International Trade in Outland Resources: the Mining and Export of Lead in Early Medieval England in Light of New Isotope Data From York

OF VALUABLE 'outland' resources was fundamental to the early medieval economy, linking upland, forested and coastal regions with emerging urban markets.Recent research has detailed the increased exploitation and production of raw materials, including tar, soapstone, iron and antler, in the centuries prior to and during the Viking Age, primarily within Scandinavia.Here, it is argued from new isotope data relating to lead from 9th-to 11th-century York that there was an additional, international trade in a valuable but non-precious outland resource.Lead mined from the North Pennines was exported across the North Sea on a significant scale, connecting the remote uplands of northern England with urban nodes including York, Kaupang (Norway) and Hedeby (Germany; historically Denmark).We argue that North Pennines lead was part of a wider early medieval English lead export industry that operated from at least the mid-8th century AD.Recent research in early medieval archaeology in Scandinavia has drawn attention to the procurement and trade over long distances of valuable, yet non-precious, materials from 'outland' zones including forests, uplands, coastal and Arctic environments.Thanks to new scientific provenancing techniques, materials such as whalebone, fur, antler, tar and iron can be traced to their origin, revealing extensive resource networks connecting outlands with settlement and agrarian regions, including southern Scandinavia emporia (Ashby et al 2015;Hjelle et al 2015;Lindholm and Ljungkvist 2016;Hennius 2018).The timeframe of these developments is variable, with some industries showing intensification in the centuries prior to the Viking Age (eg Hennius et al 2018; Hennius 2020), and others being interpreted as a response to demands initiated by the maritime expansion, increased trade networks and urbanisation of the 8th to 11th centuries (eg Ashby et al 2015; Hennius 2018).The cumulative effect of these studies is to deepen understanding of the hitherto largely overlooked 'utmark' or outfield economy (ye 2005) as well as the mechanisms of extraction, transport and exchange that connected producers in outland zones with distant, yet closely networked, consumers and craftspeople (Lund and Sindbaek 2022, 191-2).To date, these studies have been 249