Please do not try exploring the Barbarian World yourself with a spade. Freelance excavation is illegal in just about every European country. Permits for archaeological investigation are issued by the authorities to accountable organizations. If you require contact with artefacts in the soil, you should find an archaeological project that accepts volunteers. The reader of this book will appreciate that ancient objects are only informative when the context of the find is recorded. Digging in the style of nineteenth-century antiquarians destroys key archaeological evidence.
Yet hardly a month passes without a new discovery of barbarian treasure by non-archaeologists being reported in the press. Many are the result of accidental finds during construction, which normally results in work being halted until archaeologists can investigate. The accidental discovery of objects and sites goes back to the very beginning of archaeology, and we have seen repeatedly how important discoveries have been made in this fashion. Often, such as in the case of the Dover Boat, important finds can be studied in the field and removed quickly for conservation. At other times, they trigger multi-year investigations.
At several points in this book, the discovery of sites by hobbyists using metal detectors has been mentioned. This might seem to contradict the statement above about the general illegality of freelance excavation. Laws about using metal detectors vary widely from country to country. In some countries, such as Luxembourg, unauthorized searching is illegal. Elsewhere, the laws are somewhat vague, in that they prohibit unauthorized searching specifically for archaeological finds or at known archaeological sites, but searching for modern coins and jewellery is considered to be acceptable. The trouble is that the metal detector cannot differentiate between a coin from 1990 and a bronze torc. This legal grey area means that metal detecting is a widespread hobby in much of Europe.
Unlike in the United States where metal detector users are reviled by professional archaeologists, a positive working relationship has emerged in some European countries between the archaeological community and metal-detectorists. Sites such as Uppåkra in Sweden have been mentioned in previous chapters as places in which this relationship has yielded good results. In Britain, it is recognized that objects might be found during activities such as gardening or walking as well as by metal detecting. The 1997 Portable Antiquities Scheme provides a way for gardeners (and metal detector users) to bring finds to the attention of the authorities and enable them to be documented.15 Finders of treasure, defined as objects (excluding isolated unmodified coins) of which any part is gold or silver more than 300 years old, may receive a reward. Archaeologists are not eligible to collect.
Visiting the Barbarians
The most direct way of connecting with the Barbarian World is through the artefacts made by its inhabitants, the sites where they lived and buried their dead and, in some cases, the remains of the people themselves. Europe is full of archaeological museums as well as preserved and reconstructed sites. A complete guide to the museums and sites of the Barbarian World is beyond the scope of this book, but they can be found listed in every guidebook. Detailed national maps, particularly Ordnance Survey maps of the British Isles, often show site locations. Archaeological sites and museums are major tourist attractions, and reconstructions of prehistoric settlements are promoted by local authorities to encourage the growth of tourist services like restaurants and lodging.
Given the pride of these countries in their archaeological heritage, it is no surprise that many national museums have extensive displays of prehistoric objects excavated from the settlements, burials and bogs of their countries. You can start with major national museums, such as the National Museum of Ireland, the British Museum, the National Museum of Denmark, the Musée d’Archéologie Nationale in France and the State Museum of Antiquities in the Netherlands, but every large town across temperate Europe will have an archaeological museum. Archaeological exhibits are often combined with displays about natural history, such as the Lower Saxony Landesmuseum in Hannover or the Natural History Museum in Vienna. Elsewhere, museums are specifically devoted to regional archaeology, such as the Museum of Archaeology in Kraków, Poland, or local archaeology, like the Museum Hallstatt in Hallstatt, Austria.
Reconstructed Iron Age buildings, with mud-brick wall behind them, at the Heuneburg. Note the four-post granary between the two buildings on the right.
In the countryside, many archaeological sites and open-air museums are open to visitors. Some sites, like Loughcrew in Ireland, are unattended, and the visitor can simply wander among the passage graves. Hillforts and oppida are usually open for walking around, and ship settings, like the one at Anundshög in Sweden, are right by the side of the road. Others, such as Stonehenge, offer the visitor a structured experience with more interpretive guidance, but usually with an admission charge.
In some cases, replicas of prehistoric structures have been built on top of the ancient site, such as at Biskupin in Poland or the Heuneburg in Germany. This practice is now frowned upon in heritage management since it can potentially damage the original remains. Elsewhere, archaeological sites have been reconstructed adjacent to the original sites, or in different locations altogether. Often this is in the name of ‘experimental archaeology’, the reconstruction of ancient things and structures to see how much work they entail, whether or not they stand up, and how they wear over time. Well-known examples of reconstructed ancient villages are Butser Farm in England and Lejre in Denmark. Often re-enactors inhabit these sites and attempt to live as barbarians. Biskupin hosts an annual Archaeological Festival at which visitors can experience ancient cuisine and watch demonstrations of barbarian activities.
Finally, a direct connection with the Barbarian World can be made by spending a moment with one of the people who inhabited it. Tollund Man resides in a display case in the Silkeborg Museum in central Jutland, while Grauballe Man is nearby in Aarhus. Lindow Man’s body can be seen in the British Museum, and the National Museum in Dublin has what remains of Oldcroghan Man and Clonycavan Man. The occupants of the Bronze Age oak coffin burials can be seen in the National Museum in Copenhagen. Perhaps the most famous prehistoric corpse is that of Ötzi, the Iceman, who is in the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, Italy. After roaming through well-done exhibits that show the objects found with Ötzi in the slush-filled gully, visitors file by a climate-controlled compartment in which he reposes. His contorted and shrivelled mummified corpse can be seen through a small window, his hollow eyes eerily gazing back at the viewer. Although it feels a bit like a wake, visiting Ötzi is an excellent opportunity to feel a connection with the most famous representative of the fourth millennium BC in the twenty-first century AD.
In fact, a visitor might want to try an Ötzi product. There is Ötzi bread made with primeval grains. Ötzi pizza periodically makes an appearance in pizza parlours in the Alps. You can purchase the records of DJ Ötzi (stage name of Gerhard Fridle), an Austrian entertainer from the Tyrol. Perhaps the most memorable product bearing the Iceman’s image is Ötzi ‘ice and fire liqueur’, whose manufacturer, the Tirol Herbal Distillery, says that it is ‘A tightrope walk from one highlight to the next! A mysteriously fruity fire liqueur with “ice crystals” – delicious and stimulating, invigorating the senses.’ You can drink it either neat, with ice or in a cocktail. Since Ötzi liqueur is 100 proof (50 per cent alcohol), it can be set on fire for a dramatic effect.
The Barbarian World today
After attending a NATO summit on 5 September 2014, u.s. President Barack Obama made a detour to visit Stonehenge. USA Today reports that he said, ‘How cool is this? It’s spectacular. It’s a special place.’16 Despite his not having demonstrated a prior fascination with prehistoric Europe, Obama’s trip to visit an iconic prehistoric monument demonstrates the hold that the Barbarian World exercises over the popular imagination. The challenge for those who study these societies is to situate them in their context as known from archaeology and texts so they can be appreciated for their immense contribu
tion to the human story.
Archaeological evidence continually increases in volume and complexity. Always remember that it presents only a fragmentary view of past life, a jigsaw puzzle with most pieces missing and no picture on the box. Unlike history, in which a primary source discovered centuries ago does not change except in its interpretation and its relationship to newly found sources, an archaeological find from an uncertain context actually can decrease in significance as new objects are discovered using better methods. New analytical techniques can take old finds and give them new life. Who could have foreseen a century ago that the girl in the Egtved coffin would now be able to tell us her story of movement and nutrition?
Ötzi ‘ice and fire liqueur’ exemplifies how the Iceman excites the modern imagination.
New archaeological discoveries are continually made throughout the Barbarian World. The most sensational of these find their way into the press, often with the assistance of press releases from communications offices at universities, museums and government agencies. Many have been highlighted in this book, including the recent discoveries at Stonehenge, Must Farm, Lavau and Sandby Borg. Other discoveries in the field and in the lab are not sufficiently surprising or unusual to merit press coverage, but rather provide small glimpses of life in the Barbarian World which eventually add up to one or two additional pieces to the jigsaw puzzle.
Melting snow and ice patches in the mountains of Scandinavia have revealed hundreds of new prehistoric finds. These objects were left behind by hunters and trappers who pursued game animals that congregated on these patches, especially during the summer. In 2011, archaeologists found a crumpled-up piece of fabric on the edge of an ice patch at Lendbreen, southern Norway.17 When unfolded, it turned out to be a tunic, which was revealed by radiocarbon dating to have been made between AD 230 and 390. Its wool had been carefully selected to include both long, coarse fibres and fine, delicate fibres. It was skilfully woven into a diamond-pattern twill especially suited to high-altitude cold-weather wear, the North Face jacket of its day. Diamond twills are known from waterlogged weapon deposits such as those at Illerup Ådal and are frequently encountered in preserved textiles from the Roman World. Was the person whose tunic was found at Lendbreen a warrior, perhaps someone who had returned from Roman service, rather than a simple mountain hunter?
The Lendbreen tunic might not look spectacular. Yet the amount of information that can be extracted from a simple discovery like this helps connect more dots that make up our understanding of the Barbarian World. More objects remain to be discovered under the fields and bogs of temperate Europe, in its mountain recesses and especially off its coasts. Not all the Iron Age princely burials have been found, nor has the last weapon deposit been excavated. Even new megalithic tombs are sometimes revealed as peat and turf are peeled away. In the laboratory, new techniques from analytical chemistry and archaeogenetics will lead to fresh insights. The archaeological record will become even more complex, and interpretations will surely change. Additional ways will be found to incorporate the Barbarian World into a usable past for modern societies, some for the good, and unfortunately others for unsavoury purposes. Barbarians live on in the modern world, not just in museums but in the imaginations of all who inhabit or visit their ancient lands.
The tunic from approximately AD 300 as found in the ice patch at Lendbreen, Norway.
REFERENCES
INTRODUCTION
1 Archaeologists generally continue to use ‘BC’ and ‘AD’ as chronological markers, despite their obvious origins in Christian belief. Many authors now use ‘BCE’ for ‘Before the Christian Era’ and ‘CE’ for Christian Era, or even ‘Common Era’ (common to whom?), in an effort towards religious neutrality. The use of the traditional BC and AD in this book is mainly for consistency with scholarly literature both past and present. The ending date of AD 500 for this book was chosen somewhat arbitrarily, roughly corresponding to the collapse of the Roman Empire in the West.
2 Let me explain. The reference is to the play within Mel Brooks’s movie and musical The Producers (1968 and 2001), and Arminius was the German chief who defeated the Romans in the Teutoberg Forest in AD 9.
3 Sometimes given as ‘history will be kind to me because I intend to write it,’ although there is no indication that Churchill actually said that. The above anecdote is given in Clifton Fadiman, The Little, Brown Book of Anecdotes (Boston, MA, 1985), p. 122.
4 An outstanding account of the origins and impact of the Three-age System is provided by Peter Rowley-Conwy, From Genesis to Prehistory: The Archaeological Three Age System and its Contested Reception in Denmark, Britain, and Ireland (Oxford, 2007).
5 Grahame Clark, Prehistoric Europe: The Economic Basis (London, 1952), pp. 10–11.
6 The first use of ‘luminous’ to describe areas that stand out in the archaeological record is found in Gordon Barclay, ‘Introduction: A Regional Agenda?’, in Defining a Regional Neolithic: The Evidence from Britain and Ireland, ed. Kenneth Brophy and Gordon Barclay (Oxford, 2009), p. 4. I have expanded the concept to the rest of Europe and the remainder of later prehistory.
1 HUNTERS, FISHERS, FARMERS AND METALWORKERS
1 The story of the Amesbury Archer, his ‘Companion’ and the Boscombe Bowmen, from discovery through analysis, is contained in Andrew P. Fitzpatrick, The Amesbury Archer and the Boscombe Bowmen: Bell Beaker Burials on Boscombe Down, Amesbury, Wiltshire (Salisbury, 2011).
2 Recent innovations in the application of analytical chemistry have yielded important insights for archaeologists, as we will see several more times in this book. Isotopes are different forms of the same element depending on the number of neutrons in their nuclei. Isotopes of oxygen vary depending on weather patterns and moisture. Isotopes of strontium vary in their ratios in rocks of different ages and compositions. Soils formed from these rocks, water that flows through these soils, plants, that absorb the water, and eventually animals and people who eat the plants, absorb the strontium isotopes in the same ratios.
3 Archaeologists refer to the periods discussed in this chapter as the Mesolithic and the Neolithic. The Mesolithic refers to hunter-gatherers living in temperate Europe after the establishment of modern environmental conditions, while the Neolithic encompasses sedentary people who used domesticated plants and animals. Those terms are not used here, to avoid jargon.
4 Søren H. Andersen, Tybrind Vig: Submerged Mesolithic Settlements in Denmark (Aarhus, 2014), pp. 169–85.
5 Lars Larsson, ‘The Skateholm Project: Late Mesolithic Coastal Settlement in Southern Sweden’, in Case Studies in European Prehistory, ed. Peter Bogucki (Boca Raton, FL, 1993), pp. 31–62.
6 In domestication, selection means breeding plants and animals with desirable characteristics and eating the rest.
7 Although some details have changed in the last twenty years, an overview of the spread of farming in Europe can be found in Peter Bogucki, ‘The Spread of Early Farming in Europe’, American Scientist, 84 (May–June 1996), pp. 242–53, and with a more current academic treatment in Peter Bogucki, ‘Hunters, Fishers and Farmers of Northern Europe, 9000–3000 BCE’, in Colin and Paul Bahn, eds, The Cambridge World Prehistory, vol. III (Cambridge, 2014), pp. 1835–59.
8 Peter Bogucki, ‘The Largest Buildings in the World 7,000 Years Ago’, Archaeology, XLVIII/6 (1995), pp. 57–9.
9 Christian Meyer et al., ‘The Massacre Mass Grave of Schöneck-Kilianstädten Reveals New Insights into Collective Violence in Early Neolithic Central Europe’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, CXII/36 (2015), pp. 11217–22.
10 The story of the discovery and early interpretation of the Swiss Lake Dwellings can be found in Francesco Menotti, Wetland Archaeology and Beyond: Theory and Practice (Oxford, 2012), pp. 3–9.
11 Jörg Schibler, Stephanie Jacomet and Alice Choyke, ‘Arbon-Bleiche 3’, in Ancient Europe, 8000 BC–AD 1000: An Encyclopedia of the Barbarian World, vol. I, ed. Peter Bogucki and Pam J. Crabtree (New York, 2004), pp. 395–7.
12 Wolfram Schier, ‘Central and Eastern Europe’, in The Oxford Handbook of Neolithic Europe, ed. Chris Fowler, Jan Harding and Daniela Hofmann (Oxford, 2015), pp. 108–11.
13 A recent authoritative volume on prehistoric copper mining in Europe is William O’Brien, Prehistoric Copper Mining in Europe, 5500–500 BC (Oxford, 2014).
14 Every year new information about the Iceman becomes available. A readable account of his discovery and the first generation of analyses is Brenda Fowler, Iceman: Uncovering the Life and Times of a Prehistoric Man Found in an Alpine Glacier (New York, 2000). Recent studies have focused on the Iceman’s genome and various pathogens he carried. See, for example, Frank Maixner et al., ‘The 5300-year-old Helicobacter pylori Genome of the Iceman’, Science, CCCLI/6269 (2016), pp. 162–5, and V. Coia et al., ‘Whole Mitochondrial DNA Sequencing in Alpine Populations and the Genetic History of the Neolithic Tyrolean Iceman’, Scientific Reports, VI, 18932; DOI: 10.1038/srep18932 (2016).
15 Ötzi can be visited at the South Tyrol Museum of Archaeology in Bolzano, and the museum’s website has an extensive presentation of his equipment and clothing: www.iceman.it.
16 Although the poor preservation of his stomach mucosa does not permit this to be determined with certainty. See Maixner et al., ‘The 5300-year-old Helicobacter pylori Genome of the Iceman’, p. 164.
17 Klaus Oeggl et al., ‘The Reconstruction of the Last Itinerary of Ötzi, the Neolithic Iceman, by Pollen Analyses from Sequentially Sampled Gut Extracts’, Quaternary Science Reviews, XXVI/7 (2007), pp. 853–61.
18 Patrizia Pernter et al., ‘Radiologic Proof for the Iceman’s Cause of Death (ca. 5300 BP)’, Journal of Archaeological Science, XXXIV/11 (2007), pp. 1784–86.
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