UNIT1 Earliest Settlements in the British Isles

1. THE PALAEOLITHIC 1.1. The Neanderthals 1.2. The First Settlers of Britain and Ireland 2. THE MESOLITHIC 3. THE NEOLITHIC 3.1 Neolithic Architecture 3.2. Ritual Monuments in Britain and Ireland 3.2.1. Stonehenge 3.2.2. The Boyne Ritual Landscape 4. THE BRONZE AGE 4.1. New Materials and Tools 5. THE IRON AGE 5.1. The Hill-Fort Defences 5.2. Commerce and Art 6. THE CELTS 6.1. Culture and Art 6.2. Architecture 6.3. Society CHRONOLOGY SUGGESTED BIBLIOGRAPHY RECOMMENDED WEBSITES REVIEW QUESTIONS FOR SELF-EVALUATION FURTHER TASKS

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1. THE PALAEOLITHIC
About one million years ago, the climate of the Northern Hemisphere began to deteriorate and in Europe and Asia the Ice Age had already begun. The Ice Age was not a continuous period of ice and snow. Four major phases of intense cold, the glaciations, were separated by three warmer periods. At the height of the glaciations, the British Isles were uninhabitable, with an ice-sheet up to 100 ft thick in the north. During the second glaciation, it reached the Thames Valley. South of the ice, glaciers gouged out the valleys. Strong winds swept the frozen ground, where only dwarf pines and lichens could grow. This tundra was the home of reindeer, woolly rhinoceroses, cave bears and mammoths. It was during the last glaciation that Modern Men lived at Kent's Cavern, near Torquay. In the late Ice Age, when Britain was still joined by a land-bridge to Europe, bands of hunter nomads roamed what is now southern England. That period overlaps with the Pleistocene Ice Ages, which began 1.6 million years ago. This was a time of great climatic fluctuation. In the warmer stages, continental animal and plant species could migrate into Britain, while in colder times their geographic space shifted to the southern territories. As it became warmer, the ice retreated northwards. Grasses and sedges, and later pine and birch forest, replaced the tundra. During the first and third of these warmer periods, the climate was hotter than today. Hippopotamuses and rhinoceroses roamed the forests of firethorn and oak.

1.1. The Neanderthals

The Neanderthals evolved from the archaic human species, such as Homo heidelbergensis, that were already living there. A recent recovery of fossil Neanderthal DNA shows that they were not ancestral to modern humans. The only site so far discovered with Neanderthal human traits on the British Isles is Pontnewydd Cave in Wales. In England and Wales there are some remains of typical Middle Palaeolithic flake tools. The Middle Palaeolithic sites found in regional clusters, support the idea that the Neanderthals lived in isolated groups and did not go very far from their home bases. No artefacts of this period have been found in Ireland or Scotland, but the presence in these areas of different animals such as woolly rhinoceros, mammoth and reindeer, that formed part of their diet, shows that in the future, signs may be found of Neanderthal human activity in these countries as well as in Wales and England.

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The Neanderthals are considered to be the great survivors of the Ice Ages, and they inhabited Europe until about 40,000 years ago, when they were replaced by different people with another culture, tradition. The new settlers were the modern Homo sapiens, members of our own species. They brought a new technology that is characterised as Upper Palaeolithic, with a wide range of tool types, including slender flint blades for inserting into knife handles and spear-shafts. Some similarities in stone working techniques suggest that these first fully modern human settlers of Europe were migrants from the Middle East. Tools carved out of antler, ivory and bone are another feature of this stage.

1.2. The First Settlers of Britain and Ireland

For most of the Ice Age, so much of the world's water was locked up in ice sheets that sea levels were at times over 100 metres (328 ft) lower than those of today, and Britain was linked to the Continent by a land-bridge. Britain'sfirsthuman inhabitants, therefore, arrived on foot. The earliest evidence of human habitation dates back to about 500,000 years ago, but there were long periods when Britain was made uninhabitable by Artie conditions. Physically, modern humansfirstreached Britain about 31,000 years ago, but they became widespread only towards the end of the last Ice Age, around 13,000 years ago. Sea levels raised by melting ice finally cut Britain and Ireland off from continental Europe around 5000 BC. When Britain was still joined to the Continent 250,000 years ago, the first known inhabitant lived in the valley where the Kentish town of Swanscombe now stands. His tribe shared the forests with the prehistoric animals that meant two things to them: meat and danger. There were straight-tusked elephants, gigantic cattle called aurochs, two species of fearsome rhinoceroses, horses and red deer. Armed only with wooden spears, the Swanscombe hunters tracked their prey in the forests of oak, elm and viburnum. After a kill, they skinned and butchered the animal on the spot, using hand-held flint axes, skilfully chipped to give cutting edges. Flints were so plentiful and easily chipped that, once used, they were often simply thrown away. Swanscombe man probably had a beetling brow and a massive jaw. Only three of his skull bones have survived, but experts believe that he was not very different from men of today, with a very similar brain size. His life was precarious. Disease and hunting accidents must have taken a heavy toll. The bones which have been found belong to someone who died young, probably aged only 20 or 25 years old. The most tantalising question about Swanscombe man is whether he understood the secret of fire. Pieces of charcoal and fireshattered flints have been found with his bones and tools, but they may have been the result of forest fires.

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The hunters of the 0\& Stone Kge ^wesce skS\s& a! CKgasasvsvg, gyoutp expeditions

to hunt the great beasts of the ice Age. Their survival depended on their courage and skill. At Kents Cavern, hunters prepared to skin and joint a dead cave bear, using flint tools. Warm animal skins provided comfort for the hunters comfort in this inhospitable world. Kents Cavern, a series of winding narrow passages and great chambers, reaches more than 300 ft into a limestone hill near Torquay in Devon. Festoons of stalactites hangfromthe roof. There, 40,000 years ago, Old Stone Age people sheltered. They used tools of flint, antler and bone. The hunters of the Old Stone Age had to devote most of their energy to survival. Yet they possessed high degree of artistic skill. This can be seen in many of the articles they used. The carefully made barbed harpoons and spear-throwers reveal a people who took pleasure in functional design. The so-called ceremonial staff from Gough's Cave at Cheddar in Somerset is a fine example of their craftsmanship. The patiently whittled antler rod, 6,5 in. long with a hole at one end. The hunters adorned themselves with strings of animal teeth and mollusc shells. They had a reverence for the dead, and almost certainly believed in life after death. This deep-rooted belief has been revealed by a discovery at Paviland Cave in Gower peninsula in South Wales. There, the early Britons buried one of their young men with great care. The corpse, that of a tall man aged about 25, with the head missing, was laid out and covered with powdered red ochre. Stones were set at each end, and around it were placed an ivory bracelet, ivory rods, perforated shells and an elephant's skull, probably for his use in the afterlife. Was this burial a special case? Honours afforded to a man of high status? Or, was it perhaps a sacrifice to the gods? Whatever the motives were, these relics show that the creative powers of these Britons were directed beyond the needs of sheer subsistence.

2. THE MESOUTHIC
The Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) follows the Palaeolithic era, and covers the period from 10,000 to 5,500 BC, after which farming was introduced. There was a rapid climatic warming, which made Britain attractive for human occupation. These warmer conditions allowed the colonisation of thick deciduous forests of hazel, oak, elm and lime. Simultaneously, these warmer temperatures led to a rise in sea levels, which finally established the shorelines of Britain as they are today. Mesolithic sites corresponding to that time have been found in England and Wales, and also in Scotland and Wales, where these represent the first recorded evidence of human activity. Mesolithic sites like Mount Sandel are the earliest in Ireland. It supposed that new colonisers arrived by boat from south-western Scotland.

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The Mesolithic people were hunter-gathers like their predecessors. They collected edible wild plants, fished and hunted animals such as red deer, roe deer and wild pig. They used halted stone axes and bow hunting equipment. microliths, used in rows to form barbed arrowheads. There are some remains from several sites such as Waun Fignen Felen in Wales and Seamer Carr in Yorkshire. Microliths were used also as drill bits for making stone heads, and elsewhere they were used as the blades of harvest knives. Other tools found at Star Carr include perforated elk antler mattocks. Wear patterns on these indicate that they were used for digging, perhaps for edible roots near the lakeside. In the later Mesolithic, there was a tendency to settle. Massive shell middens, food storage pits, territorial boundaries and planned cemeteries have been discovered, showing evidence that there were some semi-permanent coastal villages. All these features are absent in Britain and Ireland, where shell middens are relatively small and dispersed. Nor are large cemeteries found, and burials are generally of single individuals, apart from the cave of Aveline's Hole, in the Mendips, where a cemetery about 70-80 people was recorded. The most typical British Mesolithic indicators are temporary, smaller settlements with no storage facilities. At Goldcliff on the Severn estuary, partly water-logged sediments preserved food residues of fish bones and land mammals, which indicate that the site was occupied only during winter and spring time. People moved up and down the main rivers, probably on a seasonal basis. The Mesolithic diet was based on plants and meat. Land mammals were the main source of protein. In the coastal sites, there is evidence for a high marine food component in their diet, as at Ferriter's Cove in Southwestern Ireland, Colonsay, and on Caldey Island.

3. THE NEOLITHIC
In 4000 BC, Britain was still populated by men who hunted their food and ate wild fruit and roots just as their ancestors had done for about 200,000 years. But by 3000 BC, self sufficient communities had spread to most parts of the country. The arrival of the first farmers in Britain and their settlement in the south of England, brought about one of the greatest changes in the history of the island. With them, in their small boats, the farmers brought not only seeds of barley and of wheat, but sheep and cattle. They introduced new types of stone tools including sickles. With their flint axes, they hacked out clearings in the woods, which covered most of the country. The well drained chalk and limestone hills proved to be exceptionally fertile.

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These first farmers were mainly dependent for their daily livelihood on their herds of sheep and cattle, whose need for grazing helped to replace forest with grassland. Because their animals needed a constant supply of fresh grazing-land, the first farmers were semi-nomadic, moving on when grazing was exhausted. Life was very hard for a Neolithic person, and in many ways, it was a more arduous form of existence. Crops and animals were prey to natural disasters such as bad weather or outbreaks of disease. But, for the first time, the food supply was at least partially under human control. In good years, enough grain could be grown to last through a lean winter. In the autumn, cattle could be butchered to provide meat for some months. Clothing made from their hides gave wonderful protection against the winter cold. So the farmers persisted, and the huntergatherer bands gradually disappeared or were absorbed into the new activities. The tools were primitive. Digging sticks were used for planting and hoeing. Later, knowledge of the plough pulled by men or oxen, reached Britain from the Continent. Sickles and other cutting tools and scrapers, made from fine flint blades and mounted in bone or wood handles, were also used in the Neolithic. Different types of axes served to help build timber and thatch huts. At the same time, the farmers needed containers to store grain, and this gave rise to the beginning of pottery-making in Britain. At first, the dishes made were plain and undecorated. But by about 3300 BC, decorations had begun to be scratched on the clay. Agriculture helped to increase the population to many times what it had been in the hunting and gathering era of around 8000 BC. The same area of land could support many more farmers than hunters, and so, as farming techniques improved, a more settled life became possible. The foundation had been laid for the dramatic cultural development of the next 1000 years.

3.1. Neolithic Architecture

The new way of life brought to Britain by immigrant peoples from the Continent had led to enormous social changes. Some settled communities had grown up, ruled by prominent families. These had led, about 3000-2500 BC, to the building of great hill-top camps as meeting places, and to the construction of collective tombs for wealthy and powerful men. In these times, Britain's first monumental architecture was created. In the Neolithic, men began building huge earthwork enclosures, or henges, at Avebury, Durrington Walls and Marden, in Wiltshire. These henges acted as religious centres for large areas and were used for over 500 years. They were

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rather like medieval cathedrals. Both resulted from enormous communal effort and centralised organisation motivated by religious aspirations. The vision of these farming people also led to the building of Silbury Hill, in Wiltshire. This is the largest man-made structure in prehistoric Europe. Earth and layers of chalk blocks were piled up to a height of 130 ft. There is no clue to its purpose. By that time, society had become sufficiently organised to supply the immense labour force necessary for these great projects. Agriculture had reached a stage where men could be spared from the fields for long stretches. This had been achieved in a mere 1500 years. It was the most important turning point since the introduction of farming. In the Neolithic period, men were able to observe the sun, the moon and the stars. They used their knowledge to build stone circles in which the stones were meticulously placed. These arrangements may have been used for a measurement of time, and to predict phases of the moon, and even eclipses. In Britain, with its uncertain climate, their accurate methods of dating the seasons must have been particularly valuable, especially among farming communities. The technical skill and deep religious instincts demonstrated at Stonehenge, created a monument that remains one of the wonders of the world

3.2. Ritual Monuments in Britain and Ireland

An increasingly large and complex society soon began to construct its first full-scale monuments. On several hilltops in southern Britain, such as Windmill Hill in Wiltshire and Hembury in Devon, large earthwork enclosures were erected. Around them were dug a series of ditches, which in places were bridged by solid causeways. These causewayed camps were certainly not inhabited all the year round. They may have served as tribal gathering places for barter, feasting or worship. There, scattered communities could reaffirm their rules and strengthen relationships with one another. In this period, a definable social structure began to emerge in Britain. The top rung of the ladder was occupied by prominent men and their families, who received burials of marked splendour. Whole communities might work together to build their tombs, long earthen mounds, or barrows, from 30 to 100 yd long. Beneath each, several people were buried and their high status was commemorated by the patterns in the exposed white chalk bedrock, which shone for years before grass grew again on these mounds. These honoured dead headed a now quite elaborate society. These monumental structures were built in the heart of inhabited zones. In fact, there is considerable variation. Certain groups of monuments may have

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been positioned on the margins of the settled land and could even have been concealed within areas of forest, while others, including henges and stone circles, were often constructed along natural routes across the terrain, where they would have been accessible to large numbers of people. This is hardly surprising when we consider the amount of labour that was needed to build them. Such structures may not have been located in the midst of the inhabited area, but practical considerations alone suggest that they would have been positioned so that a workforce from the wider region could be drawn on. It seems clear that major constructions of this kind were in parts of the country that had already seen sustained clearance and exploitation. At the same time, such was the importance of these sites that people may have travelled over long distances in order to build them. Clusters of monuments often seem to have been spaced across the landscape at approximately equal intervals, and it has been suggested that each served the settlers of a determined territory. This is most clear in Wessex and the Thames Valley, but a similar pattern of distribution can be seen in the cemeteries of passage graves in Ireland, and in positions of the largest chambered tombs in the Orkney Islands. It is not clear whether or not each of these ritual centres functioned as an independent unit. There is some evidence to indicate that Neolithic and Bronze Age people may also have moved between them.

3.2.1. Stonehenge
In the British Isles there are altogether about 900 stone circles, and a few more in Brittany. Some of them are considerably larger than Stonehenge, but none rivals it in the height of its stones, the precision of their plan or the refinements of their shaping and jointing. None but Stonehenge, moreover, had stone lintels on top of the uprights. In all these respects it is unique, and represents the culmination of a very long tradition of building with large stones. Stonehenge stands on the southern part of Salisbury Plain, about 8 miles north of Salisbury and 2 miles west of Amesbury. It is the focal point of the densest concentration of Neolithic and Bronze Age Figure 1.1. Stonehenge. Megalithic Monument. monuments anywhere in Britain,

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and can be considered as a kind of prehistoric cathedral which has endured for 2000 years. Like many Christian cathedrals, it has a very long history of building and alteration, which reflects changes in architectural style and fashion, and changes too in the way in which religious beliefs were expressed in tangible form. Excavations have shown that four main periods can be recognized in the building and use of Stonehenge, the third of which can be further divided into three stages. Stonehenge I consisted of a circular earthwork enclosure about 91m across, surrounded by a bank with a ditch outside it, and a smaller bank outside the ditch, all much flattened by wear. This earthwork was constructed in about 2800 BC. In a broad entrance-gap on the north-east side there stood a pair of stones; and beyond, astride the axis of symmetry, there was a row of four large wooden posts, which perhaps supported timber lintels to form a triple gateway. During period I, the Heel Stone or Friar's Hell was placed, so called from the legend of an imprudent friar who accosted the devil whilst he was building Stonehenge. The stone thrown by the Devil hit the friar on the heel, but he was unharmed. Inside the bank there was a ring of 56 pits, evenly spaced about 4-9m apart. These are now known as the Aubrey Holes, after the 17th century antiquarian John Aubrey, who first noticed the five circular cavities when he was visiting the monument, and made a record of what he had seen. No one paid attention to them until the 1920s, when William Hawley began excavating them and named them in honour of Aubrey. The pits are about lm wide and deep, with steep sides and flat bottoms. Their purpose is unknown, although it is clear that they never held upright stones or wooden posts, which would have left impressions on the chalk at the bottom. Soon after they were dug, they were re-filled with chalk, some of which had been burnt meanwhile. Later they were re-used for burials of cremated human bones, one of which has been dated to about 2200 BC. Stonehenge I seems to have remained in use as a place of Neolithic worship and burial for about seven centuries. Then, in period II, it was altered by the addition of the Avenue and the bluestones around 2100 BC. The Avenue ran for about 510m from the entrance of the circular earthwork, in a straight line. Around the centre, the builders of Stonehenge II began to erect a double circle of bluestones, so called for their colour. They come from the Preseli Mountains in south-west Wales, about 135 miles from Stonehenge. These bluestones were set up in two concentric circles about 1.8m apart. On the north-east side there was an entrance marked by extra stones on the incised lines, which pointed down the Avenue to the midsummer sunrise. On the opposite side a single large hole evidently held a stone of exceptional size, probably the present altar stone. The four stations lie at the corners of a rectangle, the short sides of which point to the rising sun at midsummer and the setting sun at midwinter, and the long sides to the most southerly rising and most northerly setting of the moon. The latter events occur only once every eighteen and a half years.

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The third stage of this great monument, Stonehenge III consisted of an outer circle of 30 uprights of uniform height, capped by a horizontal ring of stone lintels. This enclosed symmetrically a horseshoe of five trilithons (so called from the Greek for 'three stones'), each of a pair of uprights supporting a lintel, rising in height towards the central trilithon. All these stones are of sarsen, like the stones of Avebury. Like them too, they were transported from the Malborough Downs, some 20 miles to the north. Both circle and horseshoe have been laid out with great accuracy, in spite of the enormous mass of the stones, of which the heaviest weighs about 50 tonnes. All these stones have had their surfaces shaped and smoothed by pounding them with stone mauls or hammers. The stone is so hard that it will blunt the cutting edge of a bronze chisel almost at once, so that hammering was the only way of working it. This must have been done before the stones were erected, when they were lying on the ground and could be turned over with levers. The shapes of the stones show subtle refinements. The uprights taper towards the top with a slightly convex outline, perhaps to give an illusion of increased height. The building of Stonehenge III began about 2000 BC and probably took many years to complete. The most difficult operations in transporting and raising the stones would have needed about 1500 able-bodied men, representing a total population two or three times as large. Almost certainly, this undertaking needed the co-operation of tribes or clans spread over a much wider area; and this implies some kind of central and wide-ranging authority, though its nature remains totally obscure. In period IV, about 1100 BC, the Avenue was extended from the end of the first straight stretch built in period II to the river Avon near West Amesbury. This must mean that Stonehenge, to which the Avenue leads, was still in use at that date, and afterwards. How long thereafter it continued as a place of worship we cannot be sure, but it must have been for at least 500 years. It is unknown what religious beliefs Stonehenge represents, or what forms of worship or ceremonies took place within it. In recent years many suggestions have been made about the possible use of Stonehenge as an astronomical observatory, to record the movements of the rising and setting sun and moon along the horizon, and to predict eclipses.

3.2.2. The Boyne Ritual Landscape

This ritual landscape in County Meath, Ireland, is one of the most complex in the British Isles. Three large passage graves at Knowth, Newgrange and Dowth, dating from the early 3rd millennium BC, are the main focus of the site, which also

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contains smaller graves, artificial ponds, standing stones and wooden structures. The major monuments were built on a low ridge, dominating an open, mixedfarming landscape that had already lost most of its woodland. The Boyne ritual landscape presents one of the best examples of such a group of monuments anywhere in Europe. The passage graves of Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth have been described as the cathedrals of the megalithic religion. Each of these sites may have been accompanied by a cemetery of small tombs, and at Newgrange there may be also be the remains of a cursus a rectangular area enclosed by a bank with external ditches. The passage graves were decorated and their mounds were probably covered in quartz. The passage at Newgrange is aligned towards the midwinter sunrise, so that the burial chamber is illuminated on the shortest day of the year. This group of monuments maintained its relevance even after passage graves had ceased to be built, and became the focus of new monuments. Small wooden circles were built outside both Newgrange and Knowth, and in the wider landscape a number of large henge monuments as well as standing stones were erected. At this time, some artificially created ponds were built but their function is unknown. At Newgrange, the significance of the landscape is evident. Some time after the great mound had been built it seems to have lost its covering of quartz. The fallen material was bounded by a bank of clay in front of the entrance to the tomb, and a series of hearths and other structures were established in this area. A large number of animal bones have been found around these hearths, apparently resulting from feasting. The remains of the mound were enclosed by a massive stone circle, and a great ring of timber uprights was built just beyond the extension of the monument. The form of the ring suggests that it may be connected with some ritual functions of the henges that are distributed across that zone. The layout of the monuments may have changed over time but, like other parts of Neolithic Britain and Ireland, this part of the Boyne Valley holds remains of ritual activity extending over hundreds of years.

4. THE BRONZE AGE

The Bronze Age in Britain and Ireland covers the period from about 2400 to about 700 BC. Initially, there were strong elements of continuity with Neolithic traditions, with the ongoing use of stone circles and communal burials in chambered tombs. The great Neolithic ritual monuments continued to dominate the land, and many of them were in active use some time after. It is a period when temperatures were slightly higher than today's and, in the west of Britain at least, the rainfall was probably a little greater. This led to the

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formation of peat in some areas. Simultaneously, the process of forest clearance and regeneration continued much as before, creating different landscapes according to the size of the local population and the fragility of the soils. There was an agrarian economy in the early Bronze Age. Wheat and barley were grown, and cattle, sheep and pigs were reared, but these activities have left no lasting mark on the landscape. One possible reason for this is that animal husbandry was dominant at this time, while the growing of cereals played a less important role in their economy. By the second millennium, all this was to change. By 1500, human groups started to enclose and divide the land. Their settlements, usually comprising small clusters of timber buildings suitable for a single family, were often contained within enclosures defined by banks and ditches. In Dartmoor, parallel walls, or reeves, were built to divide up tracts of pasture lands. In Wessex, it is still possible to see the ordered way in which huge tracts of land were divided into regular chequer-boards of small fields. The latter half of the second millennium saw the landscape of Britain totally transformed as communities everywhere started to impose a new structure on the land they were trying to control. In the southern chalk lands, rise in cereal productivity led to further changes, most notably an increased awareness of fertility and of the importance of nurturing soil to maintain productivity. It also gave rise to the creation of grain storage pits. These silos, dug down into the rock, were effective stores for seed corn so long as the pits were sealed and airtight. The reason for putting the corn into the ground may have been to place it within the protection of the chthonic deities, who were believed to live within the earth, and would ensure its survival and fertility. In the Bronze Age, the old ancestral tombs were no longer used, and some of them were blocked. New traditions had arisen, including that of individual elite burials under cairns or barrows. The best-known example from this time is Stonehenge, where the sarsen circle, and later the horseshoe setting inside it, had been set up within the old henge. Towards the end of the period, warfare became more important and the first hill-forts appeared. This was the era of the Beaker Folk, named after the distinctive cups they buried with their dead. Beaker folk, who came over to Britain from Europe, brought many new customs to the island. Unlike the earlier islanders, they preferred single graves to collective tombs, and buried their dead beneath individual round mounds called tumuli. The bodies are sometimes found equipped with archer's bows and knives of copper. Metal was the outstanding contribution of these people. On their arrival, its use was established in Britain. This beaker was found in a Wiltshire burial mound. Unlike the simpler pottery of earlier generations of the Britons, it bears distinctive geometric markings. Bronze Age peoples established their characteristic round barrows in a variety of designs, which were not built after 1400 BC. The extraordinary White Horse at Uffington (Bershire), carved in the chalk hillside, followed

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another 500 years later, around 900 BC. With a lack of any scientific dating until recently, a tradition developed in the later Middle Ages that this carving represented not a horse but a dragon slain by St George, whom the English had adopted as their patron saint before 1350 AD. Although today we are aware that this tale is a myth, the White Horse reminds us of the growth of interest in the value of the horse in prehistoric societies.

4.1. New Materials and Tools

The Wessex people brought the rich metal resources of Britain under their control, and founded a culture of exceptional wealth and power. Their prosperity was founded on a network of far-flung trading connections. Goods were exchanged with the inhabitants of Ireland, Scandinavia, Brittany and central Europe, and perhaps with the people of the eastern Mediterranean. Their homeland on the Wiltshire Downs was ideally situated for trade. Northwards lay the shores of the Bristol Channel, from which boats crossed to Ireland. Southwards, they were within easy reach of the English Channel and Continental trade routes. The Wessex chieftains could exchange the grain, wool and hides produced by their peasant subjects for the precious metals of Ireland, Cornwall, Wales and northern England. And these goods, in turn, would be traded for luxuries from the whole of Europe. In addition to wealth, trade brought them increased knowledge and power. Their brilliant organisational abilities, their exceptional technical skill and, above all, their mastery of metal, made the Wessex people the master craftsmen of their age. They worked the valuable tin, copper and gold ores to create useful tools and beautiful ornaments. Copper was produced by smelting ore. It was soft enough to be hammered into shape, but hard enough to take a cutting edge. They soon discovered that by adding a small amount of tin, it was possible to make a much harder alloy, bronze. Tools made of bronze would make a sharper point and cut much more cleanly than copper or flint. Unlike stone, bronze tools could be recast if they broke, re-straightened if they bent, and sharpened over and over again. Copper and tin, and therefore bronze, must have been rare in Britain and Ireland. But gradually, the knowledge and use of the new material spread, as the copper ore supplies of Ireland, Wales and northern England were opened up, and tin from Cornwall became more accessible. At first, bronze seems to have been used for luxury goods only. Bronze beads and even small knives, found in the early graves, were status symbols, rather than practical tools. Tools for everyday use were still made of flint. A few centuries later, more effective daggers were made, together with flat bronze axes. These were weapons buried with the Wessex chieftain in the Bush Barrow.

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In the early stages, the objects were cast by pouring the molten metal into open moulds of stone or clay. Then they were hammered or trimmed into their final shape. But as supplies of bronze increased, so did the range of products and the technical skill of the smiths. Fostered by contacts with metal working on the Continent, British trade and production in bronze reached its peak in the 8th century BC. But during the next two centuries, knowledge of an even better metal was beginning to spread to the island: iron. It was abundant, widespread and much more durable than the metals they had been using. As supplies of bronze increased in Britain, so did the technical abilities of the bronze smiths. The cire perdue, or lost wax, method of casting was a sophisticated technique developed in the later Bronze Age. By 1000 BC, it was commonly used as an improvement on the old process moulds of stone or clay. Using this technique, British craftsmen could produce a range of implements with more varied shapes than could be produced by simple mould-casting. Axe-heads, daggers and, later, all manner of objects including sword-blades and shield-mounts, were made in this way. They provided lasting proof of the bronze-smith's art in Britain. Bronze Age monuments were certainly spectacular, but they were comparatively few in number. In the late Bronze Age and during the greater part of the Iron Age (the last millennium BC), new types of monuments such as hill forts appeared and new iron weapons began to emerge.

5. THE IRON AGE

In the Iron Age, there was an interaction between the 'civilised' cultures of the Mediterranean sphere (the Greeks, Etruscans, Phoenicians and Romans) and the 'barbarians' beyond, played out over a period of some 800 years. It began in the eighth century BC, when the Greeks and Phoenicians were starting to colonise the Mediterranean coasts. Due to geographical reasons, there were some links between Ireland and the west of Britain. This formed part of an Atlantic zone that included the western seaboard of Europe. The sea allowed adjacent communities to keep in contact with one another, exchanging ideas and gifts, trading in a number of commodities, among them the metals in which the region was so very rich. The Atlantic zone was characterised by small homesteads scattered quite densely where the land was good. These homesteads would usually support a single extended family. In the south-west area they were called 'rounds' and 'raths' and were enclosed with earthworks. In Scotland and the islands, homesteads were usually stone-built and are known as 'duns' and 'brochs'. The brochs were large, round houses with thick walls that were sometimes taken to

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considerable heights, making them look like towers. The duns were larger and less regular structures, and seldom attained much height. In south-eastern Britain, settlements were larger, forming little villages, but there were also many single, scattered farmsteads. They were protected with banks and ditches. In Ireland, Iron Age settlements were more elusive, but a number of hilltop enclosures have been found. Along the west coast, there were many stone-built forts, some of which may well have begun life in the Iron Age. The famous fort of Dun Aengus in the Aran Islands originated in the late Bronze Age.

5.1. The Hill-Fort Defences

It was around the beginning of the Iron Age, from about 700 BC, that hill forts proliferated, particularly in the central part of the island, where they concentrated in a broad band stretching from North Wales to the chalk downs of Wessex and Sussex. These were often within view of one another. The term 'hillfort' covers a variety of different kinds of fortified site built and was used in the period from about 800 BC until the Roman conquest in the first century AD. Most hill-forts occupied an impressive hilltop spur, fortified against attack from hill or valley. They developed from about 650 BC, and by 300 BC had a vertical stone wall and rock-cut ditch. Were their builders struggling to secure shares in dwindling resources? Or do the hill forts represent a healthy, wealthy system of exchange between tribes? Many went out of use as major centres around 50 BC, for reasons which are not clear. The most closely studied of these has been Danebury (Hampshire), where evidence of a diversity of structures was found within the grassy banks of this long-deserted site. Houses were found above ground, and below ground, storage structures. Its development is broadly contemporary with Crickley Hill, with the major hill fort works dating back to the 400s and 300s BC. Much evidence of occupation later on has been uncovered, perhaps for as many as 300 people, as well as evidence for exchange of goods using 'currency bars'. The hill-forts are varied in form. Some are roughly circular contour works of about 5 hectares; others may be smaller with spurs or ridges at the ends of the sites, while a few are very large and defined by slight banks and ditches. Such variety implies different functions. There is no reason to suppose that their main function was defence against attack. The act of enclosure could be a response to a number of needs, both social and ritual, while the massive defence and gates could have been designed to impress rather than to deter, proclaiming the status of the occupants. Evidence of attack has, however, been identified at a number of sites, in the form of layers of burning at gates, and sometimes bodies, lying unburied. This evidence suggest some aggressions.

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One important question to be answered about hill-forts is what and when went on inside. Were they used only as refuges at times of stress to permanently occupied towns? Around 300 BC, there is a clearly evident change: many of the early forts were abandoned, while a few continued to be used and became more strongly defended with massive ditches, sometimes in multiple rows, and with elaborate entrances defined by outworks. On the evidence of the hill forts of Iron Age England, violence was not all from within the country; part of it was caused by outsiders. Late Iron Age people feared attack from across the sea, as exemplified in their defended promontory lookouts and defences.

5.2. Commerce and Art

By the beginning of the Iron Age, an agricultural economy was established in Britain and Ireland. Wheat and barely were grown, and familiar farm animals were reared in an integrated arrangement. Hunting was not widely practised, but coastal communities made good use of the additional resources of shellfish that were readily at hand. There were, of course, many regional variations. In Devon, for example, cattle were important, while on the Wessex chalk-land, the emphasis was on sheep and corn. Many areas and regions provided some goods in surplus such as corn, hides, wool and salt, which they used for exchange. Some communities would have maintained networks of contact through which they distributed and acquired goods. Throughout the Iron Age, the people of Ireland and the British Isles were able to absorb new ideas from the Continent. In the seventh and six centuries BC, warrior equipment such swords and horse gear arrived in the islands through systems of gift exchange, and were copied by local craftsmen. From about 500 BC, British warriors, like their Continental neighbours, were equipped with iron stabbing swords and, occasionally, iron-fitted chariots. But these people knew more than fighting. They were Celts, as famous for their delight in decoration as they were notorious for their ferocity. They hammered their iron not only into weapons, but into the finest art of prehistoric Britain. Producing iron tools involved an elaborate process of high-temperature smelting, reheating and forging. This process remained unknown to generations of British bronze-smiths. The secrets of iron-making were gradually carried across Europe from the eastern Mediterranean. It was not only art styles that were adopted, but belief systems as well. In Yorkshire, the local communities started to adopt burial practices, including the burial of a chariot, that were very similar to rituals carried out on the Continent, in Central-Europe. In Britain, these communities form part of what is known among archaeologists as the Arras culture. These practices were

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introduced by a limited influx of new people; it is possible too that the rite was simply adopted by some elites familiar with these beliefs and customs of communities on the Continent. This familiarity was acquired through regular systems of trade and exchange. The Atlantic seaways were active, and flourished because of the desire for the metals, copper, gold and tin, that were to be had in southern Ireland, southwestern Britain and Wales. Tin, which is the fundamental component of bronze, was in particular demand because of its scarcity, and in the sixth and fifth centuries, British tin was travelling as far as the Mediterranean. Towards the end of the fourth century, the Greek scientist, Pytheas, travelled from Marseille to the British tin market in Cornwall: before his voyage, there were only vague rumours of the mysterious 'tin islands'. By around 300 BC, the contacts across the North Sea had declined, but the Atlantic seaways continued to develop and expand as the demand for British tin increased. In a tradition going back to the Neolithic, there is both archaeological and written evidence of cross-Channel economic contacts before Julius Caesar visited. The chalk-white cliffs of the English coast are generally believed to be the derivation of the poetic name 'Albion' (from Albus, white) for England. Iron Age Britons lived in round houses (contrasting with the rectangular structures of the Romans) on scattered farmsteads, some of which were defended, and which often had surrounding field systems and grazing.

6. THE CELTS
The word 'Celts' comes from the Latin Celtae, which in turn derives from Keltoi, a name used by the ancient Greeks to describe a barbarian people on the northern fringes of their world. The term Keltoe or Celts was eventually applied to a great variety of peoples or tribal groups who spoke closely related languages (with evidence of distinct dialects), and who shared a similar material culture. It has been suggested that their language goes back to the Bronze Age in the second millennium BC. These ancestors of the Celts can be distinguished clearly during the 7th-6th centuries BC from the cultural mix of central Europe. By 600 BC, they were associated with the Hallstart culture of Austria. By the 5th century BC, their material culture had evolved into La Tene, 'the shallows', after an Iron Age site at Lake Neuchatel in Switzerland. Here, magnificent artefacts were discovered in princely graves: weapons, vehicles, rich personal ornaments, and highly decorated utensils. There was evidence of trade with, and influence from, the Mediterranean world and even beyond.

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The first written historical reference to the Celts is around 450 BC when the Greek historian Herodotus (c.484-c.424 BC) told of Celtic settlements near the source of the Danube. From this point on, the migration of the Celts is recorded all over Europe. They sacked Rome in 387-86 and Delphi in 279 BC. Their migrations took them as far west as Spain and north into Britain and Ireland. At their peak they controlled lands from Ireland and Spain to the plains of Hungary. At no point did the Celts form an empire, their territory consisting of independent kingdoms or groups of kingdoms. The most important descriptions of the Celts come from the Greek philosopher Posidonios (C.153-C.51 BC) and the Roman statesman Julius Caesar (100-44 BC), who depicted them as war-loving and vainglorious. Champions fought naked, engaged in single combat, were driven into battle on chariots, and removed the heads of their enemies. Their priests were the Druids. By the time of Julius Caesar, their kingships were giving way to magistracies; they had towns engaged in international trade, used coinage, and some Celtic peoples were using writing. The Roman conquest of Europe and the later barbarian invasions obscured the Celtic past in these regions, but in nonRomanised Ireland a Celtic world survived. The Celts, a warrior people, spread across much of Europe throughout the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Many established themselves in well defended hill-forts in the south and west of England. Often highly complex constructions, the hill-forts were protected by a system of multiple ditches and ramparts. Within these virtually impregnable hill-top fortresses, the members of a tribe and their animals lived. There is no evidence to suggest that migrant groups spread westwards to Britain, Ireland and Iberia, as was once thought. However, by the time of the migrations in the 5 th and 4 th centuries, much of Western Europe, including Britain, was using dialects of a language group which, since the seventeenth century, has come to be known, somewhat confusingly, as 'Celtic'. The language probably developed in Atlantic Europe some time towards the end of the second millennium BC and was already ancient by the time the La Tene chieftains had begun to wield their power. There is no direct relationship between the geographical spread of the Celtic languages and the La Tene culture of the middle European migrants.

6.1, Culture and Art

La Tene art is considered to be the first definitive Celtic art. Initially, its fantastic imagery often included interpretations of Classical and Oriental forms, but later, its distinctive styles were more reminiscent of plant forms. The La Tene culture reached its flowering in the 3 rd century BC.

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In sagas written by monks in 7 th and 8 th century Ireland, there are remarkable parallels for the descriptions of the continental Celts. Irish society is Celtic but has traces of earlier peoples. Exactly when the Celts arrived in Ireland and Britain is a matter of continuing debate, but traces of La Tene culture are found in the 3 rd century BC and probably represent groups migrating into an island that had been Celtic for a long time previously. Like the Celtic character, Celtic art was energetic, exuberant and explosive, and yet at the same time full of humour. By about 200 BC, an essentially British style of Celtic art began to appear under Continental influence. Individual 'schools' of artists, working under the patronage of wealthy chieftains, developed their own distinctive styles. When the Romans came to Britain in 55 BC, British craftsmen were lavishing their skills on objects used to display wealth and status. These objects were weapons, shields, helmets and horse trappings. Specialists worked full-time to produce magnificent products for the wealthy, and excelled in metalwork, especially iron and bronze. Even articles for everyday use, such as pots, weavingcombs and spindle-whorls, were enlivened with simple elegant patterns. The artists took their inspiration from nature, often repeating the gentle curves of the rolling hills in rounded, flowing patterns. A straight line or a sharp angle was almost unknown in the richly embossed and usually abstracts designs. Behind it all, lay the suspicion of humour, sometimes called the 'Cheshire cat' style. After a short gaze, almost any design will dissolve into the shape of a human face. Sometimes you see the whole, sometimes just the grin. The coming of Christianity brought with it 'Romanitas' the culture of Rome. Native Celtic tradition now fused with these new ideas to create an extremely rich cultural environment. Ireland produced some of the greatest works of Celtic art in each of the media, including epic hero-tales, illuminated manuscripts such as the Book of Durrow and the Book of Kells, and the Celtic high crosses that were distinctive features of Celtic Christianity. The Gaelic language was a mixture of Celtic and pre-Celtic languages. Ireland inherited the earliest vernacular language of Medieval Europe, with a unique literature. Gaelic was introduced to Scotland by Irish settlement. Another branch of the Celtic language continues in the native languages of Wales and Brittany. Although Gaelic identity was stimulated by the coming of the Vikings, native Gaelic society and culture was profoundly changed following the AngloNorman invasion of the 12th century. It continued to survive independently in the Gaelic lordships, and saw revival in the later Middle Ages when the AngloIrish colony declined, but the Reformation in Ireland and the renewal of English crown power finally led to the collapse of the traditional Gaelic society in the 17th century, as the English Protestant conquest and colonization was completed.

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6.2. Architecture
The Celtic architects put all their emphasis on strength and security, and the brochs must have been among the strongest fortresses in all prehistoric Europe. From the safety of their fortress home, the tribesmen traded skins, wool, hides, corn and slaves for iron and bronze weapons and goods from the south. Over 500 brochs like this are known in Scotland. Some Celts and a chieftain and his supporters decided to sail to Shetland from the Orkneys in search of a safe place for a farmstead. They took over the Iron Age farming community which lived in round stone houses protected by a circular wall on the lake island of Clickhimin, among other communities. The newcomers then set about building a broch. This is a communal farmhouse within a massive stone tower. For, in that time, when danger was always near, they found that the island site alone was not enough for their protection. The outside of the broch was 65 ft in diameter and it stood 40-50 ft high. Large quantities of building stone, ferried from the mainland, were needed. It was stock-piled in the yard, the builders living in temporary huts nearby. The main entrance, at ground level, was a 17 ft long passage through the wall, opening into the central courtyard. A solid wooden door, with a guard-room just beyond it, made the entrance virtually impregnable. The central courtyard, about 33 ft across, was surrounded by tiers of timber rooms. These were two or three storeys high, and they backed on to the inside of the tower wall. A staircase, built into the wall, led from the first floor to the top of the tower. Two small rooms inside the wall at ground level provided storage space, or perhaps additional living-rooms. The work of the community was done on the ground floor. There was a central stone-lined hearth in the courtyard, and jobs like smithing, corngrinding and weaving were done in the rooms around it. Cattle were also housed there in winter. The people themselves lived and slept in the upper storeys. Some communities, such as the Clickhimin, prospered and built a great number of brochs. The best preserved broch built by the Celts stands on a lonely headland of Mousa, one of the Shetland Islands. Its walls are 43 ft high.

6.3. Society
Celtic society in Britain preserved many features from the previous order, including shrines and feast days. Its calendar combined lunar and solar cycles, as in megalithic times. The social structure was similar to that advocated by Plato, based on a religious cosmology and democratic idealism. Each tribe had

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its own territory with fixed borders, and that land, held by the tribe as a whole, consisted of forest and wilderness, common lands and agricultural holdings. Under a complicated system of land tenure, everyone's rights and obligations were carefully defined. Some of the land was worked in common for the chieftain, the priests, and the old, poor, and sick tribesfolk; the rest was apportioned as family farms. Grazing and foraging rights were shared on the common lands. Much of the tribal business was conducted at annual assemblies where land disputes were decided, petty offenders were tried, and chiefs and officials, both male and female, were appointed by popular vote. A great number of old farmsteads in Britain, today, are on Celtic sites. During his raid on Celtic Britain in 55 BC, Julius Caesar commented on its high population and numerous farms and cattle. The unifying bond between all the Celtic tribes was their common priesthood, the Druids. Their efforts, a common culture, religion, history, laws, scholarship, and science were preserved. They had paramount authority over every tribal chief and, since their office was sacred, they could move where they wanted. Who were the Druids? Knowledge of the Druids comes directly from classical writers of their time. They were compared to the learned priesthoods of antiquity, the Indian Brahmins, the Pythagoreans, and the Chaldean astronomers of Babylon. Caesar wrote that they "know much about the stars and celestial motions, and about the size of the earth and universe, and about the essential nature of things, and about the powers and authority o f the immortal gods; and these things they teach to their pupils." They also taught the traditional doctrine of the soul's immortality. They must have professed detailed knowledge of the workings of reincarnation, for one writer said that they allowed debts incurred in one lifetime to be repaid in the next. A significant remark of Caesar's was that Druidism originated in Britain, which was its stronghold. Indeed, it has all the appearance of a native religion, being deeply rooted in the primeval native culture. Its myths and heroic legends are related to the ancient holy places of Britain, and they may largely have been adapted from much earlier traditions. In the Celtic, as in all previous times, the same holy wells and nature shrines were visited on certain days for their spiritual virtues. The overall pattern of life was scarcely changed. In the course of time, society became more structured and elaborate and the Druid laws more rigid, but the beginning of the Celtic period in Britain was evidently not marked by any major break in tradition. Druids managed the higher legal system and the courts of appeal, and their colleges in Britain were famous throughout the Continent. Up to twenty years of oral instruction and memorizing were required of a pupil before being admitted into their order. Minstrels and bards were educated by the Druids for similar periods. Nor was there any great shift in population; the British population, even in the so-called Celtic lands, are predominantly of native Mesolithic ancestry.

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The Druids' religion and science also have the appearance of belonging to an earlier Britain. Their knowledge of astronomy may have descended from the priests of megalithic times, together with the spiritual secrets of the landscape. Yet there is an obvious difference between the Celtic Druids and the megalithic priests before them. The Druids abandoned the great stone temples and reverted to the old natural shrines, the springs and groves where they held their rituals. A religious reformation is here implied. It is characteristic of state priesthoods that their spiritual powers wane as their temporal authority grows: and the less confidence they inspire, the more tributes and sacrifices they demand of the people. In its latter days, the rule of the megalithic priesthood probably became so onerous that it was overthrown. Whether as a native development or prompted by outside influences, a spiritual revival seems to have occurred in Britain in about 2000 BC, with the building of the cosmic temple of Stonehenge and the first evidence of Celtic culture. Stonehenge is a unique monument, a symbol of a new revelation. The tendency in modern scholarship is to see it once more as the temple of the Druids, if so, it proclaims the high ideals on which Druidism in Britain was founded. All Celtic men of substance were included amongst the Druids or the nobles, who were the learned and priestly class, and were the chief enforcers and guardians of the law. This was the elite with great powers. The Druids were believed to be able to render people insane by flinging a magic wisp of straw in their faces, to be able to create the clouds of mist so common in Irish myths, or bring down showers of blood or fire. They possessed the ability to forecast the future by watching the clouds, could confer invisibility on which they chose, and had various and peculiar means of divination. Unlike the nobles, they were not a hereditary class, and enjoyed exemption from otherwise compulsory service as a warrior. They were also free of taxes. Not surprisingly, admission to the order was eagerly sought by the young, but many tried and few were chosen. The training could take twenty years, and nothing could ever be written down. The president of the order, who was elected, served for life, and enjoyed absolute authority all over the Druids. Ireland especially was full of sacred places, the burial mounds, the sacred groves of the druids, the sacred wells, pillar stones, and the great hill fortresses such as Tara, Emain Macha, and Aileach. Monarchy became the form of government. Ireland was divided already into 'fifths' or kingdoms, and these were divided into states called Tuatha, of which by about 1000 AD there were probably a hundred or so. The religion was of course Druidism. Their written language was 'Ogam'. This language largely became known through funeral descriptions on upright stones or tense passages or written on wooden staves.

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THE DRUIDS IN IRISH MYTHOLOGY

The importance of the Druids in Irish mythology simply cannot be overestimated, and despite the presence of story-tellers, they exerted an immense influence on what was eventually written d o w n . Their culture was entirely oral, it being against their deepest principles t o have anything written d o w n , even at a time when they w o u l d have been skilled in Latin or a version of Latin, though the Romans declared that when anything had t o be written d o w n by the Druids, as for example, accounts, it was in Greek. The w o r d ' d r u i d ' itself is believed t o have come from dru-vid, meaning very knowing, or wise, and it is from the Romans that we first hear of t h e m , especially from Julius Caesar, who, in his accounts of his own fighting and adventures, has proved t o be utterly reliable and free from all idle speculation, important when any aspect of Irish mythology is considered.

CHRONOLOGY
Chronological Table
400,000 BC Earliest human remained in Britain (Boxgrove, Sussex) 10,000-BC Land bridge with Europe 4000 BC 8000 BC End of the glaciations 7500 BC Old Stone Age gave way to Middle Stone Age 7000 BC Hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) Era appeared in Ulster, possibly via a land bridge from Scotland. 5000 BC Rising sea levelled Britain off from the rest of Europe 4000-BC Farming spread throughout Britain and Ireland 3500 BC Early farmers began to build monuments 4000-BC New Stone Age monuments: Sweet Track; Avebury, Silbury 2000 BC Early farmers arrived and began to build monuments 3500 BC Animal and crop husbandry, weaving and pottery was introduced by Neolithic people arriving by sea, probably from Britain

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3000 BC Constructions of Newgrange passage tomb in Ireland 2500 BC Copper mining began in southwest Ireland 2000 BC The main stage of Stonehenge was completed Bronze tools and weapons were in use in Britain and Ireland 2000-BC Stone Circle built at Stonehenge 700 BC Bronze Age beaker folk, round barrow burials 1000 BC Earliest use of iron in Britain 700 BC The Iron Age: Hill forts were built 550 BC Hallstatt ornamental style reached Britain 400 BC Influence of the La Tene ornamental style reached Britain 320 BC Greek navigator Pytheas of Messalia visited Britain 300 BC Iron Age Celtic-speaking people arrived to Ireland, migrating from Central Europe via France and Britain. It developed into the Gaelic language 70 BC First native coinage produced in southern Britain

REVIEW QUESTIONS FOR SELF-EVALUATION

1. What were the main characteristics of the First Settlers of Britain and Ireland? 2. What were the most relevant Neolithic changes? 3. How did they build Stonehenge? 4. What were the new materials and tools used in the Bronze Age? 5. What does 'Ritual Landscape' mean? 6. Enumerate the main features of Celtic art 7. Describe the construction of the Hill-Fort Defences. 8. What were the most important changes in the Iron Age? 9. Why was religion so important in Prehistoric times? 10. Who were Druids?

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