Food and Farming in Prehistoric Britain

by Paul Elliott

  In prehistory, as in many parts of modern Africa, the immediate area in front of the house became an extension of the interior. For the Tswana tribe, this area provides space to store building materials, for a vegetable or herb garden, for animal pens, for a toilet and a washing area, for the storage of animal feed, and as an outdoor kitchen. At prehistoric sites in Britain, the areas outside and between roundhouses are dominated by fence lines or ditches as well as post-built rectangular structures (these might represent wood stores, toilets, store sheds, and granaries). The fence lines suggest that the control of animals in the immediate environs of the house was crucial and that mixed farming was important, as we already suspect. Ditch or fence lines also separate hungry animals from crops, again suggesting that vegetables may have been cultivated right on the doorstep.

  Rubbish tips, what archaeologists term ‘middens’, are not common finds close to roundhouses. It may be that waste was routinely deposited onto the fields or dumped into the cattle byres along with old straw bedding and the dried rushes that were used to cover the house floor. Modern tribes who use roundhouses often mark out a spot for refuse disposal, typically in front of the door, but rarely any closer than 10 metres. The ‘yard’ area is routinely swept clean, creating a cleared arc of ground in front of the doorway. One study found that material swept away accumulated against the outer wall of the house, in ditches and hollows in the ground, and away from the door against fences or other obstacles.

  Iron Age roundhouse with its associated farming enclosure at Hod Hill, Dorset. The ditched yard contained a stable or cattle byre. (I. A. Richmond)

  The Modern Experience

  Although I cannot in any way claim to have recreated the life of an Iron Age farmer, I have been lucky enough to spend several weekends inside Ryedale Folk Museum’s roundhouse along with three colleagues. Ordinarily the house is quite sparsely furnished, a central hearth is flanked by two benches, two timber beds at the rear use straw as their mattresses, and to the left of the doorway (as one enters the house) is a rotary quern stone and a vertical weaving loom. Visitors rarely see the fire lit, with the result that the house appears cold, empty, and dark. Our aim was to furnish the house and spend two days and a night within it, cooking, eating and drinking, talking to the public, and then sleeping in the straw-filled beds.

  It is interesting to compare our experiences with the archaeological evidence. Immediately we needed storage space, a place for the meat, vegetables, and other consumables that we had brought to cook. With the morning sun illuminating the ‘work area’ to the left of the doorway, we decided to place it in the periphery, against the outer wall to the right of the doorway. To conceal the stores from members of the public, we erected a heavy canvas screen around them, leaving access for ourselves at the rear. We threw deer and boar skins onto the beds along with undyed woollen blankets. Our spears, decorated shields, swords, and other Iron Age paraphernalia we decided to place in a prominent position so that visitors would not fail to be impressed by them. The best place seemed to be on the platforms that had been built over the beds as well as in the backspace—directly opposite the entrance to the roundhouse. By late morning the sun illuminated this area beautifully.

  Our baskets, sacks, and farm tools were piled up against the outer wall, wherever there was space. The aim was to keep the central area around the hearth free of clutter since we would be spending much of our day there. A basket of charcoal and a large stack of firewood had to be close by, however, and so it was decided to put it along the front of the hearth, well out of the way. With sunlight streaming in through the entrance it seemed natural to sit in a horseshoe shape around the fire, facing both the light and any visitors who should enter. Tools, knives, chopping boards, bowls, and cups were stacked on handy tree stumps that served as low tables, or were stuffed underneath or just behind the benches. In this way they were always within reach, and being so close to hand meant that we didn’t have to fumble through bags or baskets in the darkness at the back of the house to search for them.

  The Iron Age house at Ryedale Folk Museum has a Celtic-style firedog over the hearth, which is an iron frame that stands over the fire. The bar across the top rotates and can be used as a spit, but we also found it extremely useful as a device from which to hang copper and iron pots, using small iron ‘S’ hooks. A jar of water was also kept by the fireside in case of accidents and also as a source of fresh water for cooking and drinking. Cutting up meat and vegetables was done on an oak chopping board that rested on top of a tree stump that we placed close to the fire. One problem that modern cooks rarely have to deal with is lack of light. This becomes apparent when trying to decide if meat is cooked, for example, or if stews are ready.

  As the afternoon wore on, the light tracked across the back of the roundhouse until it faded and we closed the door. Although we would have liked to light lard-filled Iron Age lamps, the danger of knocking one over and setting fire to a sheepskin or bed was far too great. Instead we lit candles that were placed in glass jars and these we placed on the floor around the hearth around which we sat. Licks of flame from both the hearth and the flickering candles provided enough light to see faces and shadows cast on the walls, but darkness blanketed the recesses of the house. When we retired to bed the fire was sensibly damped down. Under blankets and on layers of straw and deerskin, we all slept well. One other resident was a mouse (plus family tucked away somewhere close by, no doubt), which must have survived off of the wheat grains scattered around the grindstone. This feature of the roundhouse is used by the museum with parties of school children. Hungry mice would have been a feature of every prehistoric house, I am sure. On one morning, in late August, the fierce summer sunrise shone through gaps in the doorway to illuminate my bed and bathe me in light, waking me suddenly at five o’clock in the morning. It was a glorious way to start the day and coincided with the calls of the museum’s two competing cockerels.

  In our experience, the roundhouse was warm and comfortable. During one weekend rain lashed the site, but the thatch proved up to the job and the house remained dry. We had some misgivings about a gap left by the builders between the top of the outer wall and the thatched roof, which (supported by an internal ring of posts) passed over it without touching. Wind and rain, however, did not penetrate this gap and it did indeed serve to let in light throughout the morning.

  Finally, it is interesting to note how the circular form of the building drew all activities and attention towards the fire. It created a distinctly communal feel. Today the focal point in most of our post-modern homes is the corner of a room or a wall, and associated with a flat-screen television or a games console. Family members tend to face the same general direction. Spending time inside a reconstructed roundhouse has given us an appreciation of how all of the indoor activities are naturally orientated around the centre of the building. It provided us with a very different sense of living space. Perhaps the few modern experiences that compare would be that of a yacht’s cabin with berths, where all is centred round the galley table.

  7

  Open-Fire Cooking

  Near at hand are their fireplaces heaped with coals and on them are cauldrons and spits holding whole pieces of meat.

  Diodorus Siculus 28

  Fire provided three essentials for prehistoric folk: light, heat and the ability to cook food. Pot cookery, something with which we are very well acquainted with today, is discussed in a later chapter. It has similarities to the modern ‘stove top’ method of cooking, but with a number of marked differences. Some foods were simply not suitable or of small enough size to drop into a cookpot and so they were cooked directly on the fire itself, either over the flames, or in the embers.

  The famous French chef Marcel Boulestin once claimed that ‘cookery is not chemistry. It is an art’. However, in an age of exact measures, of controllable gas flames and oven timers, this is no longer the case. Cookery is science—it really is chemistry
. Going back to an open wood fire, though, to the oldest technique of all, cooking is brought fully into the realm of art. Fire is unpredictable and there are innumerable variations that may affect the cooking process: the type of wood, for how long the wood was seasoned, how far from the fire the food is suspended, cooking over flame, or cooking over embers, the strength of the wind, and so on. The ability to read the fire, to make changes and to have some control over its heat and capricious nature, adds an ancient ring of truth to Boulestin’s remark.

  Many of the experiments for this book were carried out on the hearth within Ryedale Folk Museum’s Iron Age roundhouse. Other techniques were practiced over a variety of other fires and fire pits over the last few years. A well-excavated hearth from a roundhouse near Battlesbury Camp hill fort provided a model for several of my cooking pits. The rectangular hearth at the centre of this Iron Age house was 15 cm deep and measured 90 cm × 60 cm. It featured a short extension from its south-east corner, which was either some kind of flue or (more likely) a cooking area that would have contained a bed of embers raked across from the main fire.

  Roundhouse of the Middle Iron Age excavated at Battlesbury Camp hill fort, Wiltshire. The central hearth was formed of two pits, cut at different depths, with an extension (or flue) extending away toward the south-east. (S. E. James)

  Fire Lighting

  Firewood must have been cut and stored during the winter months, giving it a chance to dry out. This seasoned wood will then have burned well. As is common in developing nations today, children will have foraged for sticks and twigs throughout the year in order to eke out the family’s store of firewood. In general, softwoods (lime, willow, birch, and poplar) burn quickly and brightly, while the native hardwoods (beech, ash, elm, and oak) are longer lasting and tend to produce very hot embers. Yet each type of wood has its own qualities:

  Alder:Burns quickly, although it is easy to light and is very good for smoking food.

  Apple:Like cherry, apple wood is perfect for smoking and grilling food over the fire. Its aroma translates into flavour.

  Ash:This burns slowly, but steadily and produces both bright flames and embers perfect for cooking.

  Beech:Beech wood also burns slowly and is more difficult to light, but it does give off a lot of heat. Its flames are bright and its embers long lasting.

  Birch:With hot, bright flames birch wood makes an ideal cooking fuel. It burns even when fresh and unseasoned, produces heat and, with its fragrant aroma, is ideal when food has to be smoked.

  Gorse:The small branches of gorse burn easily and produce a lot of heat quite quickly. Gorse does not produce sparks.

  Lime:Lime wood produces pleasant enough flames and is fairly flammable, although it gives off little heat.

  Oak:Flames from oak are hot, although not very bright and burn slowly over a long period to produce useful embers. Oak wood can, however, be difficult (and frustrating) to light.

  Pine:This wood can produce sparks and it produces quite a lot of soot. However, pine burns well and with a vivid flame.

  Poplar:Poplar wood does not give off much heat, but burns brightly. It is very flammable, making it a good choice as a fire-lighter.

  Willow:This wood makes poor fuel for a cooking fire, it burns poorly and produces few embers. On the upside, it creates very little smoke.

  With the start of the Iron Age, fires could be lit by striking a piece of flint with a small length of steel. The sharp flint carves off a red-hot splinter of steel (the spark), which must be caught within a pile of tinder. I’ve used various types of tinder, including dried bracket fungus and charcloth, which is essentially ‘cooked linen’. Charcloth catches a spark easily and after the glowing cloth is nested inside a large handful of dry grass, can be wafted and blown on until a flame ignites. Prior to the Iron Age, a nodule of iron pyrites would have served the same purpose. Other early fire-making techniques include the fire bow and the fire plough. The former uses a hardwood spindle, rotated by a small bow and bowstring. Spun in place on a softwood base, the spindle drills through the wood and (with both patience and luck) will ignite a small pile of tinder. The fire plough also uses the friction of a hardwood shaft on a softwood base, this time using a simple backwards and forwards motion along a groove cut into the base. Both require skill and determination to use effectively.

  We should not assume that the roundhouse hearth required a fire starting every morning, though. It is easy to dig into the ashes of the hearth at sunrise to find a few glowing embers. The addition of a little tinder and some patient blowing will almost always bring yesterday’s fire back to life. ötzi the Ice Man was discovered in the Italian Alps along with all of his equipment; this included a small birch bark container, blackened on the inside, that probably held a piece of glowing bracket fungus. Carried in this way, the smouldering ember could be carried some distance and then used to start a new fire.

  Over the Flames

  Spit Roasting

  It seems that the usual way of roasting fowl or large joints of meat was by turning on a spit over the fire. For most of the period the spit would have been a straight green bough, hopefully with a natural ‘crank’ at one end, that rested on two upright and Y-shaped (or forked) branches. In the Iron Age, however, elaborate firedogs were the fashion. These were iron stands in the shape of a single crossbar, close to the floor, that ended in a pair of upright pillars often topped with elegantly wrought animal heads. It is thought that the firedog served several purposes, the bar along the floor probably supporting firewood in the hearth, while a second bar spanning the gap from animal head to animal head, served as a spit. In our own work with an Iron Age firedog, the spit saw use both as a method to slow roast meat, but also as a pot hanger.

  Of course, even in the metal-rich world of the Iron Age, sinking that much iron into a single item would have been a great expenditure. Yet the firedog sat in the hearth, at the centre of the roundhouse, the focus of social life and something all visitors will have seen and admired. In the great and noble houses throughout history, the job of squatting by the fire and continuously rotating the spit was given to a slave or servant known as a turnspit. Modern electric rotisseries replace this drudgery, but in fact constant rotation of the spit is not absolutely necessary.

  Spit roasting is the most effective way of cooking large fatty or cylindrical-shaped foods, including whole birds, lamb legs, pork loins, and of course whole pig, lamb, or goat. The process will require several hours during which the cook must attend both to the rotation of the spit (which ensures even cooking) and also the fire. Prior to threading the iron spit through the meat, it may necessary to first tie up a roast or bird with either wet string or fresh cordage, in order to keep it compact and symmetrical. Wooden skewers can also be used to impale the joint which pass through a hole that has been bored into the spit itself. Without these measures a poorly mounted piece of meat may not turn at all, but simply hang over the fire, the spit rotating futilely through its centre. Smaller animals such as squirrel or hare, (once gutted) will instead need to be laid onto the spit with legs tied together.

  Iron firedogs from Lords Bridge, Barton, Cambridgshire. This utilitarian kitchen furniture actually formed the centrepiece of any wealthy roundhouse family.

  Hardwoods are needed as fuel for this type of roasting, and the fire should be lit at least one hour before the meat goes into the spit. The rule of thumb when building an effective fire for spit roasting is that the embers should provide a moderate level of heat. To test this, the cook should be able to hold his hand over the embers at the level of the spit for at least three seconds. Once the meat is roasting over the embers the spit can be turned a little at a time, and a strategically placed stick used to lock the crank end in place. By slowly turning the spit incrementally and the careful positioning of coals beneath the spit, the meat can be slowly and evenly roasted.

  Our own spit roasting concentrated on p
oultry, and at no time did we employ a drip tray. This is something recommended by most modern cooks, since the juices that run out of the cooking meat can be used to make a delicious gravy—they should not be wasted. However, we lacked a suitable prehistoric container in which to catch the juices and had to let them drip into the hearth. Locating the firedog at the front of the hearth is a sensible move since it gives the cook more control of the heat. A central fire can be maintained near the back and hot embers pulled toward the spit at the front as and when needed. Fresh fuel will be added to the back of the fire so that it does not interfere with the spit and the bed of embers below it. The firedog used in our own experiments was a little too high for our purposes and so required a strong fire with flames in order to adequately cook the roast.

  One advantage of the spit roast process is the opportunity to smoke the meat as it cooks. Hardwood chips can be tossed into the embers at frequent intervals, creating smoke that adds additional flavour to the turning meat. Since the idea is to create smoke and not to simply burn up these woodchips, they must be soaked in water for an hour or two prior to use. Aromatic woods are ideal for this process such as cherry, apple, alder, or oak.

  Hanging a Leg of Lamb

  Some cuts of meat are simply the wrong shape for the spit. A leg of lamb, for example, is wide and heavy at one end, narrowing to the bone at the other, yet the joint can still be roasted over the hearth. The trick is to suspend the leg of lamb from a wooden tripod, using strong twine. With the bone serving as a strong anchor point, the joint can be easily hoisted into a position over the embers and it will spin with little provocation. The heat is most intense at the widest part of the joint while the slender end faces away from the coals, thus receiving a lot less heat. Of course this is a perfect combination and the narrow end of the leg of lamb should be cooked through by the time the bulk of the meat is ready. The tripod may simply be formed from three poles lashed together, each one roughly the height of a man. All of the advice given for spit roasting is pertinent here; carefully manage the fire and the coal bed to ensure the meat receives as much heat as needed, but no more and no less.