“There were Africans in Britain before the English came here.”

Peter Fryer, Staying Power: the History of Black People in Britain (1984)

What’s the evidence?

“There is an on-going debate regarding the presence or otherwise of black people in Britain in antiquity. The basic problem with this kind of research has always been the reliability and availability of source materials and the analytical methods by which we study them.”

The Archaeology of Black Britain: Approaches, Methods and Possible SolutionsRichard Paul Benjamin, Postgraduate Researcher University of Liverpool and Alan M. Greaves, Lecturer University of Liverpool

Posted on www.blackpresence.co.uk, 26th September 2010

• York’s ‘ivory bangle woman’• The numerus Maurorum

Aurelianorum at Burgh-by-Sands• The Stratford-upon-Avon

skeleton

Bust of Septimius Severus.Rome, Museo Nazionale. SO IX, nr. 54.Photograph: Jan Theo Bakker.

Dr Richard Benjamin of the University of Liverpool, in British Archaeology 77, July 2004

Archaeology and heritage, the way they are taught and presented, have enormous ramifications for Black communities and wider British society.

Dr Richard Benjamin of the University of Liverpool, in British Archaeology 77, July 2004

Burgh-by-Sands rubbishes the viewpoint that a Black presence in Britain began with the Atlantic slave trade or the arrival of the SS Empire Windrush from the Caribbean in the 1950s. The site not only assists Black Britons to have an interest in archaeology and heritage, but to reshape their very identity.

Dr Richard Benjamin of the University of Liverpool, in British Archaeology 77, July 2004

Archaeology can show that Britain since antiquity has been a diverse, multi-ethnic and multicultural nation, something that needs remembering more than ever today. Burgh-by-Sands has the potential to be a revolutionary archaeological site: it could herald a new era of Black British heritage.