i ‘Wether’ is the term that is still used to describe a castrated male sheep. Most meat lambs are wethers.
j Latest research shows it was a stone circle, not a tomb.
k ‘Other-worldly’, mystical, a power or force beyond rational analysis. From the Latin word numen, meaning divine presence, deity.
Scene 5
Hunters Become Farmers (from 4000 BC)
Fengate – Etton and Windmill Hill – Clava Cairns – Tomnaverie
The introduction of metalworking in the centuries just before 2500 BC is often seen as one of the biggest developments in prehistoric Britain – and it certainly was profound, with very long-term effects that continue to impact our lives today. But was it such a big deal at the time? We’re now starting to understand how metalworking arrived in Britain and we are also learning more about the people from the continental mainland who introduced it. With hindsight, we can appreciate that these newly arrived technologies were to have a lasting effect on British prehistory. But to what extent did they alter the way that most people led their daily lives? We know, for example, that houses remained the same as before, as did farmyards and domestic animals (cattle, pigs, sheep/goatsa), all of which were domesticated at various times, much earlier. Burial rites did change somewhat, but corpses continued to be placed under barrows, much as before. If you want to find a period of change that profoundly affected all aspects of people’s daily lives, you have to turn the clock back a further millennium and a half, to 4000 BC. This is the period that saw the introduction of farming and, with it, the birth of the Neolithic (or New Stone Age) period.
In the mid-twentieth century, before the invention of radiocarbon dating, archaeologists had to construct time frames for prehistory using key events that could be given a reasonably precise date in calendar years BC. Very often these events involved the known ancient civilizations of the Near East, together with a few clues that could be provided by geologists and other specialists working with pollen cores, lakebed deposits and tree-ring dates.
Using this sometimes rather flimsy framework of dates and events, prehistorians were able to reconstruct a picture of prehistoric Europe, which showed how the idea of farming spread from its Eurasian origins in and around modern Iraq, and then north and west into Europe. They were even able to define certain routes followed by the earliest farming communities: west through the Mediterranean, or up the River Rhône, or overland north of the Alps and so on. It was very often seen as the spread of an enlightenment – a new way of living that was much superior to the earlier style of hunter-gathering. Books and articles on the subject sometimes included the Latin phrase ‘Ex oriente lux’ (‘Out of the East, light’) – a term that was first used to describe the spread of religious beliefs from the Near East. In many respects, the spread of farming was seen in a similar light.
And then facts began to muddy the crystal-clear waters. New radiocarbon dates showed that the process had taken place rather earlier than previously thought and there was evidence that some of the innovations supposedly introduced from the Ancient Near East had actually moved in the other direction. Many of the new types of religious and ceremonial monuments that appeared in western Europe during the Neolithic – such as chambered tombs, stone circles and stone rows – had been developed locally, and had then spread eastwards. We used to believe that farming took more than a millennium to diffuse from southern England to northern Scotland. We now realize the spread was very much faster: probably no more than two centuries.1 It is quite clear that the introduction of farming was a far more complex process than we had previously supposed.
The first farms appeared in southern Britain in the century before 4000 BC. Current evidence would suggest that they were introduced by new arrivals, but we cannot rule out the possibility that some may also have arisen through the spread of an idea, or new knowledge. However, DNA and other biological research indicates that most of the population of Neolithic Britain were arrivals from the continent, probably via Spain and Portugal, following several generations of migration westwards, along the shores of the Mediterranean. But a word of caution is needed. The latest study is based on analysis of bones from sixty-seven Neolithic individuals across Britain.2 That’s not a huge sample, and there is also a possibility that the bones in question, most of which came from special places, from chambered tombs, barrows, causewayed enclosures and caves, might be skewed to favour the upper echelons of society. Six samples of Mesolithic bones were analysed and these had strong similarities with Mesolithic bones from continental Europe. They were also distinctively different from those of the Neolithic farmers. So what happened? Was the indigenous British Mesolithic population and culture simply wiped out by the newcomers? Or did they survive to influence the development of later prehistoric societies?
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Coming from a farming family myself, I have long been intrigued by those first farmers and how they would have behaved in the British landscape. Then in 1982 I was given – or rather acquired – the opportunity to excavate a so-called causewayed enclosure, just outside the little hamlet of Etton in the lower Welland valley, on the edge of the Fens near the Lincolnshire/Cambridgeshire border. Causewayed enclosures were built and used in the centuries around 3600 BC. They consist of a ditch, or series of parallel ditches that were dug around a plot of land where communities in the region held regular gatherings. The area of land in question was in the River Welland floodplain and the site was located within a now extinct meander of the old river, which has long since been straightened and canalized behind high flood banks. But you could see quite clearly on aerial photos that the ditched enclosure had been set to one side of the slightly rising ground within the meander.3 I can remember thinking that this was rather odd, as they could easily have taken in the whole of the meander, with very little extra effort. Had they been constructing an Iron Age fort, three millennia later, that’s precisely what they would have done.
The more I thought about the positioning of the enclosure, the more I became convinced that it had been deliberate. But why? I tried in vain to come up with a rational explanation, but none occurred to me. Instead, I found my thoughts were often returning to another, and far better-known, causewayed enclosure at Windmill Hill, near the magnificent Wiltshire henge at Avebury. The author of the definitive report on the pre-war excavations of the site describes the positioning of the enclosure as crowning the hill ‘lopsidedly’.4 And when you visit the site, the lopsidedness becomes even more apparent. As I just mentioned, this off-centre positioning is in stark contrast to Iron Age hillforts, which are famous for the way they often seem to crown a hill: in effect, the ramparts, the ditches and banks of the fort capture the hill and dominate it, just as the placing of a crown on an English monarch’s head symbolizes that the new king or queen may be chief among all citizens, but is still subservient to God.5 It seemed to me, however, that causewayed enclosures were sending out a very different message.
Very often, the simplest explanations are the best and when you see something dissonant or somehow ‘unnatural’, such as the off-centre positioning of causewayed enclosures, it must conceal truths about ancient attitudes to the landscape. It seems to me that the modern approach is Us First: obstacles are there to be bridged or tunnelled through; rivers are straightened; bogs and swamps are drained. In the Middle Ages, it was all about God. So hills and plains were dominated by the soaring towers of magnificent cathedrals. Even as early as the Iron Age, the spectacular positioning of hillforts was used to proclaim a particular tribe’s dominance of a given landscape. But Neolithic attitudes still owed much to the Mesolithic hunter-gatherer communities, who had to live in greater harmony with the plants and animals around them – and on which they depended for their survival. They seem profoundly different: less arrogant, perhaps. In my darker moments, when I see pictures of farmers burning the Amazon rainforest, and am depressed by the state of the world’s deteriorating climate, I sometimes think back to 4000 BC: could we have done things
differently? What if we had retained more of our hunter-gatherer traditions – would we be living in greater harmony with nature? Maybe – but we didn’t.
Farming is essentially about modifying and harnessing different aspects of the landscape to provide a reliable source of healthy food. It has never been about complete domination: the landscape must work with farmers, not for them. Recent research suggests that the first farmers in Britain grew cereals and kept a few livestock. Essentially, this was small-scale subsistence farming. But after a few centuries, people in different areas adapted to the landscapes where they lived and farmed. In the Fens, for example, livestock became increasingly important because of the abundance of pasture, especially in summertime when water levels dropped and flocks of sheep and herds of cattle were able to graze the lush meadows. In other regions, such as river valley floodplains, fertile gravel soils were ploughed to grow crops, while areas of damp or upland grazing were selectively used at different times of the year. In many places, these more specialized forms of farming were able to expand beyond the subsistence or family-sized unit to become larger and involve more people. Eventually, from about 2000 BC, the earliest field systems began to appear, replacing the more open patterns of grazing (which were probably never truly unbounded, and would have involved informal agreements between neighbouring communities).
Having set up a small farm myself, I know only too well that the process of specialization requires a degree of humility. If you want to be successful, you cannot just impose your farm on a landscape without making concessions to it. And often, the simplest way to discover what your particular soils are best at growing is to ask a few local people. I was told, for example, that our sticky clay-silt soil grew excellent grass and clover, but was far too heavy for potatoes. And they were so right: every season the maincrop potatoes from my vegetable garden are honeycombed by hungry slugs, which thrive in the damp ground in high summer. But you can get away with first and second early varieties, as long as you harvest them by early August.
Attitudes to landscape are about far more than the practicalities of farming or hunting. Just find yourself caught outside by an unexpected severe storm and you will soon discover how gales, rain, snow, thunder and lightning can show who’s in charge. By the same token, experience a clear dawn over Salisbury Plain or a blazing Fenland sunset and you will glimpse moments of transcendent peace. So I don’t see the arrival of the first farmers in Britain as a prehistoric version of cinema’s Wild West, with incoming cowboys fighting hostile natives. Indeed, the distribution of Early Neolithic and Mesolithic settlement sites in the Fens is almost identical. So even if the two groups were genetically different, it seems that they shared the same knowledge about the best places to settle and establish their communities.6 This suggests that the two groups were in regular contact and there is no archaeological evidence to indicate that there was active hostility between them – although it should be said that all archaeological remains of what one might term ‘the contact’ period just before 4000 BC are slight and very hard to identify. The more we are learning about the period, the more it would seem that the relationship was flexible and probably very complex.
Because the builders of sites like Etton and Windmill Hill must have had a close relationship with the landscape in all its aspects, practical, agricultural, spiritual and emotional, I am in little doubt that the ‘lopsided’ positioning of the two enclosures was both carefully considered and deliberate. The simplest explanation is that they did not want their enclosures to be seen to crown or dominate the hill or landscape features on which they were built. This interpretation of their builders’ underlying motive would in turn suggest that human communities believed they were subservient to the powers behind the landscape: the sun and the passage of the seasons, which were closely tied to more local effects such as storms, the flooding of rivers, the growth of plants and the availability of fish, game and grazing. The emphasis on elaborate tombs from the start of the Neolithic would suggest that the forces who controlled these great powers would have been reached through the ancestors. Given this world view, it is quite understandable that they did not want their enclosures to dominate certain prominent places that had probably been regarded as spiritually special for a long time.
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We live in a world where big is beautiful, where spectacular location and grand design guarantee many visitors, great reviews and commercial success. In a culture where braying politicians are becoming the norm, we forget that there have always been other, quieter ways of doing things. I have long considered restraint to be a sign of strength – albeit inner strength – not weakness, which is why I have long been fascinated by the mundane and everyday in prehistoric life. Of course, we can never be certain, but I think it probable that most ordinary people in later prehistoric Britain had never visited Stonehenge or Avebury and if they had, they would have been told to wait behind the bank and ditch that surrounded those great henges; the inner area would have been a very holy place, reserved for important individuals on special occasions. So how did ordinary people satisfy the need, which we all have from time to time, to experience the numinous or to seek emotional comfort and consolation in times of personal crisis? Were there prehistoric equivalents of parish churches or non-conformist chapels? Rather surprisingly, the answer to that question is a firm Yes – indeed, we know of hundreds of them. In my view, they are one of Britain’s hidden treasures and should be far better known. More to the point, they have revealed a huge amount of information on how they were built and used and about the rituals that took place within them.
Small henge-like shrines of the Neolithic and Early Bronze Age survive in many places across the British Isles. Quite frequently they were located in liminal places that were deliberately removed from settlements. But this was not always the case. In a very few instances, such as Seahenge,b we can make reasonably well-informed estimates on the numbers of people that would have attended the ceremonies (or ceremony) that were held there. At Seahenge, for instance, the ‘congregation’, including bystanders, might have been as large as 200–250 people – the size of a large country funeral today. In other instances, where the monument shows clear evidence for repeated reuse, the congregations would have been very much smaller – maybe one or two families and perhaps a couple of dozen people. Indeed, the more research I have done, the more convinced I have become that these shrines were in many important ways the prehistoric equivalent of present-day places of worship.
Two particularly important groups of small prehistoric ceremonial sites survive in north-east Scotland and these provide a superb example of what one might term an ideological landscape. Few other places in Britain can boast such high-quality preservation and completeness.7 Archaeologists love to categorize everything they find: it’s part of the process of imposing sense and order onto the seemingly random assemblage of sites, finds and vanished landscapes that we reveal every year in our excavations and surveys. The sites in question are known as Clava cairns and recumbent stone circles and they occur on the northern slopes of the foothills of the Grampian Mountains, east of the Moray Firth, roughly between Inverness in the west and Aberdeen on the east coast. The Grampians are a presence – I am tempted to say a brooding one – to the south, but the landscapes where the sites occur are generally lower-lying, situated along river valleys and amid rolling hills. Today the area is characterized by numerous small towns and villages, linked by a complex network of roads and lanes. It is not the stereotypical Scottish Highland landscape of steep slopes, grouse moors and lonely castles. It was almost certainly quite densely inhabited in prehistoric times, too.
5.1 A map of north-east Scotland showing the distribution of Clava cairns and recumbent stone circles.
I don’t want to get bogged down in too much detail, but I must first briefly explain the main characteristics of the two types of monuments: Clava cairns and recumbent stone circles. At first glance, it seems quite simple. The names say it all: cairns are mounds
or heaps of stone, whereas stone circles are arrangements of single standing stones. Most cairns occur in upland areas of Britain, where they often formed part of funerary monuments. Their role was essentially the same as that of the soil or turf forming the mounds of barrows in lowland Britain, which concealed and protected bodies, coffins and cremations. Some upland cairns, known as clearance cairns, concealed nothing and may well have been used as boundary markers. Clearance cairns were probably heaped up when the surface of the land was cleared of stones to make fields or meadows.
I mentioned clearance cairns because they illustrate one of the largest challenges that archaeologists working out in the field have to face. If you’re looking at drone images or conventional aerial photos, you automatically achieve a sort of remoteness or distance that makes certain decisions seem much simpler. Take those clearance cairns, for example: from the air they’d look very different – far more haphazard and random – than the far more carefully arranged and structured cairns over a burial monument or within a stone circle. Sometimes, of course, the seeming clarity provided by an overhead, aerial view can be misleading, but then that’s archaeology: always full of surprises. But on the ground, nothing’s ever simple and that’s because you can see the site in its full context, including background views, neighbouring outcrops of rock, thickness of soil cover – even changes in surface vegetation – all of which can provide useful clues. And the situation gets even more complicated when you start to excavate.
Conventional archaeological maps display the prehistoric monuments of north-east Scotland in the two distinct groups that can be seen in the map on page 84. Viewed from the surface, there do indeed appear to be two quite distinct types of monuments: the more cairn-like Clava cairns to the west and the very characteristic recumbent stone circles to the east. Indeed, the carefully shaped and placed cairns and recumbent stones, with their two characteristic upright flankers, stand out prominently and make the distinction of the two groups seem very straightforward. I won’t go into the details of how the two groups of sites have been dated, as the evidence is both rather thin and also convoluted and complex.
Scenes from Prehistoric Life Page 10
