available in Central Europe. The north had to have something to exchange,
which doubtless included perishables such as furs and perhapsfish and seal
products, but all that remains in the archaeological record is amber. In Denmark
amber was too common to be considered valuable and too widespread for its
distribution to be monopolized by elites. The Roman historian Tacitus
describes the far ends of Germania on the bounds of the sea“that girds the
earth,” where the Aestii, who collected amber, lived: “For a long time,
indeed it lay unheeded like any other jetsam, until Roman luxury made its
reputation. They [the Aestii] have no use for it themselves. They gather it
crude, pass it on unworked, and are astounded at the price it fetches.”So
much amber was drained from Denmark its use there practically disappeared.
Ancient writers referred to an amber route running through Europe, but a
series of trading networks would be more accurate. Indeed, Baltic amber
reached many places that did not send bronze to Denmark because they
lacked metal deposits themselves, indicating a complex and interrelated
system. Raw amber was carried south to working centers where skilled
craftsmenflaked it intofinished products. One such center of production was
in northern Italy, where craftsmen producedfibulae for re-export south and
east. Other distribution systems were more circuitous as, for example, the
one that brought amberfirst to the Wessex culture of south Britain, where it
was fashioned into exquisite necklaces, then across Europe to Switzerland and
south to the Adriatic Sea. Amber beads of Baltic origin were found on the
Uluburun shipwreck off the southern coast of Turkey. At one point, rival
amber networks, one running up the German river system and the other
from the eastern Baltic through Poland, had to devise substantial detours to
avoid each other’s fortresses.
The Greek historian Herodotus tells an interesting story about an
unnamed product that modern historians assume was amber. According to
him, this product originated with a people called the Hyperboreans, whom
he describes as living on the edge of the world. Periodically these
Hyperboreans, in honor of a long-established tradition, would send“sacred
objects tied up inside a bundle of wheat straw”to their neighbors with
orders to pass them on from tribe to tribe until they reached the Adriatic
Sea. From there they were conveyed to Greece and the Aegean Sea, where
they ended up at the island sanctuary of Delos. These offerings were moved
hundreds of miles through an unknown number of different peoples and
places. Since nothing is reported to have been returned in exchange, for the
Hyperboreans this cannot be considered as trade, but it does appear to refer
to the route over which amber was carried southward for trade. Herodotus is
detailing a classic down-the-line system in which items traveled long dis-
tances without the need for people to accompany them. However, directional
trade was also used once the demand for amber was sufficient.
The popularity of amberfluctuated from time to time and place to place
so that, for example, it was very much in evidence in southern Britain in the
22 In the beginning