Food and Farming in Prehistoric Britain

by Paul Elliott

  Edible roots often need very little work to turn them into a meal and they can easily be dried and stored for long periods of time. In this way, like smoked and dried meat, they allowed hunter-gatherer groups to retain a stock of foodstuffs for the leaner months of the year.

  Cooking for the Tribe

  In a world without cook pots, one could imagine that the only way meat could be cooked was for it to be spit roasted over an open fire. Likewise, we can imagine that green leaves gathered in the Mesolithic might simply be eaten raw. But, although direct evidence for the Mesolithic is lacking, similar societies today prepare their foods in a wide variety of ways.

  Let us look at meat, for example. Spit roasting was almost certainly used for some animals, but would not be suitable for all. It is quite an intensive and time consuming method of cookery and other ways of dealing with meat were almost certainly used. My favourite is the earth oven, which we discuss at length later in the book. Here, a pit is lined with stones and a fire burnt on top of them; once the stones are hot, joints of meat are added to the pit and soil is placed on top. Heat from the stones cooks the meat over a period of several hours. Alternatively, river clay allows the cook to cover food with clay, and after it has dried, place it into the embers of a fire. Now the heat radiates inwards, through the clay, and cooks the meat within and preventing its juices from escaping. This and other cooking techniques will be explained in much greater depth later on.

  From a modern perspective, it is easy to assume that ‘gathering’ simply involves picking fruits, nuts, and berries of off trees and bushes. Unfortunately, man cannot live by fruits and berries alone—in Mesolithic Britain, such a food resource is dependent on the season and would never have been abundant enough to feed several large families in one location.

  While many wild plants can be eaten raw, there are many that require processing in order to render them palatable. Hazelnuts, for example, are best eaten once roasted; this improves the flavour, makes them easier to digest, and helps to preserve them for later consumption. Berries, like sloe and bird cherry, require pulverizing between two stones and then drying as simple cakes in the sun. Root foods such as sea beet, sea kale, goat’s-beard, and pig nut can be eaten raw, but once roasted they are softer, easier to eat, and often tastier. Some resources require almost as much processing as wheat—the seeds of Fat Hen, for example, must be stripped from the stem, dried in the sun, rubbed to break them from their seed cases, lightly parched on a hot stone, and then ground into flour. This flour would be baked as bush bread, something known to modern Australians as a ‘damper’, a flat-bread composed simply of flour and water and baked on the ashes of a campfire. Seeds of the ribwort plantain, as well as several other species, can likewise make decent flat-breads.

  There are some plant resources that require even more complex processing than this. Yellow waterlily seeds have survived on some Mesolithic sites (particularly in Denmark), but the seed-bearing fruits must first be gathered by coracle or dug-out canoe. Back on dry land they are left to rot in vats of water and once the seeds are free they are then rinsed and dried. Like the seeds of Fat Hen, they must then have their outer coverings removed, then winnowed, parched by the fire, and finally ground into flour.

  Many of these techniques, used by hunter-gatherer societies today and by Mesolithic groups in the past, are identical to the processing of wheat grains in arable farming. The leap from gathering to harvesting was not a leap of imagination across a vast gulf of knowledge. The shift to sedentary agriculture required many of the skills that Mesolithic communities already possessed.

  Did the families at Star Carr, huddled around flickering campfires, enjoy the lives they led? Or were they merely surviving? Anthropologists who have followed modern nomadic groups have discovered that they certainly enjoy more free time than their crop-farming cousins. In leaner times of course, the Star Carr community may have struggled to feed everyone. It was the lingering threat of famine and bad winters set against the backdrop of an expanding Mesolithic population that made agriculture, when it arrived on the shores of Britain, so attractive.

  3

  Farming the Land

  The most ancient farmers determined many of the practices by experiment, their descendants for the most part by imitation. We ought to do both—imitate others and attempt by experiment to do some things in a different way.

  Varro, Re Rustica

  Initially, this book was to look at food and cookery in prehistoric Britain, but it is impossible to discuss food without looking at its origins. Where was it grown? How was it grown? Could it be stored? How were animals controlled and used? Today, farming and food are almost completely divorced from one another, with consumers dropping sliced loaves, tins, and shrink-wrapped meat into their baskets, often oblivious to the methods used to grow or rear it.

  Of course, in prehistory, there really was no such thing as a consumer—this is an invention of industrialisation and free market economics. Our ancestors, on the other hand, consumed what they produced, more or less, and used exchange and gift-giving to obtain items (like metal, jewellery, or colourful dyes) that they could not source for themselves. Only a tiny elite existed at any one time in British prehistory, a small number of wealthy families that were able to survive off the toil of others. For the simple farming family, the preparation of every meal was actually the end point of a long process that began at least a year earlier. While the modern householder might plan a meal a couple of days, or perhaps a week, in advance, the prehistoric farmer was forced to work to a much longer timescale.

  For the earliest communities at the start of the Neolithic, an even greater task faced them. There simply was no farmland, either for the cultivation of wheat and barley or for the grazing of cattle. Land had to be cleared and, as populations rose steadily throughout the Neolithic and into the Bronze Age, ever more land was required for agriculture.

  Part of a standing stone from Gavrinis, Brittany; carved into its surface are emblems of the agricultural lifestyle: ard, ox, sheep, sickle, and axe. (C. T. Le Roux)

  At the start of the Neolithic, much of Britain was covered in forest. Small plots of land, opened up by the felling of trees with stone axes, must have been sufficient for the needs of the small number of farming communities at that time. The needs were simple: the farmers wanted to hoard foodstuffs to see them through the winter. In Britain, natural food supplies are drastically curtailed for up to nine months of the year. A plant was needed that produced food annually that was amenable to storage for a full year. Nut trees take several years to mature, for example, and do not bear edible nuts every year. Early farmers in the Near East settled on wild einkorn grass (Triticum monococcoides), a primitive cereal whose seeds (it must have been noticed) were slightly larger than those of other grasses. We know that the seeds of several wild plants were probably ground up by Mesolithic gatherers in order to make flour. Wheat grass would have been processed in just the same way and under cultivation some of the seeds were put aside for replanting.

  Where seed beds were needed, trees had to be felled first. The investment in labour to clear land and to grow these new crops quickly led to more permanent or semi-permanent settlements. Crops of emmer wheat (Triticum dioccum) and barley (Hordeum spontaneum) began to be planted across Britain. Population levels rose as families needed more manpower with which to maintain the crops, and more hungry mouths required ever greater land clearances. Pollen and snail shell analysis from Dorset and Wiltshire indicate that in this particular corner of Britain enough trees had been felled by 3200 BC that the landscape was now open grassland, with some areas of farmland and scrub ‘regrowth’.

  Marks cut by prehistoric ards that were discovered under, and adjacent to, the South Street long barrow, Wiltshire. They date to around 2000 BC. (J. G. Evans)

  Field Systems

  We know that fields existed and were properly demarcated. Some large earthen burial mounds w
ere constructed over (and so preserved) traces of farmland. Beneath South Street Long Barrow, near Avebury, archaeologists discovered furrows cut by ards (the earliest form of simple plough). Fences, ditches, and planted hedges were used to mark out some of these individual fields in order to prevent cattle, pigs, and other farm animals from eating the crops growing in them. Examples of these kinds of Neolithic field boundaries are few in number, but some have been identified at Rougham Hill in County Clare, Fengate in eastern England, and on the Shetland Islands. Evidence for cattle droveways has also been found at Fengate and at Hambledon Hill, Dorset, where two cross dykes have been interpreted as routes by cattle to reach new pasture.

  It was not until the Early Bronze Age, when Stonehenge was at its peak of development, that elaborate and large scale field systems begin to appear in the archaeological record. These systems were made up of small fields arranged together in groups. Field boundaries may initially have been formed as a strip of uncleared ground between two plots of farmland, on this strip of land hedges, brambles and thorn bushes flourished and soon acted as a natural barrier. Hedge laying practices carried out by prehistoric farmers would turn these tangles of stem and bush into a tough, stock-proof barrier. Other boundaries were formed by earthen banks, or from the practice of picking stones off the land and dumping them into cairns along the field edge. On Dartmoor these cairns were sometimes used by farmers as repositories for the ashes of their dead. Stones certainly need to be cleared before crops are sown and even before animals are grazed, but constant maintenance is needed since stones have a tendency to keep appearing at the surface during cultivation.

  Some field systems, like the Dartmoor ‘reaves’, were subdivided by low, purpose-built, drystone walls. Similarly, sarsen stones were used to construct drystone field boundaries on Fyfield Down, Wiltshire. Some of these sarsens were cracked and burnt, suggesting the use of fire to break apart the larger sarsens into more manageable chunks. The Fyfield Down walls acted as revetments to the accumulation of plough soil that naturally migrated downslope each year. These banks of earth that built up downslope over time are known as lynchets, and they create very visible terracing on a hillside. Some of the known Bronze Age field systems extend over large areas, and one of the most extensive on Dartmoor covers an area of 900 hectares.

  Reaves (or stone and earth banks) on Shaugh Moor, Dartmoor, in Devon. Reaves were used to parcel-up farmland in the south-west; here on Shaugh Moor, the western section was further subdivided, and then divided again into even smaller plots.

  (J. Collis)

  The size of individual Bronze and Iron Age fields is small in comparison with fields laid out using modern farming techniques. It seems likely that a single demarcated field was able to be harvested, ploughed, seeded, or weeded by a single family in a single day. In many parts of Britain, small clusters of fields, forming a ‘farmstead’ system that related to a single settlement or roundhouse, seem to have been the norm. Fields discovered in prehistoric Britain are generally rectangular in shape and 0.7 hectares or less in area. Typically, the dimensions of these fields are around 70 × 50 m. They are rarely located far from a roundhouse and the evidence suggests that the fields a family tended were usually close to the family home. Cattle required more distant pasture, as well as a network of ditch-lined droveways to reach them.

  Wooden bucket of Bronze Age date, from Wilsford Down, Wiltshire. (L. Coleman)

  Arable Farming

  For here now is the Age of Iron. Never by daytime will there be an end to hard work and pain, nor in the night to weariness, when the gods will send anxieties to trouble us.

  Hesiod, Works and Days

  From the Bronze Age into the Iron Age and beyond, bread has provided British households with their staple food. Much of the arable farming that took place in prehistory concerned the production of wheat, barley, and oats—cereal crops that formed the mainstay of the diet. Crop farming requires the careful management of fields, fields that first must be created, manured and maintained, seeds that must be planted, crops that must be carefully managed, and then harvested, with some of the seed corn going into storage for next year’s sowing. The story does not stop there. A good deal of processing is required to turn sheaves of wheat into flour ready for mixing into dough at the fireside.

  All arable farming begins with the tilling the ground, breaking up hard-packed earth into a loose soil that will be ready to accept a scatter of seeds. The modern plough is an innovative machine carrying out several operations at once. A knife-like blade, called a coulter, sits at the front of the plough and cuts into the soil just ahead of the main blade or share. The share then turns the soil over and a curved mouldboard further back flips the soil upside down to one side of the shallow furrow. In this way fresh nutrients are brought to the surface while weeds and the remains of stubble and earlier crops are buried. Prior to the ploughs of the Roman period, however, only some of these technical innovations had been recognized.

  In 1944, a well-preserved Bronze Age plough was discovered at Donneruplund, Denmark, and others have been unearthed at Dostrup and Hendriksmose. Since it lacked a mouldboard with which it turned over the soil, the Donneruplund plough was actually an ard.

  Ards are still used today in poorer farming areas. The ard cuts into the earth with an angled wooden spike and creates only a narrow furrow called a ‘drill’, which leaves the intervening ground undisturbed. Traces of this implement have been found across Britain as ard marks like those beneath South Street long barrow. Well-preserved ard marks have also been found gouged into the chalk bedrock on Slonk Hill, near Brighton, and at other locations across Britain. To further break up the soil within the field, the ard was often used to cross-plough at 90 degrees. Lacking the sophistication and utility of the later mouldboard plough, the ard was redesigned and variations of the tool came into being, each suited to a different kind of job.

  Where the soil was heavy or as-yet uncultivated, a rip ard (also known as a ‘sod buster’) was employed, its sharply angled spike digging in deep and stubbornly locking in place every 2 or 3 metres. For cutting furrows in previously cultivated land, a bow ard was used. The Donneruplund ard was of this type, fitted with a heart-shaped undershare that lifted the soil and helped churn it up as the ard passed through. Modern trials with a replica of the Donneruplund ard were quite successful, but indicated that the wooden share quickly wore away. Although none was found with the Donneruplund example, iron sleeves to protect the wooden share have been found across Iron Age Europe. In earlier periods, stone points were fitted to the business end of ards in an effort to increase the wear time of these tools. The third type of ard was the seed-furrow ard, used to create particularly narrow drills within previously prepared soil, drills that allowed seed to be sown and crops to be grown in distinct rows that later allowed the farmer to hoe out any weeds growing between them. All of the ards seem to have been pulled by cattle; rock carvings like those from Litsleby in Denmark and Val Camonic in Italy both depict a pair of oxen hauling ards under the direction of a ploughman. Both ploughmen are carrying goads with which to drive the animals on, and in the Val Camonic carving, two associates carry hoes or mattocks with which to break up any stubborn clods of earth left by the ard. Experimental work at Butser Ancient Farm has shown that an experienced ploughman and a well-trained team of oxen can plough half a hectare in a day.

  The Roman naturalist Pliny, who died during the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in AD 79, advised Roman farmers to plough their fields several times, and sensible Celtic agriculturalists will have done the same.

  After the furrows have been gone over again transversely, the clods are broken, where there is a necessity for it, with either the harrow or the rake; and this operation is repeated after the seed has been put in. This last harrowing is done, where the usage of the locality will allow of it, with either a toothed harrow, or else a plank attached to the plough.

  Pliny, The Natural Wor
ld, 18.49

  The preparation of fields ready for planting must also have included manuring. This is the art of artificially adding nutrients to a field from the faeces of domesticated animals and is believed to have begun sometime in the Bronze Age. It is likely that fields were also left fallow for a time, as many were during the Medieval period. In Scotland, poultry and sheep manure was ranked as the most effective, followed by horse and pig manure. Cattle dung was considered the least effective because around three-quarters of its weight is made up of water. To be used it was first mixed with bracken or straw, which tended to soak up its moisture and aid fermentation. Large quantities of the stuff was required since one ton of manure provided only around 5–8 kg of nitrogen and an equally small amount of potassium.

  A layer of ‘dark earth’ found on prehistoric agricultural land at Welland Valley, near Maxey, was made up of manure mixed with domestic rubbish (pieces of bone, pottery, and flint), which may represent hearth sweepings. Was domestic refuse dumped directly onto a manure pile (or ‘midden’) close to the roundhouse? An ancient tradition found in the farmhouses of Orkney, Shetland, and Caithness might throw some light on this practice. Here, a hollow next to the house’s central hearth was created by the regular scraping of ashes that were pushed off the hearth. In Orkney these ashes were held by a circle of wet peats, but turves could also have been used. These peats, along with the ash, were thrown into the cattle barn or byre to be used as bedding. In this way peat was used for fuel, converted into ashes, and then used as bedding in the byre. Finally, when the byre was cleaned out, the sweepings were spread as fertiliser onto the fields. It was probably via this method that domestic rubbish found its way onto prehistoric fields at places like Welland Valley and Potterne in Dorset. Cattle must also have been left to graze on recently harvested fields, adding more manure directly to the soil while they munched their way through unwanted crop stubble.