The Romans then attempted to push farther west but only succeeded in advancing into a limited part of southeastern Wales and along a narrow corridor of western England, as far as the modern city of Chester, where they established the frontier fortress of Deva. A new fortified road, Watling Street, now ran 160 miles from Deva to the major Roman port of Londinium (modern London) on the River Thames. For the next decade the Romans made repeated attempts to invade South Wales but were consistently repelled, and an entire legion (the 20th) was pushed out of this mountainous region, in which the Romans were ill equipped to fight. It was not only in South Wales that the Romans suffered defeat but also in the northwestern area of England, which they erroneously believed they had already subdued. There they were continually harassed by a tribal coalition led by a renegade chieftain called Venutius. This effective alliance appears to have been cemented by the Druids, whose influence united an otherwise disorganized collection of tribes.9 Accordingly in 60 CE Claudius’s successor, Emperor Nero, decide to gamble everything in an attempt to eradicate them once and for all.
Claudius’s cautious policy had been to capture one tribal region at a time, then to secure the area by constructing fortresses, roads, and forts and by building walled towns inhabited by friendly citizens. The Druids had their chief stronghold far from Roman territory on the island of Mona (modern Anglesey), off the northwest coast of Wales. But even though two of the four British legions were widely dispersed—the 20th, based at what is now the town of Caerleon, still fighting the Silures tribe in southeastern Wales and the 2nd engaged against the Dumnonii tribe in the far southwest of England—Nero ordered the 14th legion to open a third front, to march right along the hostile north coast of Wales, deep into enemy country, and cross the Menai Strait to wipe out the Druids on Anglesey. Despite the objections of Suetonius Paulinus, the military governor of Britain, that this would leave only one legion, the 9th, to control the entire southeast, the heartland of Roman Britain, the emperor was adamant. Moreover, Nero insisted that Paulinus himself lead the offensive. The Roman army was completely divided and fighting on three fronts, a rash course of action that very nearly cost the Romans the entire province of Britannia (the Roman name for occupied Britain).10 But such was the threat the Druids seem to have posed that the emperor and the senate in Rome considered it a gamble worth taking.
Tacitus tells us that once the Britons on Anglesey had been routed, the Romans set about destroying the Druids’ sacred places on the island. One of these appears to have been the megalithic complex at Castell Bryn Gwyn, in the district of Llanidan, which archaeology has revealed had been consistently in use from around 2500 BCE (see chapter 9). Pottery and surrounding graves have demonstrated that it had been used by the Neolithic Britons, the Beaker people, the Wessex culture, and throughout the Celtic era. Excavations at the site in 2009 revealed evidence of the Roman military action of 60 CE, such as discarded armor, buckles, arrowheads, and hobnails from Roman boots, and that a contemporary Roman fort was built over the megalithic complex, destroying all but a few monoliths and the henge earthwork. It was only with modern geophysics and aerial photography that the full splendor of the original complex was rediscovered. It had originally consisted of a 180-foot-diameter henge circle linked to a nearby smaller stone circle to the southwest, which survives as the standing stones of Bryn Gwyn (see chapter 5), by an approximately 1,000-foot-long avenue of stones. It must have been a hugely important site, for the surviving stones measure up to 14 feet high.11
Archaeology has also shown that other stone circles and their outlying monoliths on the Isle of Anglesey met the same fate at this time, such as Plas Meilw, a mile to the southwest of the modern port of Holyhead, where only two 10-foot-tall stones survive; Plas Bodafon, where only one 4-foot-tall stone survives in woodland near the town of Amlwch on the north coast of the island; a stone circle near the village of Llanfechell, in the north of the island, from which only one 6-foot-tall stone remains; and the so-called Llanfechell Triangle, a megalithic cove arrangement of three similarly sized stones, around a third of a mile to the west.
In Celtic society women seem to have enjoyed equal status to men, something that astonished the misogynistic Romans. The succession of tribal leadership fell to the firstborn, whether male or female, and women even fought alongside men in battle. Tacitus, for instance, tells us that female warriors fought ferociously in defense of Anglesey and that it was a warrior queen, back in the East of England, who took advantage of the Romans’ precarious military situation to mount a full-scale rebellion. Queen Boudicca (sometimes referred to as Boadicea) was from the Iceni tribe in what is now the county of Norfolk in eastern England. Her revolt is outlined in the works of both Tacitus and Cassius Dio, who describe how she raised an army, sacked the Roman capital of Camulodunum, and succeeded in all but exterminating the only legion (the 9th) still deployed in eastern Britain. It’s likely that the Britons managed to engage them in a forested region, as Tacitus tells us that the infantry was almost completely wiped out; only the commander and some of his cavalry escaped.12 Boudicca’s army continued to grow as tribe after tribe rallied to her side once she sacked the port of Londinium and the Roman city of Verulamium, what is now Saint Albans in the county of Hertfordshire. By the time she began her march north along Watling Street, Cassius Dio tells us that her army had swelled to around 120,000.13 Strictly speaking, Boudicca’s actual fighting force was probably very much less, as most of these people seemed to have been little more than a disorganized rabble of frenzied followers who joined an ever-growing, surging mob as the victorious queen swept through their lands.
Hearing of the disaster, Paulinus withdrew from North Wales and summoned the legions based in the southwest and in South Wales to join him. It seems that the 2nd legion in Devonshire was too embroiled in its own struggle to comply, but some of the 20th retreated from their engagement with the Silures tribe and were able to rendezvous with the governor and part of the 14th legion. With two incomplete legions and various auxiliaries, Paulinus had around ten thousand soldiers, but despite her numerical superiority Boudicca’s army was defeated somewhere in central England. This is the battle, mentioned earlier, in which eighty thousand Britons perished to the loss of only four hundred Romans. It would seem that the Romans had managed to contrive a favorable location in open countryside to make their stand, and Boudicca, confident in her vastly superior numbers, made the mistake of confronting them head-on.14
Fig. 10.1. Early Roman Britain.
But this was nowhere near the end of the rebellion. Although Boudicca is said to have died shortly after the battle, her remaining forces continued a guerrilla campaign that went on for two years until Nero finally sent reinforcements from Gaul.15 Paulinus was eventually replaced by a new governor, Publius Petronius Turpilianus, who was forced to sue for peace, and for the next decade the Romans only remained in charge of the southeast.16 Britain was almost completely lost to the Romans, and Nero’s disastrous policies led in part to his overthrow and suicide in 68 CE, resulting in a series of civil conflicts throughout the Roman Empire. In Britain the situation was so bad that the army there mutinied. Apart from in the southeast, the Britons continued to govern themselves along the old tribal lines, while the diminished region of Roman Britain was in a state of virtual anarchy.17 During 69 CE a succession of generals seized and lost the imperial throne, until one of them, Vespasian, was strong enough to hold on to power and restore control over the empire. He almost abandoned Britain altogether, but two years later, in a show of determination, he sent new forces to the country and reestablished dominion as far west as the Fosse Way.18 It was not until 73 CE that the Romans began to extend their territory from what it had been at the time of the Boudicca revolt by conquering the Silures of southeastern Wales. And it was not until 78 CE that they finally retook the Isle of Anglesey.19 Ultimately the whole of what is now England was conquered, but this took until the mid-80s. The northern tribes mounted fierce resistance, again led by another war
rior queen, although this time we are not told her name.20 The complete conquest of the Roman province of Britannia—what is now England and Wales—was not achieved until four decades after the invasion first began.
Regardless of their own religious notions, successive waves of migrants had continued to use the stone circles once they arrived in Britain, and the Celts were no exception. Roman historical sources, backed up by archaeological evidence, reveal that the Celtic sect still venerating these monuments three millennia after the first of them were built were the Druids. Unfortunately, the early Roman sources concerning life in Britain tell us very little about the specific beliefs of the Druids. We learn that they were a highly revered cult of British priests, that they were a unifying element among the Britons, and that their influence had once stretched into Celtic Gaul. Tacitus describes them during his account of Paulinus’s campaign in 60 CE, telling us that their major stronghold had been on the Isle of Anglesey. He describes how they included both men and women and how they stood among the warriors on the shores of the island, where the population fought ferociously to defend their spiritual leaders. And that’s about it.
As the classical authors such as Tacitus and Cassius Dio, who wrote about the Roman invasion of Britain, tell us next to nothing about the beliefs of this mysterious sect, if the Druids did preserve some knowledge as to why the stone circles were built, how are we to discover what this might have been? Well, it was not only in the Roman-occupied regions of the British Isles that the Druids existed. Scotland remained free from Roman rule. In the 120s CE, after the Romans had fully conquered what is now England and Wales, Emperor Hadrian built a 70-mile-long wall (known as Hadrian’s Wall) across a narrow stretch of northern England to divide occupied Britannia from the hostile Scottish tribes. The Romans referred to these northern Celts as Picts, from the Latin picti, meaning “painted” or “tattooed” people.21 As elsewhere in Britain, some stone circles were certainly still being used by the Picts in the first century CE and continued to be used for some time after. Sadly, though, no written records survive from this early period of Scottish history to directly reveal anything about the Druids. But there was another Celtic area of the British Isles that remained free from Roman rule. And that was Ireland, which the Romans called Hibernia. There, the Druids survived until a time when far more about them could be recorded.
In 476 CE the Roman Empire, which had started life as the city-state of Rome around nine hundred years earlier, finally collapsed throughout Western Europe, when the Germanic chieftain Odoacer deposed Emperor Romulus Augustulus and proclaimed himself king of Italy. By this time Christianity had become the state religion of the Roman Empire, and the bishop of Rome, later to be called the pope, was its head. Fortunately for the Roman Catholic Church, Odoacer was himself a Christian and allowed what would eventually become the Vatican to remain as a tiny independent state, a status it still enjoys today. (Technically, it is the smallest country in the world, 110 acres in size, with an official population of around one thousand.) Many of the new kingdoms that sprang up throughout what had been the Western Empire retained the Christianity adopted from the Romans and still regarded the pope as their spiritual leader. And it was from missionaries sent by the pope to convert the people of Ireland that we learn much more about the Druids.
The Megalithic culture seems to have stalled in Ireland from about 3000 BCE until it recommenced a thousand years later (see chapter 6). It seems to have primarily been the Beaker people, having immersed themselves in the Megalithic tradition, who first reintroduced the practice of stone circle building to Ireland. Hundreds of their tumuli exist throughout the country, showing that the Beaker people migrated there from around 2000 BCE, possibly due to the Wessex culture’s arrival in Britain initiating a westward movement of the population (see chapter 9). However, while the construction of stone circles slowed in mainland Britain around 1200 BCE, Megalithic culture not only continued across the Irish Sea, but the monuments also became even more elaborate, owing to further migrations from the British mainland after the arrival of the Urnfield culture. Ireland, being less populated, did not suffer the same kind of food shortages caused by climate change that were endured by the contemporary inhabitants of Britain; it remained a far more peaceful land and an inviting prospect for British migrants. Many Wessex-style cist mounds have also been found in Ireland dating from this time, while DNA analysis of human remains from the period have revealed that there was a considerable influx by the Britons generally. Some two hundred stone circles survive in Ireland, of which most were built after 2000 BCE, and they continued to be erected and used for almost 2,500 years.22 The phases during which these sites were erected, modified, or repaired have been established by the radiocarbon dating of organic remains found beneath monoliths, in earthworks, and in pits dug to hold stones, while the periods when they were being used can be ascertained by the radiocarbon dating of charcoal from fires and animal bones (evidence of ceremonial feasting) or by dating pottery fragments found at sites, either by examining their distinctive style or by using scientific techniques such as thermoluminescence and rehydroxylation dating (see chapter 4).
This new period of Irish Megalithic culture that began around 2000 BCE continued for around 2,500 years, well after it ceased to exist in Britain. Examples of stone circles dating throughout this extended period are found all across Ireland. In the South of the Irish Republic, for instance, there’s the 30-foot-diameter, nine-stone Templebryan Stone Circle, 1.5 miles north of the town of Clonakilty, and the similarly sized, eleven-stone Canfea Stone Circle at Ardgroom, both in County Cork, as well as the approximately 55-foot-diameter, fifteen-monolith Kenmare Stone Circle in County Kerry. In Northern Ireland, examples include the Drumskinny Stone Circle in County Fermanagh, 40 feet in diameter and originally having thirty-nine monoliths, while in the district of Beaghmore in County Tyrone alone there are no fewer than seven similarly sized stone circles. Throughout the whole of Ireland, new stone circles continued to be built for centuries. To name just a few:
The Beltany Stone Circle near the town of Raphoe in County Donegal, originally consisting of around eighty stones, of which sixty-four survive; radiocarbon dating of organic remains obtained from beneath the stones places the erection of the ring to around 1400 BCE.
The 30-foot diameter, seventeen-monolith Drombeg Stone Circle at Glandore in County Cork, where the dating of a Wessex-style cist tomb just outside the circle places its construction to around 1200 BCE.
The 60-foot-diameter Bocan Stone Circle, near the village of Culdaff in County Donegal, which consisted of about thirty stones. Urnfield graves have been found around and within the ring, dating its construction to about 900 BCE.
And in the district of Auglish, in County Londonderry, there are six stone circles, the earliest dating from around 800 BCE, the last as late as the fifth century CE.
There were also large megalithic complexes just like those found in Britain. At Auglish, for instance, archaeologists have identified the remains of a 100-foot-diameter stone circle originally consisting of forty-one 6-foot-tall monoliths, joined to two smaller rings by stone avenues. The largest megalithic complex in Ireland is the Grange, on the west side of Lough Gur in County Limerick. It is composed of a 150-foot-diameter stone circle of 113 standing stones, up to 13 feet high and weighing as much as 40 tons, and it is surrounded by a ditch and embankment 40 feet wide, with a king stone aligned with sunrise on the midsummer solstice. There are two smaller, satellite stone circles and an earthen avenue on the eastern side leading to a cove of three monoliths. Thousands of Beaker pottery shards have been excavated from beneath these stones, seemingly used to line the pits into which the monoliths were erected, indicating that the complex was built either by or with the help of the Beaker people, just like those in mainland Britain from around 2000 BCE. Organic deposits found beneath some of the stones have revealed that they were re-erected, presumably after toppling, on various occasions right up until 450 CE, meaning that the co
mplex was still in use and being periodically repaired for an astonishing 2.5 millennia.23
The Iron Age Celts first arrived in Ireland around 500 BCE, a couple of centuries after they had migrated to Britain, and by the first century CE they had established an almost identical way of life to that of the contemporary Britons. But, unlike Britain, Ireland was never invaded by the Romans and remained a land of individual Celtic tribes until centuries later. So at the time the first Christian missionaries arrived in the fifth century, life in Ireland was still pretty much as it had been in Britain during the Roman invasion four hundred years before. It is not only from archaeological evidence of ceremonial activities or repairs to megaliths at Irish stone circles that we know that many were still being used for some purpose until this time. There are clear signs of continuous occupation. Many Irish megalithic complexes and stone circles are surrounded by Beaker tumuli, cistvaens, Urnfield graves, and Iron Age burial cairns, indicating that the sites were used by a whole succession of cultures living in harmony, just as they had in Britain, but in Ireland this continued right up until the arrival of Christianity. For example, the Drumskinny Stone Circle has an adjacent Celtic burial cairn dating from around 400 CE; the Beaghmore Stone Circles are interspersed with Celtic burial cairns dating to 450 CE; and just to the north of the Templebryan Stone circle, there are the remains of a number of late Iron Age burial chambers. A further ten-foot-tall standing stone in the direction of the midsummer sunset is marked with a fifth-century CE Ogham inscription (early Irish writing), showing that the site was still in use as late as 450 CE. One of the last megalithic sites known to have been used by the pagan Celts is the Canfea Stone Circle, which had a large Iron Age settlement right next to it; fragments of drinking vessels found there precisely match those unearthed within the ring, indicating that it had seemingly been used during ceremonial feasting dating right up until the mid-fifth century.24
Wisdomkeepers of Stonehenge Page 18