Food and Farming in Prehistoric Britain

by Paul Elliott

  In the rest of Europe, warriors of the Late Bronze Age Urnfield culture produced bronze helmets, leg defences, and even breastplates for their warriors to wear into battle. Communication links across the length of Europe had never been better and Urnfield military equipment is very reminiscent of the type of arms and armour being used in Mycenaean Greece at this time. It has been suggested the Homeric duels between Greek warriors were a common feature of Late Bronze Age warfare across Europe. Bronze weaponry served as a symbol of social status, but was certainly used to wage war between communities, clans, and tribes. The skeletons of two men, found at Tormarton, Somerset, both displayed savage spear wounds, to the pelvis of one and through the spinal cord of the other.

  Iron, a new metal that could be obtained from a number of different sources, was on the horizon. In fact, some iron tools were already being produced during Britain’s Late Bronze Age, but metal production and the trade in raw materials was still focussed on copper and tin. When the widespread adoption of iron did occur, c. 700 BC, the fabric of British society and the pattern of settlement seems to have continued unabated. Indeed, taking a broad view of events in prehistory, the Middle and Late Bronze Ages seem to have formed the beginnings of a society that continued into the Iron Age. The new metal did not revolutionize British society. The real revolution had been agricultural and it had occurred back in 1500 BC.

  Iron Age (700 BC to AD 43)

  The Britain of the Late Bronze Age continued to develop, even as new methods of metal production took hold. Iron was now ubiquitous and even replaced the flint tools that had continued in use throughout the Bronze Age.

  By 500 BC, hill forts existed right across Britain—close to 3,300 have so far been identified, many of which were built on prominent hills. Their position harkens back to those rows of Beaker barrows that sat up on high ridges, intended to be visible for miles around, not just to their builders in the farmland below, but also to travellers and neighbouring communities. Hill forts had this same intended purpose, to impress, to intimidate, and to carry with them the pride of the tribe that had built them. Chiefs and kings certainly existed when the Roman invasion took place, but these powerful leaders seem to have arisen as the Iron Age matured. Hill forts were fortified settlements, yet most of the roundhouses built within the ramparts are of roughly the same size. Nothing like an Iron Age palace or ‘great hall’ has ever been found at one of these sites, suggesting that, if there were warlords and chieftains earlier in the period, then they must have had some kind of mandate from the tribe. Like the building of causewayed enclosures or henges, these great hill forts would have required vast amounts of labour, provided by the communities that would use them. It is doubtful that the people ‘lived in their shadow’ as an Egyptian peasant might have looked up at the pyramids of Giza from his remote and humble place in the world. All the evidence suggests that hill settlements were used by the communities around them. When finds from large sites, like Danebury, are compared with much humbler dwellings, it is quite striking how similar they are. Spinning, leatherwork, bread making, weaving, pottery, and metalworking all took place at the greatest of hill forts, just as they did in roundhouses and villages across Britain. Clues to the hill fort’s other activities have also been detected at Danebury; a collection of stone weights as well as iron ingots (known as ‘currency bars’) suggests these settlements served an important economic role as trading centres.

  Over time a number of hill forts were abandoned while other sites were extended, enlarged, and aggrandized with multiple rampart defences of ditch and bank. Although a few of the interior spaces remained quite bare of dwellings, most were populated with roundhouses and some, like Danebury and Maiden Castle, could easily be described as towns. Typically, a hill fort featured two gateways at opposite ends of the enclosure. The steep-sided bank was frequently faced with timber or sometimes drystone walling, both as a statement and as a reinforcement. Around these rapidly growing social centres, large tribal areas began to coalesce and are visible in some of the pottery types of the Iron Age, which begin to show regional variations. These tribal units are given definite form, and even name, by the Romans prior to their arrival in AD 43.

  Early Iron Age pottery from All Cannings Cross, Wiltshire. (A. Wilkins)

  It is easy to focus on the growing numbers of hill forts and the development of the large tribal entities that faced Julius Caesar and Aulus Plautius, but earlier Bronze Age trends continued. Extensive field systems had been laid out after c. 1500 BC, but in the Iron Age there is evidence from parts of southern Britain that territories were brought under even tighter control. Around Hampshire and Wiltshire, for example, long boundary ditches were dug to encompass large tracts of farmland. One of these ditches, running past Quarley hill fort, can be traced for up to 11 km. A number of these new ditch divisions terminate at hill forts, one of which is the 2-km stretch that connects the valley of the River Test to the hill settlement at Danebury. Taken together with other evidence, it is clear that Britain’s population had increased dramatically since the Early Bronze Age. Innovations in metalworking had led to gradual efficiencies in agriculture that enabled the landscape to support many more people. Field boundaries had become necessary as conflict between communities that now existed closer than ever before soon became a part of life. While the hill forts and swords of the Bronze Age suggest that communities were going on the defensive, the warlike and battle-ready culture that emerged at the end of the Iron Age illustrates just how intensive the population pressures were becoming in the centuries leading up to the Roman invasion.

  I have used the term hill fort quite liberally here; many communities in the British Iron Age built monuments that were certainly not hill forts, but must have played much the same role. In the north-east, hill forts are rare and much smaller ‘fortified homesteads’ were the norm, while in the eastern counties, from the East Riding of Yorkshire south to the Thames valley and East Anglia, the local people settled instead in large villages. The rugged Scottish landscape gave rise to a completely different form of Iron Age settlement. The roundhouse concept was adapted and reimagined in stone. Brochs are the famous drystone towers that include galleries within the thickness of their walls. They show a sophisticated knowledge of architecture in stone and often feature attached enclosures that were also built of the same material. Other northern building types include hill forts as in the lowland zone, but also duns, which are drystone fortifications that represent a single homestead, and wheelhouses, which are round houses in stone with internal radial subdivisions (like the spokes of a wheel). Finally, some of the Iron Age clans and tribes constructed artificial islands known as crannogs to serve as platforms for offshore dwellings. Whatever the form that settlements took, the trend throughout the Iron Age was for the construction of the permanent and visually dominant homestead.

  Between 200 BC and 100 BC, the process of enlarging and elaborating hill forts stopped. In the south of England a number of lowland settlements were established instead that seem to have served a definite commercial or trading purpose. These open settlements are called oppida after a term used by Julius Caesar for similar sites that he had seen in Gaul. Oppida, like those at Wheathampstead, Winchester, and Bigbury are typically surrounded by a series of defensive earthworks; at many of these sites, Iron Age coins were also minted, further emphasizing their commercial importance. The oppida represent the beginnings of an urban system that was fully exploited by the Roman invaders and several Roman cities were established on, or close to, the site of abandoned Iron Age oppida.

  Rome and Roman influence was felt in Britain many decades before a legionary ever set foot on British soil. Between 150 BC and 55 BC, Roman amphorae begin appearing on hill fort sites in Hampshire and around the Solent. By the late first century and the period of Julius Caesar’s expeditions to Britain, amphorae are instead found further east, in Kent and Essex. Writing around this time, the Roman writer Strabo lists Britain’
s exports as ‘grain, cattle, gold, silver and iron … also hides and slaves and dogs that are by nature suited to the purposes of the chase’. In return for these commodities, the British tribes of the south took delivery of amphorae full of Roman wine and sets of Roman dinner plates. Hengistbury Head, overlooking Christchurch harbour, seems to have been an important entrepôt early on, a place where slaves and grain and wolfhounds were assembled before being shipped across the Channel by Gallic boat-owners. Fig seeds and unworked examples of yellow and purple glass found at the port tell us that other exotic goods were also being brought across for resale to the tribes. Might these new expensive imports have something to do with the rise of the powerful chiefdoms faced by Caesar’s armies? Like bronze before it, Roman produce could only be afforded by the wealthy and marked those families out as a distinct elite. Exotic goods served as gifts to loyal war bands, and chiefs giving greater gifts could command ever larger war bands. Status and power, perhaps driven by the exotic produce arriving from Gaul, became important factors in the new tribal system.

  Dating from the early first century BC, this type of pottery was originally manufactured in Armorica, northern France, before being imported into southern Britain. (A. Wilkins)

  It was said that the Britons resembled their Gaulish neighbours very closely, and so there are many details of life and society recorded by Roman writers like Julius Caesar and Tacitus that shed light on Late Iron Age Britain. Caesar makes a clear distinction between the wealthy noble families and the common poor. He states that the common man is bound in service to members of the aristocracy in an almost feudal manner.

  A chief could expect certain obligations from the poorer families bound to him, and he in return had certain duties and responsibilities. Ties to other clans and tribes could be maintained through marriage, as in other cultures, but also through the fostering of sons who were brought up by their adoptive parents until manhood. Such ties were needed, because both Gauls and Britons were known to be boastful, warlike, and eager for battle. Too often this martial ardour was directed at a neighbouring tribe, with the result that long running feuds could develop. Tacitus remarks:

  Now they are distracted between the warring factions of rival chiefs. Indeed nothing has helped [the Romans] more in fighting against this powerful nation [of Britain] than their ability to co-operate. It is but seldom that two or three states unite to repel a common danger; thus, fighting in separate groups, all are conquered.

  Accounts of the Roman conquest of Britain bear this out. Prior to Caesar’s first expedition in 55 BC, the chief of the Catuvellauni, a man called Cassivellaunus, had been in a continual state of war with the other tribes and had even defeated his neighbours, the Trinovantes, forcing them to submit to him. No doubt because of Cassivellaunus’s talent for warfare, the British tribes had elected him as their commander-in-chief for their campaign against the Romans. Caesar soon left Britain, to be murdered in Rome a decade later, but when the legions returned again in AD 43, the main force marched straight for the Catuvellauni homeland. This was where the centre of power in Late Iron Age Britain lay, where the most pugnacious warlords hounded their neighbours. It was also the region where most of the ‘Dressel 1B’ Roman amphora were found—imports of luxury wine from the continent that could be dated to around the time of Cassivellaunus.

  With the British tribes unable or unwilling to work together, hill forts were defeated piecemeal across southern England. Tribes further north, like the Brigantes and Parisi, remained pro-Roman—for as long as they could. Inevitably, the legions were drawn northward and when the giant confederation of the Brigantes suffered a change of ruler, a war of pacification in the north finally led to the end of a free Britain south of the Solway-Tyne frontier. The Scottish tribes, hidden away in their highland territories, proved tougher to conquer; the final attempt being left half finished by the sick emperor Septimius Severus in AD 211. Henceforth Hadrian’s Wall, constructed a century earlier, would mark out the edge of Rome’s most westerly frontier: Britannia.

  2

  Survival in the Mesolithic

  Only when I am sleeping I am not a hunter. I am a hunter all the time I am awake. That is what I am and who I am. I kill animals for meat.

  Gonga, a Hadza tribesman

  Rising out of the morning mists across the lake rose the sun, burning orange like an ember on the camp fire. As if to herald its coming the birds of the forest had erupted into song, but as the sun rose higher into the pale sky, their cries began to slowly subside. Nothing moved, there was no sound. Shadowy forest lined the lakeside as far as the eye could follow.

  Suddenly the flat calm of the vast lake was broken. A grey heron, silent and majestic, lifted clear of its perch within a reed bed. It swept low over the water with broad wings beating, and its long legs trailing behind. Ripples spread out from the reed bed.

  Something had disturbed the heron, and the two brothers watched carefully for signs of movement. Yes, now they could see the elk drinking from the lake, but well hidden within the reeds. The elk had been cornered two days ago and shot with arrows, but he was strong and would take several days to die. The hunters were desperate not to lose him, for the meat of the beast would feed their families for a week or more. The men moved quickly along the edge of the birch woods with the intention of cutting of the elk’s path of retreat from the shore.

  Perhaps of all the periods of British history, the Mesolithic is the most entrancing and also the most enigmatic. However, it is also relatively unknown to the layman, who may recognise the mammoth hunters of the Ice Age, and the technological wizardry of the early Stonehenge builders, but not realise that there is a vast gulf of human prehistory that separates them—something like 4,000 years or the equivalent of 160 human generations. Of the entire human occupation in the British Isles, from the time the glaciers of the Ice Age retreated up until today, the Mesolithic takes up an extraordinary two-fifths.

  At its start, as the ice retreated and the frozen wastes from the Cotswolds to the Cairngorms began to give way to forest, human hunters and their families moved in to prey upon the forest animals. The Mesolithic communities became part of the natural world, unlike their descendants, who would simply exploit it. Without towns or villages, metal tools, agriculture, writing, beasts of burden, or formal government, the families and clans of Britain lived out those 160 generations, moving through the forest, hunting deer and wild cattle, gathering berries, herbs and nuts, camping, and then moving on. This way of life sustained the human population and left few discernible marks on the natural environment.

  The Lost Lake

  In some places the Mesolithic hunters did leave behind some evidence of their lives, though that evidence is often slight. One place is Star Carr, North Yorkshire, a Mesolithic encampment that sat on the shores of a large lake in the wide Vale of Pickering. The lake was formed from water melted out of the retreating Ice Age glaciers, but today it is lost, along with the birch wood forests that surrounded it. Today a modern field system sliced by drainage ditches stands as mute testimony to the forgotten lake of the Mesolithic.

  Excavations conducted in 1949–51 revealed a well-preserved bed of branches and brushwood that extended out from the shore into the reed bed. This platform was associated with flint-knapping and the working of antler and the flint was taken from the nearby Yorkshire Wolds as well as the beaches of Flamborough Head. Scatters of flint were found around the lake shore and also on several small islands. Of course, if people were living on islands this implies that they had the skills to build their own boats, and Clark’s team discovered a wooden paddle. No boats have yet been found, but it is likely that the hunters built either cow skin coracles or canoes dug out of logs.

  Thirty years later a more substantial timber platform was discovered to the east of Clark’s brushwood camp and more recent work has extended the Mesolithic presence all along the shoreline and further back on the tree-lined slopes overloo
king the lake. Yet, although finds have been recovered from sites around the lake edge as well as the islands, no other site in the area resembles Star Carr. Compare the 192 barbed hunting points found at Star Carr to only two other examples found elsewhere around the lake. Few of the animal bones found at the site were from meaty joints, those more edible parts were cut free and taken elsewhere to be eaten. If the platform at Star Carr was not a typical hunting camp, what was it?

  House excavated at Flag Fen in 2008. (N. Milner)

  Clues come from a collection of deer antlers found by Clark that were probably used as ritual head-dresses. Did shamans carry out hunting rituals on the platform? In the later Neolithic and Bronze Ages, wooden platforms were commonly used by native Britons to cast offerings into sacred waters. It is possible that the Star Carr camp was actually a sacred site, a meeting point where religious ceremonies could be performed and craft activities carried out. If so, it would have acted as a central point for the tribe who hunted and fished at the lake.

  Star Carr remains one of the most famous and most important Mesolithic sites in Europe. Current theory suggests that it was a winter site, a lowland base camp used by bands of nomadic hunter-gatherers. Here, in hide tents erected on the brushwood floor, several families could live together, hunting deer and other animals in the forests and restocking supplies of harpoons and points. Fishing was undoubtedly practiced, although fish bones have not survived. In the summer these families moved north onto the North Yorkshire Moors (at that time heavily forested), where many scatters of worked flint have been found. Other hunters moved up into the Pennine Mountains where over 540 sites of worked flint have been recorded, many associated with camps and hearths. The Pennines may not have been forested at the time Star Carr was in use, instead they were open heaths with a scattering of hazel trees. The tribes followed game up into these highlands in the summer and returned to the beaches, lakes, and valleys in winter to fish and eat up the stores of hazelnuts that were gathered in autumn during the final deer hunting expeditions.