Poole Harbour, Dorset. Image Credit: Sandbanks Community Group
It's well known that the during the invasion of Britain in 43 CE, the Romans came across with and disembarked their ships in Poole Harbour, disrupting the cross-channel trade and industry and establishing a legionary camp near Hamworthy and a new trading port in Poole. It's altogether possible that Vespasian, the future emperor, sailed into the harbour to crush the Durotrigan tribal centres of Dunium, Vindocladia, Duronovaria (Maiden Castle, not to be confused with the Roman Durnovaria) and possibly Duropolis. This was not the first intrusion of the Mediterranean world onto Dorset's shores, however.
In an fairly old article by Dr. Caitlin Green (link below), a historian and tutor at the University of Cambridge, she agrees with the musings of earlier scholars that the Phoenicians, or at least their Punic descendants visited the island frequently, whether for tin or other luxury goods, and left their mark in the form of archaic place names, such as the Isle of Thanet (apparently referring to Tanit, a Phoenician goddess), or Sark (meaning roughly 'the dawn sun' in proto-Semitic). Interestingly, in support of this she mentions that several coins of Carthaginian provenance were found in Poole Harbour, close to the 'monumental' marble foundations of the Iron Age port, which has been dated to the third century BCE. Furthermore, she notes that Wilkes et al (2002) have drawn architectural parallels with this port and structures in Motya, Sicily and other Carthaginian harbours.
These strands of evidence lend themselves to two exciting interpretations. One is that Carthaginian sailors frequented the harbour in the early classical period, building a port modelled on Mediterranean examples using local Purbeck stone, possibly using the local population as the labour force. This port was then used to exchange Carthaginian goods, such as wine, olives or salt, with local commodities. These were probably perishable, as no Carthaginian structure has been identified as being built using stone sourced from Britain, or individual buried with British jewellery or metalwork. This would have been mediated with currency, that was valued as an elite method of exchange by local tribes.
The second interpretation is that through contact and intermittent trade with Carthaginian sailors to the east, who arrived in Cornwall (i.e. the Casserterides and the island of Ictis) to acquire tin, the local Iron Age communities adopted Mediterranean architectural styles and building techniques. That Phoenician (or at least Levantine) sailors traded with Britain has been archaeologically proven from isotopic analysis of tin ingots found on the coast of Haifa. The stray coins in the harbour might have been lost overboard by British logboats, (i.e. the Poole Logboat, constructed around 295 BCE) travelling back from the west.
There are, of course, other ways that the coins could have ended up at the bottom of the harbour. Later Greek travellers might have thrown or dropped them overboard, or a Roman transport ship, carrying the possessons of a north-African family, might have sunk during a storm. Perhaps they were even brought to England by a medieval trader or Norman knight (either of the Sicilo-Norman kingdom or a knight of the Eighth Crusade) travelling back from Tunis, who encountered some Carthaginian ruins collected the coins as a souvenir or trinket.
However, the fact that there is a wealth of other evidence (including one literary source, the second-hand account of Pytheas of Massaila) for trading activity in the area during the 4th and 3rd centuries BCE, the period which the coin dates to, and the apparent similarity between the Iron Age port and Mediterranean ports, makes it likely that Carthaginians were responsible, ether directly or indirectly, for their deposition.
To conclude, I would also suggest that there is another indication that Dorset was economically secure and well-connected with the Mediterranean: the settlement of 'Duropolis', uncovered by Miles Russel and his team from Bournemouth University in 2015. Unlike nearly all other Iron Age settlements, it is completely undefended, an appears to follow a organised street plan. The stratigraphic evidence indicates that it was abandoned by around 100 BCE, corresponding with the destruction of Carthage at the end of the Third Punic War and a general shift in western Europe towards building oppida. The fall of Numantia, the Celtiberian capital, in 138 BCE, must have prompted chieftains across the continent to either adapt or accommodate themselves with the Romans. While no coins from Carthage or amphorae have been found at the site, its structure suggests a relatively egalitarian and peaceful society, which may have been made possible by Mediterranean trade.
Sources:
Green, C. (2015) Thanet, Tanit and the Phoenicians: Place-Names, Archaeology and Pre-Roman Trading Settlements in Eastern Kent? Available at: https://www.caitlingreen.org/2015/04/thanet-tanit-and-the-phoenicians.html#fn13
M. Markey, E. Wilkes & T. Darvill, (2002) 'Poole Harbour: an Iron Age port', Current Archaeology, 181, 7–11
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