration of the saints), and through common design in the

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 A parallel history 413

Figure1 Step-gabledbrickmerchanthouses on the Hopfenmarkt,Rostock, North Germany,as

depicted in the local merchantVicke Schorler'sillustratedchronicle of the city c. 1578-86.
StadtarchivHansestadtRostock.

visual arts, particularly in the ecclesiastical sphere (Zaske and Zaske 1986). The form of
carved and painted altarpieces endowed by leading merchant families or guilds, carved
bench- and pew-ends, monumental grave slabs and baptismal fonts and doors in cast
bronze all allude to the shared religious and social values of the urban bourgeois elite of
the region.

Impact of archaeology

But what of the private sphere behind the gabled facade of the merchant house? So little of
the traditional histories of the Hansa trading town has been concerned with the conditions
and routines of everyday life among its inhabitants. Where questions of standards of living
and domestic comfort in the Hanseatic urban household have been considered, the
emphasis has inevitably been restricted to probate inventories and to museum survivals of
precious and base metalware, textiles or furniture (Hasse 1979). In 1989 the Hamburg
Museum for History hosted a major international exhibition on the history of the Hansa
entitled Die Hanse: Lebenswirklichkeitund Mythos (Bracker 1989). Although the show
contained thousands of artefacts and works of art, they were used principally to
supplement the primary historical discussions of civic foundation and trade agreements.
The exhibition omitted any discussion of how archaeology has transformed our
knowledge of the Hanseatic town and its cultural profile.
Excavation, by contrast, offers the opportunity to amplify this previously narrow
narrative, particularly in the sphere of domestic lifestyle as reflected in dining practices,
recreational activities and in the structures, layout and decoration of living spaces: all
important measures of social behaviour and cultural identity. The biennial conference of

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414 David Gaimster

medieval archaeologists from key Hanseatic towns around the North Sea and Baltic held
in Liibeck, and the occasional seminar series on the medieval Baltic town, are among the
first attempts to initiate some synthesis of the 'finds mountain' that is now being generated
by urban development in the region. The first four proceedings deal with research issues,
trade, buildings archaeology and urban infrastructure(Liibecker Kolloquiumsbande 1997,
1999, 2001, 2004; see also Evans 2004 for review).
The recent public exhibitions and publications on the latest urban finds of ceramics,
glass, metalware and organic products from key medieval mercantile centres such as Lund
(Wahloo 1999), Stockholm (Hallerdt 2002) and Turku (Ahola et al 2004) illustrate the
manner in which the archaeological record is transforming the cultural history of the
Hanseatic Baltic town, at both the regional and the micro-scale level. Meanwhile, the
investigation of shipwrecks and their cargoes in the Oresund at the mouth of the Baltic,
along the coasts of Mecklenburg-Lower Pomerania and in the Finnish archipelagos, is
helping to map the content, direction and mechanisms of the maritime trade in finished
western European commodities that linked the ports and people of the region (Gaimster
2000a). These are the objects that created and cemented the cultural identity of urban
mercantile communities on the Baltic rim.

Case-study: the Baltic ceramic market c. 1200-1600

With their short lifespan, ubiquity on the ground and distribution across diverse social
contexts, ceramics can be cross-examined as cultural documents (Kulturtrtiger) in their
own right in the Hanseatic urban milieu (Stephan 1996; Verhaeghe 1998). Uniquely among
the regional finds assemblages of the late medieval to early modern period, ceramics are
represented on virtually all sites, from castles to merchant house. While it is unrealistic to
reconstruct the incomings and outgoings of Hanseatic commodity trade in the North Sea
and Baltic through sherds of pottery, of all the mass materials excavated, ceramic imports
have the best potential to provide a physical measure of cultural contact with the West, in
particular the rate by which Western technologies and domestic practices were assimilated
or rejected by diverse social groups in the region.
The archaeology of the Baltic medieval town also forms a laboratory for the
investigation of technological transfer between the south and west on one side and
Fennoscandia on the other. Through chemical analysis of pottery fabrics, it is becoming
increasingly clear that potters from western Europe migrated around the Baltic rim to
service the new urban markets opening up in northern Germany and on the edges of the
kingdoms of Denmark and Sweden. The archaeological evidence for red earthenware
production, both of highly decorated tableware in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries
and of stove-tiles in the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries, reflects the degree to which
Hanseatic communities became self-sufficient in these essential domestic utensils (Schafer
1997; Gaimster 1999a). In this sense Hanseatic towns on the Baltic rim were centres of
technological exchange and innovation. With their commercial function linking the region
to long-distance trade networks, Baltic ports attracted new ideas, fashions, technologies
and industries from outside. Growing populations generated new levels of demand and
competition which, in the case of red earthenware ceramics, stimulated local manufacture.

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 A parallel history 415

In terms of numbers, late medieval ceramic trade in the Baltic is dominated by the
competition between stoneware producers in the Rhineland, Lower Saxony and Saxony
(Gaimster 1997: ch.3.3, 1999c). In contrast to the relative fragility of red earthenware, its
robust body enabled stoneware to be transported in bulk and over long distances, as the
discovery of the extensive early fourteenth-century cargo of Rhenish and Lower Saxon
stoneware on the wreck of a coastal trading ship found at Nauvo (Egelskar) in the
archipelago to the south of Turku (Abo) has recently demonstrated (Gaimster 2000a; Alvik
and Haggren 2003). Intensive workshop production, stimulated directly by growing
demand on the urban markets of northern Europe, resulted in a relatively low cost to the
consumer and the ability to reach a wide spectrum of the population. With its
technologically superior body, which is impervious to liquids, stainless and odour free,
stoneware revolutionized so many domestic activities from washing up to preserving food.
In addition, its increasingly varied repertoire of forms over the fourteenth to fifteenth
centuries reflects a market response to the multiple drinking, decanting, transport, storage
and sanitary needs of town dwellers across the continent. Despite the plain, utilitarian
body, stoneware captured a niche in the popular tableware market of northern Europe,
enabling the aspiring middle classes to imitate aristocratic drinking and dining practices in a
less expensive medium. Stoneware producers substituted fine metalware and drinking glass
with a finely potted ceramic body that imitated their form, function and social role
(Gaimster 1997: ch. 4.4). Given its wide penetration of the international pottery market,
German stoneware may be regarded as a type-fossil of mercantile or 'Hanseatic' urban
culture, which linked consumers irrespectiveof means from London to Tallinn and beyond.
The finds from the castle harbour at Kalmar in southern Sweden provide a snapshot of
the dominance of the trade in German stoneware during the late medieval period. The fact
that stonewares make up around 5 per cent of the overall domestic ceramic assemblage
from the town may be explained by the relatively high numbers of alien names recorded as
resident in the city (Elfwendahl and Gaimster 1995). During the late fourteenth century,
for instance, one-third out of a total of 2000 family names listed as resident in the city were
German in origin. A similar explanation could also be made for the Stockholm stoneware
sequence. Here the well-documented population of resident German merchants provides a
context for the high frequency of imported stonewares recorded in the Gamla Stan (Old
Town) and in neighbouring districts (Gaimster 2002) (Plate 2).
While finds of highly decorated stonewares, such as the distinctive group from the
Lausitz in Saxony, with their ecclesiastical forms, anthropomorphic plastic ornament and
applied gold foil, are found across the Baltic region in urban patrician contexts, as well as
on castle sites and monastic houses (Stephan and Gaimster 2002), urban excavation has
also demonstrated the extent to which undecorated stoneware vessels were afforded almost
disproportionate value by expatriate communities trading on the edge of Europe.
Excavations on St James' Street in the Livonian frontier town of Tartu, Estonia, have
produced a standard fifteenth-century Siegburg beaker inside a moulded leather
cover, which was incised with an ornate frieze of forest animals and birds (Gaimster
1999b: fig. 2).
The subsequent phase of the urban pottery market in the Baltic is defined by a profound
shift in the balance of utilitarian and social roles performed by imported ceramic products.
Increasingly, from the end of the fifteenth century onwards, polychrome-painted tin-

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416 David Gaimster

Plate 2 Stonewarejugs and beakersfrom Stockholm,Sweden.Type-fossilsof Hanseaticurban

culturein the Baltic.StockholmMedievalMuseum.

glazed earthenware (maiolica) from southern and western Europe, together with stoneware
and earthenware stove-tiles, both transformed by the development of moulded relief
decoration, injected a new luxury element into the Baltic urban household. The
archaeological distribution of polychrome-painted maiolica vessels, in particular, on
Baltic urban and castle sites provides a measure of the critical role of the Hanseatic trading
network in mediating the arrival of Mediterranean Renaissance culture in the north (Falk
and Gaimster 2002). Excavations in major mercantile centres such as Elblag on the Polish
Pomeranian coast and Stockholm, Kalmar, Malmo and Lund in Sweden have produced
the most substantial groups of these exotic imports, which arrived via the Hansa trade
with Antwerp and Bruges. Comparative quantitative analysis of castle finds in the
hinterland of the towns clearly shows that the urban mercantile communities played a
leading role in setting domestic taste in the region.
The archaeological evidence for the spread of the smokeless ceramic tile-stove into the
Baltic forms a further quantitative and qualitative measure of long-distance technological
and cultural transfer from continental Europe. Stove-tile finds make up just under 20 per
cent of all domestic ceramics found on urban mercantile and residential feudal sites across
the region and, as such, represent a key element in the Hanseatic domestic inventory
(Gaimster 1999b, 2001a). As in the case of German stoneware, lead-glazed earthenware
stoves contributed to a technological transformation of the domestic environment. In
addition, with the development from the mid-fifteenth century onwards of coloured glazes
and moulded relief, and with the growing influence of cheap printed propaganda from the
early sixteenth century onwards, they introduced a new iconographic element into the
Baltic domestic scene.
Earthenware stove-tiles, in contrast to stoneware, were a fragile product and risky to
transport over long distances. Although it is possible to identify rare instances of tiles
imported into southern Scandinavia, it is clear from the number and distribution of
production sites and from analysis of the fabrics that most stoves operating in Baltic urban

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 A parallel history 417

households were manufactured locally, often with the use of moulds imported from
northern and central Germany. Production on this scale can only be explained by the
movement of specialist craftsmen or even workshops around and across the Baltic rim.
The combined documentary and archaeological evidence for German tile-makers settling
in Lund, Malmo, Kalmar, Stockholm and Turku from the mid-sixteenth century onwards
illustrates the extent to which specialist continental craftsmen were attracted by the
prospect of new markets opening up in the north (Gaimster 1998: 177, 1999b: 58).
The development of cheap wood-block printing from the late fifteenth century formed
the key factor in the symbolic transformation of domestic ceramics in Germany during the
early years of the Lutheran Reformation. The fusion of graphical reproduction and
moulded technology enabled producers of stoneware vessels and earthenware stoves to
respond immediately to rapidly changing political and religious loyalties in the
development of a new iconographic repertoire over the course of the sixteenth century.
Tiles moulded with woodcut-based representations of the leading protagonists of the
Lutheran Reformation have a particularly widespread archaeological distribution in the
region (Plate 3), the secular personality cults suiting the new confessional and political
affiliations of the Baltic mercantile communities (Gaimster 2001a: 167-68). Out on the
Hansa's western orbit, the City of London has also produced a parallel series of tiles
(Gaimster 2000b: 145-6, 2003: 132-3). These finds place the English metropolis squarely

Plate 3 Redwarestove-tilefrom Turku, Finland,mouldedwith a portraitof Johann Friedrich,

Electorof Saxony,leaderof the SchmalkaldicLeagueof Protestantprinces(c. 1530-47).Photograph
by KirsiMajantie.CopyrightTurkuProvincialMuseum.

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418 David Gaimster

within the Hanseatic cultural network, which was so instrumental in spreading

Protestantism beyond its area of origin in northern Germany.
In contrast to the immediate pre-Reformation phase in the Baltic zone, in which elite
residential sites, such as castles and monasteries, dominate the archaeological distribution
of representational stoves, the new secularized products (particularly those displaying
Lutheran affiliations) appear with greater frequency in urban contexts. This new, socially
inclusive, pattern suggests a radical shift in consumption by which urban mercantile
communities are taking the lead. The emerging archaeological distribution coincides
geographically and socially with the spread of new confessional loyalties across the region.

Cultural transfer and resistance

Imported western ceramics fulfilled dual utilitarian and social roles among the medieval to
early modern mercantile communities living in the Baltic Sea region. Their archaeological
distributions form a signature of Hanseatic cultural codes and lifestyle practices among
dispersed and heterogeneous communities, notably in the spheres of dining culture and
domestic comfort.
By contrast, in the case of Novgorod, out on the north-eastern frontier of the Hanseatic
cultural zone, the archaeological distribution pattern appears atypical. This principal
Hanseatic trading station (Kontor) situated at the northern end of the Baltic-Black Sea
and Baltic-Caspian trade routes, supported two substantial European mercantile
communities during the late Middle Ages: the Gotlander's Court or Gotenhof, founded
by the early twelfth century, and the Court of St Peter, or St Peterhof, the German trading
enclave firmly established by 1191. Both settlements clustered close to the wharves of the
river Volkhov on the market side of the city. The primary purpose of these trading stations
was to exploit the rich forest wilderness of northern Russia and Karelia for pelts, pine
resin (for distilling into pitch) and honey. In return, the city of Novgorod consumed vital
raw materials such as amber and silver from the Baltic and finished goods from western
Europe, including cloth and metal utensils, together with foodstuffs and preservatives,
including herring and salt (Brisbane and Gaimster 2001).
Here the polarized distribution of western ceramic imports around the alien residential
areas of the city contrasts with the pattern recorded in other Baltic trading centres, notably
in the neighbouring Livonian-Russian border city of Pskov where western imports were
dispersed more widely around the settlement (Gaimster 2001b: cf. figs 7, 8). Evidently in
Novgorod, with its strong domestic wood culture, there was entrenched resistance to the
use of ceramic tableware from the west.
Although technically superior, imported stonewares, together with the more decorative
red earthenwares, were generally rejected by the native population in favour of
autochthonous wooden drinking vessels. It looks as if the German ceramics found in
Novgorod were merely part of the domestic toolkit required by Hanseatic traders resident
in the city. Here, on the edge of the pine forest zone, pottery (in this case reduced grey
earthenware) was largely relegated to the utilitarian functions of cooking and food
preparation while wood, with its suitability for lathe-turned, carved and painted surface
decoration, was more suited to table use. This preference for wood at the expense of

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 A parallel history 419

ceramics for dining, therefore, is not just a functional, but a cultural equation (Hather
2001). This conclusion reveals a strongly embedded resistance among the majority of the
native population to alien social practices. The asymmetricalimported pottery distribution
visible in Novgorod contrasts starkly with the picture from contemporary Hanseatic
Kontorsites such as London or Bruges, where Rhenish stoneware imports are found across
the urban landscape, irrespective of social or functional topography. In Novgorod, on the
edge of the forest zone and behind the Catholic-Orthodox frontier of northern Europe,
both alien mercantile and native host communities were keen to express their respective
ethnic identities and cultural loyalties, through their own material culture, including, and
most visibly, in the dining sphere.

Parallel lives: Hansa history and archaeology

Due to the rapid regeneration of town centres on the Baltic littoral, archaeology is
beginning to make a significant impact on the narrative of the Hansa in the popular
histories of northern Europe, its greatest dividend being in the profiling of long-distance
cultural and technological transfers in the domestic sphere. The success of western
European domestic ceramics across the region, and in a range of social contexts, hints at
something more than commercial transactions and the transfer of technical expertise.
With the exception of Novgorod, the relatively homologous pattern of ceramic
consumption reflects a brand loyalty element and a degree of embedded cultural
motivations in the dining sphere and in heating arrangements, which characterize the
Hanseatic mercantile household on the Baltic rim. In a phrase, the material evidence
points to a proto-colonial scenario, comparable to early European contact sites in North
America and the Caribbean where settlers asserted their cultural affiliations, ethnicity,
class and religion through the active use of imported domestic goods and the transfer of
craft production to new markets. Here archaeology has also revealed how indigenous
and African-American populations resisted the colonial order through the active use of
material culture. The colonoware pottery of the coastal south-eastern USA provides a
telling example of allegiance to African foodways among colonial slave populations
(Wheaten 2002).
This quantitative and qualitative profiling of urban ceramic sequences around the
Baltic rim could be applied to Hanseatic trading centres beyond the region, such as to
London or Bruges. At its City base, the Steelyard, London, hosted one of the permanent
trading posts or Kontore of the Hanseatic League. Together with Bergen and Bruges, the
English metropolis formed a nodal point of the Hanseatic commercial network in the
North Sea. Excavations on the site of the Steelyard complex during 1988-9 by the
Museum of London investigated deposits left intact by the development of Cannon
Street Station in the mid-nineteenth century. Masonry walls surviving to a height of
1.4m above the level of the floor running north-south to the river were identified as the
single-aisle Guildhall of the Cologne merchants, who are documented as resident in the
area from c. 1175 (Keene 1989). The 156 moulded stones recovered from the site
belonged to the largest stone building in the metropolis, outside military and
ecclesiastical functions. Detailed analysis of the domestic finds assemblages - work still

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420 David Gaimster

to be commissioned by the Museum of London - should in due course be able to expose

the degree to which the lifestyles, living conditions and affiliations of the Steelyard
residents were influenced by continental German culture. In addition, targeted analysis
of contemporary waste assemblages associated with documented alien or 'stranger'
communities in London, Southwark and Norwich (cf. Bolton 1998 for London
communities) and their indigenous neighbours may also indicate whether the Baltic
signatures of acculturation and resistance can be extended to the opposite corner of the
Hansa's international trade network.
With its potential for unlocking the cultural dimension at various social levels, on
both the pan-regional and the narrow intramural micro-scale, archaeology is on the
brink of creating a parallel biography of the medieval trading community in northern
Europe, one that that avoids tautology through its use of separate source materials and
sheds a new perspective on the existing economic and commercial data. That said, the
challenge for developing a dynamic and distinctive methodology for urban historical
archaeology in Baltic and North Sea Europe, along the lines suggested by Anders
Andren (1997: 179-83), is to maintain this complementary strategic approach within the
everyday, developer-led rescue environment. If this can be achieved, the developing
material definition of Hanseatic lifestyles offers ample opportunities for cross-referencing
artefacts and texts.

Society of Antiquariesof London

E-mail: dgaimster@sal.org.uk;website: www.sal.org.uk

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Dr David Gaimster, formerly Assistant Keeper in the Department of Medieval and Later
Antiquities at the British Museum, London (1986-2001) and Senior Policy Advisor in the
Cultural Property Unit at the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (2002-4), is now

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 A parallel history 423

General Secretary and Chief Executive of the Society of Antiquaries of London (since
2004).

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