Professor Rob Collins

So we can be very certain that those ceramics are linked to military and urban supply networks.

And there might be market forces there in terms of demand and such, but

those ceramics are really key because there's no other ceramics getting over to the west coast of Cumbria, over to Maryport, for example.

That's very strongly related to military supply.

So the question is, is when do they stop getting those Yorkshire ceramics?

And that's what we cannot yet say, but we have the techniques.

So we just need to get some lab time and maybe the funding for the labs, of course.

But this is something which has shifted quite a bit because there's now techniques where we can do radiocarbon dating from the lipids that are on the insides of the pots.

So those cooking pots, we can scrape the residue and see if we can get some C14 dates from those.

That's not something we could do 10 years ago.

So, I mean, we're really kind of now on a cusp of being able to ask some of these questions, and that's really, really exciting.

Yeah, so the key thing that happens in 407, 408 is Constantine III is raised as the last of three usurpers in Britain and he crosses to the continent.

And he crosses to the continent with an army.

And so this event is really important because traditionally it's assumed that Constantine III strips Britain of its entire garrison.

He takes all the soldiers with him to the continent.

I would argue we don't have evidence for that.

He certainly is building an army, but we know other usurpers with more documentation.

When they're building an army, they're often hiring barbarian mercenaries.

The federati.

The federati, yeah.