Scenes from Prehistoric Life

by Pryor, Francis;

  Star Carr also provided evidence for shaman-based religion, in the form of several spectacular antler headdresses. Some seventy years of research in and around Lake Flixton is continuing to plot its islands and shoreline in extraordinary detail, but rather surprisingly, no other substantial settlement sites like Star Carr have yet been revealed.12 There are, however, many indications that some of the twenty-four smaller sites around the lake and on the islands were occupied for shorter intervals than Star Carr itself. Some were visited repeatedly and there is good evidence that they were visited for specific purposes, such as preparing and consuming food. Others seem to have been used very differently: for producing flint tools (using high-quality flint brought in from outside the area); in other areas, people worked red-deer antlers into tools or sharpened flint axes for woodwork. Maybe these were smaller, perhaps temporary, settlements or campsites for people from Star Carr as they went about their daily tasks of hunting, fishing and gathering food.

  These varied activities give us a clear impression of the way people would have perceived Lake Flixton in early prehistory. In a word, it would have been their territory: they controlled it. But such control would not have been absolute and it would have changed not just through time, but with the pattern of the seasons, as game and other resources became available. Of course, we can only guess at this early stage in our investigations, but what we see as ‘the woodland’ around the lake would have been viewed as a number of different environments, such as feeding and drinking areas for game, good land for felling trees and coppicing and maybe holy places that were reserved for the spirits of the ancestors. It all had pattern and purpose. It was never unstructured. So we must drop any idea that the early inhabitants of post-glacial Britain wandered around like lost souls. Wild game was plentiful and there is now good evidence for the use of specialized digging-sticks to find edible roots. I would be surprised if somewhere as large as Lake Flixton was home to just one major settlement, so it’s important that research should continue. But it must take place on a sufficiently large, landscape scale, because we will never understand how early post-glacial communities lived in Britain if we don’t study a range of settlement types.

  I’m sure that the people who lived around Lake Flixton were familiar with neighbouring communities, both on the higher land around the Vale and on the river floodplain to the east and west as well. These relationships would have been different and would have changed through time. It has taken us over half a century to begin to understand the diversity, richness and complexity of early prehistoric life around just one extinct glacial lake. But in some respects, research has only just started.

  There are few other areas in Britain that have been as intensively studied as the region around Star Carr. But there is one notable exception. It lies much further south, in the county of Wiltshire, and it owes its fame to a huge stone monument that was constructed at least a millennium after the close of the Mesolithic. Thanks to some extraordinary recent research, all of it on a landscape scale, we are now beginning to understand some of the very ancient beliefs that after several millennia may have inspired people to construct a hauntingly enigmatic and enormously complex stone monument on the dry limestone landscape of Salisbury Plain. Stonehenge is starting to reveal the secrets of its origins.

  a The term ‘Anthropocene’ has been proposed for this era, but there is still no general agreement about when it should begin.

  b The term ‘Migration Period’ has replaced it.

  Scene 4

  From Wood to Stone on Salisbury Plain (8000–3000 BC)

  The Stonehenge Car Park – The Avenue – Blick Mead Spring – Stonehenge

  The archaeological evidence for the Mesolithic communities that inhabited Britain in the millennia following the Ice Age is remarkably slight. This is doubtless a result of the passage of time, but it must also reflect the fact that people tended to live in naturally fertile lowland areas, where food plants, fish, wildfowl and game were plentiful. Sometimes their houses were quite light, but often they were well built, if modest by later prehistoric standards, and so far we have not discovered evidence for larger public buildings, nor for religious and other places where neighbouring communities would have come together. To make matters worse, these slight remains have been damaged, or obliterated altogether, by later activities, such as farming and gravel extraction. The archaeological damage caused by deep ploughing and subsoil drainage in the past fifty years has been truly devastating.1

  The arrival of farming in Britain just before 4000 BC also witnessed a sudden increase in the building of collective tombs under large barrow mounds, followed by the construction of communal meeting places and shrines, starting with the causewayed enclosures.a Although it may have taken two or three centuries to gather pace, this apparent explosion of construction was in marked contrast to the Mesolithic tradition, evidence of which – in the form of burials, for example – remains very hard to discover. But the seeming scarcity of built monuments in Mesolithic times should not be confused with a lack of veneration for special places, as indeed the early use of caves in Ireland so clearly demonstrated. More recently, evidence has emerged for the recognition that certain landscape features were seen as sacred or special as early as 8000 BC, or possibly even earlier. This leads me to believe that the inhabitants of Star Carrb would probably not have regarded the shores of their own Lake Flixton as just a source of food and fuel. I am sure that, in their minds, the waters of the lake would have been imbued with depths of spiritual meaning – whose richness and diversity we would find it hard to imagine, given our own reliance on rational explanation.

  The traditional archaeological view of the great Neolithic and Early Bronze Age monuments of Britain is that they were innovations that came from overseas, with the introduction of farming. And although there may be much truth in this, we are now starting to realize that the new sites were often positioned in areas of the landscape that had long been considered special. There is also growing evidence that many of the beliefs enshrined within the new sacred tombs and enclosures had elements that echoed earlier practices and ideas. And one of the best places to view what we now know was a changing, dynamic relationship between people, shrines and landscape is the area around the most famous site of them all: Stonehenge.

  Every prehistorian must have at least one unwritten book about Stonehenge inside his or her head. Wisely, because it’s a site that everyone has strong views about, most people don’t take the trouble to put their ideas on paper.c This interest and controversy has given the site and the landscape around it new life and relevance, which I have to confess I find very moving.

  Recent research has generally focused on the remarkable ancient landscapes that surround and form the setting for Stonehenge.2 Indeed, it is probably fair to say that these landscapes are an inseparable part of the monument: not only have they revealed where the workforce who erected the great stones once lived, but they have also provided us with clues as to why the region was chosen in the first place. Modern technology has played a huge part in these studies, with everything from precise geological identification of the various stone sources to ground-penetrating radar, geophysics and even drone surveys.3

  As I read yet another revelatory story about the site, I often wonder to what extent all this attention on one place is affecting our view of British prehistory: the people who built and worshipped at Stonehenge certainly produced some remarkable structures. But we also know for a fact that there were hundreds of other henge sites – some made from wood, others from stone – right across the British Isles, and most of them were similarly surrounded by rich, so-called ritual landscapes, where people processed along ceremonial routes, buried their dead and regularly came together to celebrate. I don’t believe that Stonehenge was unique. Yes, it was probably the most significant monument in Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain, but there were many others, too. Stonehenge is revealing the extraordinary richness and complexity of life between 3000 and 15
00 BC, both in Britain and across the Channel in western Europe, with which there were many close ties. Stonehenge came to prominence some five thousand years ago, but we now know that its roots almost certainly extended back another three millennia.

  Early indications of the antiquity of Stonehenge came when the landscape was first studied in any detail, in the decade following the First World War. The use of aerial photography as a means of closely observing enemy trenches during that conflict had led to huge improvements both in plane stability and camera technology. The result was a famous book, Wessex from the Air, published in 1928.4 In their preface, the authors admit that both the camera (an Ica Type F.K.1 German Service Pattern) and its lens (a 4.5 Zeiss Tessar) were German, bought from the UK government Disposals Board shortly after the war. Wessex from the Air revealed many sites for the first time and showed the extraordinary archaeological richness of Salisbury Plain. At the time it was appreciated that some of the sites surrounding Stonehenge had to pre-date it by many centuries. Today, we realize that was just the start of the story.

  The next major step was unplanned. Stonehenge had always been a tourist attraction and in the era that immediately followed the Second World War, when income was short and money was still quite tight, it was decided to expand visitor facilities there. In 1966 work began on the expansion of the car park just across the roadd that used to pass directly by the Stones, to the north. Before the construction work began, archaeologists were given the chance to excavate the land and they discovered a straight line of three quite widely, but evenly separated post-holes.e The posts had been partially charred (supposedly in the belief that this would prolong their life) and the charcoal, which was identified as pine, was radiocarbon dated. The dates fell between 7000 and 8000 BC.

  In 1988 the car park was further extended and another pine post-hole was revealed. It was to one side of the alignment of the original three posts, but most probably belonged to the same monument or structure. Again, the new post was dated to 8000–7000 BC, a long time span that suggests the posts had been replaced over the centuries. The early date for the posts would help to explain the use of pine, which is a hardier tree than oak and which we know was able to grow well in early post-Ice Age times. All four posts were also quite large, with diameters of about 75 centimetres (2½ ft) – roughly that of a modern telegraph pole. This would be very large for a Mesolithic fence or building. Their use in a defensive screen can be ruled out because of the wide gaps between them – and besides, the ground in this part of Salisbury Plain is flat and would have been impossible to defend without a major earthwork of some sort – usually a deep ditch and wide bank. So what was going on?

  When no obvious practical purpose for a possible structure presents itself, archaeologists tend to reach for their explanation of last resort, namely ‘ritual’, or religion. And that seems to be the best explanation for these very early and quite massive pine posts. Presumably they marked out or formed part of a temple or shrine of some sort, but having said that, we should remember that throughout history Christian churches were important meeting places for local people, so the Stonehenge pine posts may also have served a communal, or social, role.

  Another clue to the possible importance of the Stonehenge area was revealed by archaeologists in the 1960s, although nobody grasped its significance at the time. That didn’t happen until almost half a century later, when a new generation of archaeologists re-excavated the earlier trench. They didn’t find any significant new objects. They just looked at the old evidence from a different perspective. And what they revealed was amazing – and yet thoroughly convincing.

  *

  Many of the most famous ancient sites, such as Stonehenge, had often been over-investigated by archaeologists, especially in the mid- and earlier twentieth century, when there could sometimes be a rather cavalier attitude to the prompt writing of full reports. Sometimes they were also rather lax about establishing archives and samples from their excavations for future generations to study and re-examine. As a result, the authorities who now control access to such sites have become loath to grant permission to excavate undisturbed ground, even to well-established professionals. Their usual way out of this dilemma was to grant new researchers permission to reopen an old archaeological trench, rather than start a fresh one in virgin ground. And this was what happened to Professor Mike Parker Pearson and his team on the Stonehenge Riverside Project when they were looking for somewhere to excavate near the Stones, in 2008.

  The old trench that Mike and his team chose to reopen had been excavated in the 1960s across the full width of the Avenue, near the Heel Stone, one of the great stones that marked out the ceremonial approach to the main monument. The Avenue was probably a formalization of a previously established processional way, which led up from the River Avon, then turned south-east to approach Stonehenge from the north-east. It was marked out by banks and ditches on either side and was constructed just after 2400 BC. The Avenue’s final approach to the Stones followed the alignment of the mid-summer and mid-winter solstices (the longest and shortest days of the year).f Stonehenge itself is arranged to respect this north-east–south-west alignment, which is fundamental to the organization of this complex site.

  When the Riverside Project reopened the earlier trench, they discovered a series of deep natural fissures in the underlying chalk bedrock.5 These parallel cracks in the rock lay on precisely the same alignment (NE–SW) as the Avenue. At first they looked very much like plough scratches, or even the narrow ruts left by cart wheels. But on closer inspection they turned out to be far too deep. In my experience, most plough scratches or wheel ruts are very rarely more than 15 centimetres (6 in) deep and 7.5–10 centimetres (3–4 in) wide, but these proved to be about 50 centimetres (18 in) deep and 30 centimetres (1 ft) wide. Mercifully, the deep grooves had not been fully excavated out by the earlier archaeologists and this meant the deposits within them were undisturbed. So they were closely examined by the Riverside Project’s soil scientist and geologist, who came to the firm opinion that they were entirely natural. Normally, archaeologists are looking for early evidence of human action, so such a result would be very disappointing. But in this instance they were delighted.

  Soil can take a long time to form, especially on rocky outcrops, such as chalk and limestone, and in cold conditions such as those at the end of the Ice Age. This was a time when many of the soils of Britain had been worn very thin. Trees and shrubs had been decimated by the freezing temperatures and the open landscapes were very prone to erosion because there was no plant cover to fend off the winds. The hidden network of fine fibrous roots that holds the soil together in modern gardens, woodlands and pastures had almost completely vanished during the Ice Age centuries – and such things take time to recover.

  With most of its soil removed by natural erosion, the solstice-aligned natural cracks in the exposed chalk of Salisbury Plain filled with rainwater and melted snow. During the bitter temperatures of night, the ice froze and expanded with enormous force. This pushed the chalk apart and at the same time it shattered its surface, giving rise to the deep parallel grooves, which are simply following the natural bedding planes that were originally laid down when the chalk was formed on the seabed, back in the Cretaceous era, about a hundred million years ago.

  Soils take a long time to become established and they were quite slow to accumulate when the climate grew suddenly warmer at the end of the Ice Age. So the very first people who moved onto Salisbury Plain would almost certainly have been able to see the dark lines of soil filling the tops of the grooves into the chalk. In summertime these natural grooves would have been partially screened by growing grasses and wildflowers, while in winter the soil would have been more bare and dark. The contrast between the two solstices could not have been greater. And then as time passed and the soils grew thicker, the grooves slowly vanished from view. But they had done their work: they had helped to inspire successive generations of people to treat this landscape as very speci
al.

  You might have noticed that I said the grooves ‘had helped’ to inspire. The more we learn about prehistory, the more we are starting to appreciate that ancient beliefs were as convoluted and complex as our own religious doctrines are today. In the post-war decades, experts – and not always archaeologists – were convinced that sites like Stonehenge could be simply ‘explained’ by one thing alone. Thus Stonehenge Decodedg revealed the site to have been a sophisticated astronomical observatory; a ‘Neolithic computer’. The problem with this view was that it assumed that prehistoric people had a modern science-based and analytical attitude to the solar system. Yes, they were indeed highly skilled in predicting solar events – possibly even lunar eclipses6 – but these observations were made not to explain the movement of the sun, moon and stars, so much as to link life on Earth with worlds beyond the horizon, which many would have believed were populated by the spirits of the ancestors. Perhaps the astronomical side of Stonehenge might be better explained in terms of astrology – or something akin to it – rather than modern astronomy or computer science.

  The precise positioning of Stonehenge can probably largely be explained by those solstice-aligned grooves in the subsoil. But would they have been enough to have inspired so many people to treat such a large area as special for so very long? Of course that’s an unanswerable question, but as I have already suggested, sacred landscapes can sometimes be shown to owe their sanctity to more than one unusual occurrence – and recently we have learned that Salisbury Plain is part of this tradition. It was concealing yet another unexpected secret.