Summary

The alleged site of the Iron Age trading centre of Ictis, as described by Diodorus Siculus, and possibly located immediately to the south of the modern harbour area.

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Description

No aspect of the Mount's history has attracted as much controversy as its identification as the tin-trading island of Mictis or Ictis, described by Pliny and in greater detail by Diodorus Siculus who probably used either Poseidonius (c.90 BC) or Pytheas (c.325 BC) as his ultimate source.

Diodorus' account, if accurate, is of the greatest importance as he appears to outline the mechanics of a perfectly likely form of early trading network, ie that based on'ports of trade', neutralised coastal settlements where foreign traders were encouraged by the benefits of security of persons and goods, 'the facilities of anchorage and debarkation, the benefit of judicial authorities, and agreement on the goods to be traded' (Hodges 1978, 97).

The implications for the degree of sophistication of the local Iron Age economy and its ability to support a regional authority capable of guaranteeing the security of the port of trade are straightforward but profound. Too much time has been spent by archaeologists, classical scholars and geographers from the late 18th century to the 1980s simply arguing about which of several possible candidates really was Ictis.

Until recently, when the rich late prehistoric trading station at Mount Batten near Plymouth was suggested (Cunliffe 1983), St Michael's Mount had been generally accepted as the most likely Ictis (see Maxwell 1972), mainly because it is near Cornwall's main tin grounds, is near 'Belerion' (Lands End) and it most easily matches Diodorus' careful description of: 'a certain island lying off Britain called Ictis. During the ebb of the tide the intervening space is left dry, and they carry over into this island the tin in abundance in their wagons' (Translation in Hencken 1932, 171).

The difficulty raised repeatedly in the 19th century (see Maxwell 1972 for references) that the mount would not in antiquity have been an island but just a hill in a vast low-lying forest covering the whole of Mount's Bay (whose inundation inspired the Lyonesse story) was effectively swept away by the radiocarbon date obtained from a sample of oak collected from a tree stump exposed in Mount's Bay in 1883 by the Royal Geological Society of Cornwall. This came out as 3656 +/-150bp, calibrated (to two standard deviations) to 2520-1700 BC (see Thomas 1985, 281-2;see de Beer 1960).

Mount Batten was obviously also an important trading centre (see Cunliffe 1988) and, given its location at the end of a short peninsula in the Tamar Estuary close to the Dartmoor, Bodmin Moor and Hingstone Down tin grounds, could well have been another port of trade but there seems little reason to doubt that if Ictis was a single place ( and not a generic name), St Michael's Mount was it. Clearly more archaeological evidence would be helpful but with development on the Mount likely to be very limited the opportunity to undertake useful excavations will be restricted.

Archaeological Comments - Site:91503*0 The identification of St Michael's Mount with Ictis adds weight to the possibility that the island could have been a coastal defended site to be poaced alongside the numerous Iron Age cliff castles found around the Cornish coast. As for the suggested early prehistoric tor enclosure /secular power centre (91500) there need not have been any created late prehistoric ramparts, the island itself being so naturally defensible. The description of Ictis can in fact be used to help explain some but not necessarily all of the other Cornish cliff castles. They too may have been late prehistoric ports of trade with the ramparts helping to secure people and goods in the neutral ground.

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