by Paul Elliott
The Hochdorf ditches were first used to soak the barley grains in order to encourage them to sprout. Next the grains were dried when fires were lit at the ends of each ditch, this process would have passed on to the grains a dark colour and a smoky taste. When the barley malt was slow dried, lactic acid bacteria would have gotten to work, adding a sourness to the brew. Hops were not used to flavour these ancient beers, instead plants such as mugwort, elderberry, heather, wild carrot, or henbane were put to use, ingredients that we know were favoured by Medieval brewers centuries later.
Sitka suggested that honey or fruit may have been added to the ‘wort’ (or liquefied malt), which will have brought with it wild yeasts to trigger the fermentation process. The wort had to be heated slowly, and the best way Celtic brewers could achieve this was through the application of fire-heated stones. It is likely that the burnt mound structures found across Britain were actually used for brewing beer, as well as for cooking joints of meat. In 2009, David Chapman, who had excavated a burnt mound on the Lleyn peninsula in Wales, decided to brew beer using the burnt mound as a guide. In replicating the process, he intended to compare the debris that resulted with the remains that he had excavated the previous year.
Chapman began by setting a large oak trough, one quarter of the size of the original, into a pit that had been sealed with clay. The water used to fill it had to be sterilised and to do that a bonfire was lit over a large pile of stones. Once these stones began to change colour (a sign that they had reached the required temperature) they were raked from the ashes and dropped into the trough. Next the stones were returned to the fire, ready for the next step in the process. Brewer’s malted barley was drenched in some of the boiling water in order to release the starches within and then, once it had cooled sufficiently (60°C was considered sufficient) it was added to the water of the trough. This wort had to be held at 60°C for an hour and a half, and this was achieved by dropping in a heated pebble every ten minutes.
Chapman’s team added elderberries to the mix, not just to flavour the beer, but to kick-start the fermentation. The skin of elderberry is one of the best sources of wild yeast in Europe. As a backup, a measure of brewer’s yeast was also added. Other ingredients, including honey, rosehip, and blackberry, helped to flavour the beer.
At last the wort was strained through a fine cloth into wooden buckets, which were then set to cool in a nearby stream. After this, the contents were covered and the brew left to ferment for five days. In the true spirit of prehistoric reconstruction, Chapman did not throw out the mash that was left behind following the straining, instead he used it to bake bread on hot stones next to the fire. The beer produced at the end if this time consuming process amounted to seventy-seven pints of very drinkable light ale. What did the beer taste like? Experimental brewers like David Chapman are able to produce an ale without hops that has an unusual flavour, at least to the modern drinker, and a beer that is much cloudier than its modern equivalent, laden as it is with yeasty sediment.
Around the world today, beer is still produced by hand in small communities for purely local consumption. In the Tanzanian town of Manyara, just south of the Kenyan border, I was shown around a local drinking house. While most pubs and bars in the town served Western soft drinks or commercially produced bottled beers, this place brewed its own banana beer on site, using bananas from the plantation that I had just come from. A dusty courtyard contained the owner’s house as well as a small shack at the back and a circular shelter with a banana-leaf roof and assorted chairs. This ‘round house’ served as the bar’s main room.
My eye was attracted to the huge cauldron at the rear of the yard, within which a wort of banana beer was being slowly heated over a log fire. The brewer, a local Manyaran lady, stirred the wort continuously in the hot sun. The interior of the shack at the rear was small and dark, but it held a number of reused feed sacks, which were hanging from the roof. Each one contained a banana beer mash that was either being strained into a large aluminium pot, or had been strained and was now drying. It wasn’t just the roundhouse-like lounge-bar of the place that had me thinking about brewers in prehistoric Britain, it was the small scale nature of the operation. Many of her customers were workers from the banana co-operative next door and it was with bananas from that same plantation that she used to brew her beer.
Although I doubt that any Celtic village ever boasted a street cafe like that in Manyara, they will certainly have engaged in local beer brewing—the remains of burnt mound structures bear witness to this. Here is a small scale, family run brewery, operating with a wood fire and shoe-string resources, to bring beer to dozens of local people. In Manyara, the drinking was reward for a tough day in the sun or part of a weekend reverie, but in Celtic Britain, the brewing may have been simply another aspect of the community’s agricultural workload, along with hay harvests and lambing. Beer was needed throughout the year as a drink for the family, it was both nutritious and free from the bacteria, which could infect fresh water; however, beer would also play an important part in the community’s feasts and festivals.
Beer Flavourings
Although the term ‘beer’ is being used here, that drink is technically one made with the addition of hops. Before the introduction of beer-brewing and hops cultivation at the end of the fifteenth century, the native malted alcoholic drink of England was known as an ‘ale’. Hops provided a new and novel bitter taste; its popularity was not based on flavour alone, but also on its qualities of preservation that help to extend the life of beer. Prior to the sixteenth century, a variety of indigenous herbs and plants were used to flavour ale, and this combination of herbs was called ‘gruit’. In prehistory, the components of a gruit will have varied from region to region and from tradition to tradition. Medieval brewers could choose from a host of native ingredients to add to their ale including juniper berry, sweet gale, ground ivy, mugwort, seaweed, meadowsweet, elderberry, yarrow, horehound, heather, and even seaweed.
Mead
Mead predates both wine and beer and as such it represents the oldest known form of alcoholic drink in Europe. Since neither grapes nor cereal crop is required in its production it is likely that hunter-gatherer societies across Europe and Africa enjoyed this delicious drink. Mead is based around the fermentation of honey and seems to have been popular among the prehistoric societies of northern Europe, where wine production was always hampered by the climate. Elegant Beaker pottery that spread across Early Bronze Age Europe is thought to have brought with it both a taste for mead and a culture of mead drinking. Prior to the mechanized extraction of honey from the honeycomb in the nineteenth century, the combs were crushed and flushed with warm water in order to gain access to the honey within. The water that remained became the base for the production of mead. Classical writers Aristotle and Pliny both mention the drinking of mead and, although Romans generally favoured wine at their banquets, Columella published his own recipe for mead that used grape must as a base.
Mead drinking is associated with the Saxons and Vikings, who enjoyed the drink in their mead halls. Celtic chiefs and heroes were also fond of mead, as the British poet Taliesin attests in his poem called ‘Song to Mead’. Taliesin was a British poet and bard who lived around AD 600, two centuries after the end of Roman rule. Lines in the poem capture the love that the ancient Britons had for this drink:
May Maelgwn of Môn be drunk with mead and us likewise
From frothing horns of finest purest mead
Which bees collect but ne’er enjoy.
Mead refined, glistening is everywhere praised.
‘Song to Mead’, Book of Taliesin, 19
The drinking, feasting, and boasting of Celtic warriors who enjoyed the pleasures of their chief’s hospitality is conjured vividly in the mead hall of Din Eidyn (modern day Edinburgh) as it appears in Y Gododdin. This poem, written by Aneirin, a contemporary of Taliesin, refers to mead many times. The warriors loyal to
Mynyddog Mwynfawr, chief of the Gododdin tribe were treated to a whole year of feasting and mead-drinking before they launched a heroic attack on the rival kingdom of the Angles further south:
Men went to Catraeth at morn
Their high spirits lessened their life-span
They drank mead, gold and sweet, ensnaring;
For a year the minstrels were merry.
Red their swords, let the blades remain
Uncleansed, white shields and four-sided spearheads,
Before Mynyddog Mwynfawr’s men.
Aneirin, ‘Y Gododdin’ 13
Epilogue
The Roman Invasion
Boiled Chicken in its own Broth:
Crush pepper, cumin, a little thyme, fennel seed, mint, rue and asafoetida root, moisten with vinegar and add dates. Work well and make it savoury with honey, vinegar, broth and oil to taste: the boiled chicken properly cleaned and dried is covered with this sauce.
Apicius 6
With the arrival of the Roman army in AD 43, the everyday diet of the British people was transformed forever. Officers and administrators brought with them their beliefs and fashions as well as their tastes in food. No doubt they dined well, just as they had been accustomed to, with their cooks taking recipes and culinary tips from the book of Apicius, a Roman gourmet. Along with these administrators came Roman spices and herbs, such as cumin, pepper, and thyme and an entire kitchen-full of new vegetables and fruits that would all eventually take root in British soil. Romanization meant the adoption of Roman customs and ways of living in the new Roman towns that had been established following the conquest and pacification of Britain. Roman foods were in demand, not just in the street cafes and taverns of Londinium and Verulamium, but in peoples’ homes.
New Tastes, New Crops
Of course the biggest impact on British palates would be the exotic spices and fragrant herbs that now reached the British Isles from all parts of the Roman Empire and beyond. Pepper, ginger, saffron, and cumin came from the East, whilst thyme, dill, fennel, rosemary, and sage were transported from the Mediterranean. With these flavourings, dishes began to take on a whole new dimension and with the addition of both honey and wine vinegar (often together in the same recipe), they could boast a uniquely Roman sweet-and-sour quality.
Throughout the Roman occupation of Britain, however, these spices and herbs always remained an exotic import. Although they did have their role to play in the new Roman diet, it must have been the vegetables that were introduced to British farmers that had the greatest impact in the countryside. Here were new foods and new crops, and they could be grown on British farms. We have the Romans to thank for cabbage, parsnip, broad bean, beetroot, radish, asparagus, and an improved (edible) variety of carrot. Excavations at Silchester have uncovered evidence for the consumption and probable cultivation of all these vegetables. Celery seeds were also found there as well as at sites further north. Some foods, like lettuce and cucumber, which today we consider to be a salad food, were introduced by the Romans as something to be cooked before eating. The cabbage was a particular favourite of Roman diners and there were more than a dozen varieties. Cato asserted that it is ‘the cabbage which surpasses all other vegetables; it promotes digestion marvellously and is an excellent laxative’ (Cato, On Agriculture, 156).
Fruits were also imported to Britain and they have remained here ever since. Plums and cherries left behind stones, which have been found at places like Doncaster, London, and Chew Park in Gloucestershire. Other fruits included pears, mulberries, gooseberries, and new varieties of apple that were far more edible than the sour native crab apple. Techniques of grafting were well-known to Roman farmers and the new species would have been grafted onto indigenous crab apple trees.
There were some fruits that could not make a permanent transition across the Channel. Figs were eaten with relish in Roman Britain, as the many fig seeds at Silchester, York, and Verulamium attest. Dates have also been found in Colchester (carbonised in the destructive fires set by Boudiccan rebels). Both fruits were dried and imported in large amphorae. While almonds and walnuts only ever made their way to Britain in the holds of cargo ships, the chestnut was cultivated successfully in Roman Britain and has remained a part of the British diet ever since. Chestnuts were eaten raw, but could also be fed to animals or ground into flour and used in baking.
Olive oil certainly influenced the diet of Romanised Britons. It replaced lard for cooking and tallow as a method of fuelling lamps. Of course, olive oil also features as an ingredient in many of the Apician dishes. Like dried figs and dates, the oil was shipped across to Britain in bulk, sealed in large clay amphorae that were stacked on the decks of Gallic sailing ships. These hard-wearing pottery vessels also introduced another Roman delicacy to the British palate—garum, or fish sauce. This popular condiment actually came in a number of grades: liquamen, garum, muria, and allec, all of which were the product of fermenting the guts and off-cuts of fish in the Mediterranean sun. Garum resembled the nuoc mam or nam pla that features so centrally within Vietnamese and Thai cookery. Evidence from amphorae shards found at London, Colchester, York, and Gloucester indicate that garum was certainly part of the Romano-British diet.
Although some wines might have been made by prehistoric Britons using the native fruits available to them, the ancient Greek and Roman authors make it clear that the drink of the Celts was beer. That changed with the coming of Rome, and those that could afford it now drank wines imported from southern Gaul, Hispania, and other parts of the Mediterranean. One amphora tag, found at Richborough fort in southern England, had come from vineyards growing on the slopes of Mount Vesuvius, on the Bay of Naples. Wine also arrived from other parts of Italy, from Rhodes, and (later) from vineyards in North Africa. The numerous shards of excavated wine amphorae suggest that much of this wine trade passed through the port of Londinium. In addition to the amphorae, wooden barrels were used to carry wine from supplier to buyer across parts of northern Europe. Several barrel staves were found at the Roman fort of Vindolanda, some of which carried inscriptions that indicated a source for the wine in Gaul or the German Rhineland. Archaeologists have searched for evidence of viticulture in Roman Britain, but most of the finds have been somewhat ambiguous. The best evidence so far has been that of grapevine pollen found in soil at Wollaton, Nottinghamshire, and at Irchester, Somerset.
Romanisation among the Britons was neither inevitable nor complete. Those tribes forced to relocate from hill forts into towns readily adopted Roman customs, fashions, and habits. Those Britons living in the countryside, tending crops and flocks away from Roman villa estates and the bustle of city life, remained relatively untouched. Taxes had to be paid, of course, and, like any community in a developing nation today, there were always useful new products that could be purchased from the townsfolk. Roman-style pottery replaced Iron Age ware, for example, and imported vegetable crops like cabbage and lettuce began to appear in the pollen record.
Roman Farming
Just as cattle and sheep crossed the Channel at the beginning of the Neolithic, they began to do so again under Roman rule. This time improved varieties were introduced. White-fleeced sheep were set to graze on the uplands of Britain, replacing the brown-fleeced Soay and Mouflon-type breeds of the prehistoric period. The white fleeces were popular amongst Romano-British farmers since they made dying much easier and put more meat on the table.
In the area of improved technologies, the large two-handed scythe allowed for a much greater quantity of hay to be harvested efficiently. There were metallurgical improvements in axes, sickles, spades, saws, and mattocks, making work a little easier—and therefore faster. The new breeds of sheep required shears with which to shear them, and Roman spring-loaded iron shears were introduced to fulfil this role.
Perhaps the greatest innovation was the use of a heavier type of plough with a coulter for cutting into the soil and with a share and m
ould board, which enabled the furrow to be turned. This will have allowed Romano-British farmers to open up new areas of farmland. Although most farmers had previously been engaged in purely subsistence agriculture, the existence of a market, with thousands of hungry city dwellers and soldiers in garrison, would have spurred on new land clearance. Following Julius Caesar’s raids on the south east of Britain and the imposition of a corn requisition on the local tribes, wheat soon became one of Britain’s main exports as the natives began to open up previously uncultivated farmland. The annona militaris, or corn tax, forced some of this increased wheat production. Subsistence farmers now had to farm more land and produce more wheat just in order to fulfil their obligations to the annona militaris. Those with extra capacity were able to extend their production still further, leading to a profitable asset.
That farmers could improve their lot is proven in the archaeology of Roman villas, many of which began life as small rectangular Roman-style cottages. Over the course of several generations these expanded to become impressive villa complexes in their own right. Some of these great farming estates were not the country seat of a wealthy Roman nobleman, or of some Romanized chief, but the hard-won fruits of a family farm that had prospered through the decades. Villas were an unfamiliar sight to prehistoric eyes, but they would eventually spread across the length and breadth of southern and central Britain. Typically associated mainly with an impressive tiled building, often with one or more wings, a bathhouse, underfloor heating, and an impressive mosaic floor, villas were actually farming estates, akin to the manor houses of the eighteenth century.
