The tin trade

For the reconstruction cameo on this programme the Team made a replica of a fine enamelled Roman brooch shaped like a leaping hare. To create the copper alloy, tin was added to strengthen the metal and lower the melting temperature. The trader and writer, 'Pytheas of Marseilles', who was writing in the fourth century BC, tells us there was a growing trade between southern Britain and the continent. The Cornish Peninsula had long had commercial contact through middle men with the Mediterranean over the sale of tin. Metal was taken around the coast to a market on the Isle of Wight. From this we can conclude that as well as being a popular settlement area over many archaeological periods, the island also held an important strategic location for trade and commerce with the continent.