Belén Poleto – History 1 – 2020 – Pablo Crovetto 1

Unit 2: From prehistory to the Roman Empire

Paleolithic period – Stone Age
In the Paleolithic period there was no writing, so that´s why it’s called pre-history. The first ice age
occurred 40.000 years ago and the second ice age happened 13.000 years ago.
The transition stage between the Paleolithic and the Mesolithic period is the Mesolithic.
Society was mainly made up of hunter-gatherers. In pre-history, roles were assigned based on
gender. If you were a woman, you gathered food and if you were a male, you were in charge of
hunting.
During this period, people learned how to manipulate and modify nature to benefit themselves.
Moreover, weapons started being made; they were made mainly made of sticks and stones.
This period is also called the Stone Age, man used rough stone or flint tools of very slowly increasing
sophistication. He supported life through hunting, trapping, fishing and gathering the wild plants and
crustaces. There was little permanent settlement, as they followed herds across the seasons and
feeding grounds (nomads, hunter-gatherers)

Neolithic period
(The Isles: A History – Norman Davies – Chapter 1: After the Ice Age)
During the Neolithic period, the manipulation of nature was widely spread. There was more
cultivation and raising of cattle. Dwelling and settlements were no longer seasonal, they were made
permanent. By using adobe, (water and mud) people were able to stick things together and made
lasting places to stay.
During this period there were several technological developments, one of them being pottery.
Pottery was used to cook food and carry water. This benefited tribes as cooked food was good for
babies, which meant that there were bigger tribes.
In this period, people needed more but they had more.
The sleeve (a body of water between the green isle and the great isle) improved communication
and primitive boats were the ones that favored trading. Communication did not fluster, it was made
dependant on boats.
In the fourth millennium, there was a rise in sea level – human settlement was concentrated in areas
adjacent to the seaways and maritime trade routed.
Neolithic revolution
The Neolithic revolution was an intercontinental movement of great duration (from 8000 to 2000 AD)
and there are many suppositions on how it expanded.
1. Bands of Neolithic agriculturalists steadily pushed their way across the peninsula in their need
and hunger for suitable land. In this case, the newcomers would have simply supplanted the
hunter gatherers, killing or expelling those whom they could no recruit
2. Neolithic farmers did not migrate themselves, but their farming techniques did. In this case,
the old population of successive regions was not displaced but was steadily converted to a
new lifestyle by a process of acculturation. The Mesolithic hunter gatherers were not victims
of the Neolithic revolutionaries but their ancestors
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3. The Neolithic revolution spread though a mix of migration and acculturation. The difficulty is
to estimate the relative proportions of these two.
The Neolithic revolution’s consequences were the following:
 Introduction of arable (land used for farming) and livestock farming
 It created permanent settlement in communities
 Its economy was based on the exploitation of crops and domesticated animals (varied diet,
surplus of meat in good years, and it favored trade and commerce)
 Social structures marked divisions between food producers and the specialized casted of
craftsmen, merchants, miners, administrators and soldiers (supported by the surplus on
meat)
 Politics put a control on the land, on the protection of settlements and in the formation of
territorial politics (nascent states)
 Its geographic patters transformed the landscape and that divided them into the familiar
sectors cultivated countryside
 Its religious ideology saw a waning of the cult of the great earth mother (emphasis on birth
and reproduction of a tiny fragile species + fertility of the fields)
 One undoubted advantage was the military power to occupy land and hold it
The period transition was a long one and activities like hunting and gathering never really died out.
Even when arable crops supplied the staple food, farming families supplemented their diets in the
old ways. Stag hunting, angling, grouse shooting, blackberry picking and cockle collecting never
stopped.

The result of the Neolithic period was not just that the population of the isles multiplied
significantly. More importantly, the isles made up for the backlog of the Ice Ages and caught up
with the trends of the continent. The consolidation of settlement stimulated both trade in general
and the Western seaways in particular

Bronze Age
The emphasis shifted to the trade in precious metals in the Bronze Age – copper, gold, tin and
eventually iron. By the third millennium, the Neolithic period was giving way to the Bronze Age.
Coppersmiths were established in the north Western highland zone and marine transport was
capable of moving heavy freight.
The development of seaways was matched by the development of trackways. In late Neolithic times,
earthwork enclosures were built on hills, surrounded by ditches and they served as refuges for local
population and their chattel s for times of alarm
The Bronze Age lasted from 1800 to 600 BC. At first, it was the age of renewed megalith building
and of the Beaker Folk (people who made highly sophisticated pottery for the time) and their
exquisite pottery. Later it was the scene of new cultures once associated conquering colonial
colonists but whose conquests may have been somewhat less sanguinary than once thought. Two
such groups became prominent – the flanged-axe warriors and the Unrfield people.
The flanged axed warriors: they brought their continental life style with hem. They improved
weaponry, which enabled them to subdue the local population. It wasn’t a huge invasion. Small
groups of raiders exerted over lordship and perpetuated their kind by taking local women as wives.

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Another theory is that local leaders imitated the weapons and techniques they were on the other
side of the sleeve in continental Europe
The urnfield people appeared three centuries after the flanged axed warriors. They were named as
such because of the large incinerators, which they used for funerary use. The urnfields were artisans
perfecting the flint, copper, gold and bronze. When they died, they cremated the ashes and placed
them in urns, and buried them into a pit.
The final phase of the Bronze Age witnessed new variants on the preceding themes. Several smaller
cultures emerged, which may or may not have been backed by migrant colonizers. Agricultural
techniques improved.

Iron Age
The Iron Age began on the isles with the importation of artefact, as swords and daggers
Iron was nor the only innovation of the Iron Age
 Horsepower was equally important. Used as draught animals to pull wheeled wagons and for
military purposes as chariot-teams or cavalry mounts
 The advance of military techniques raised the threshold of fear and insecurity
 Rapid multiplication of hillforts. They were smaller but much more protected with steep
approaches, v-shaped ditches, elevated stone-faced ramparts, high wooden palisades and
fortified gateways
The presence of tin in the headlands had many consequences. It revived the Western seaways. It
revitalized the intercourse of the isle with the mainland. The continental tribe of Venetii built a
powerful fleet to protect their sea trade. Trade grew to the point where barter was no longer
sufficient. The first insular currency was wrought from iron bars
 Craftamship reached high standards. Blacksmiths forged sickles, which could pass muster in
any later age
 Bronze smiths concentrated on fine domestic vessels, like bowls and cauldrons. The
carpenters has mastered both the construction of heavy platforms and the delicate lathe
turning so rounded ladles, handles and spoons. The weavers used an improved loom with
bone bobbins
 The miller’s ground flour from a hand operated rotary quern.
Iron Age artefacts were utilitarian and beautiful.
Coastal saltpans added one last feature of the Iron Age landscape. They greatly increased demand
for salt probably arose from the new capacity to lay down surplus meat as salt beef and salt pork,
and hence to allay the immemorial terror of winter starvation
The abundance of copper led to specialization in the heaviest and most expensive type of bronze
axes and of high quality bronze cauldrons
The presence of gold inspired the production of magnificent hammered sun-discs and crescent
shaped Lanulae or gorges which found their way very far abroad
The firs work of literature was “the book of invasions” which recorded the sequence of peoples who
made up the island’s pedigree

First inhabitants
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(The Isles: A History – Norman Davies – Chapter 2: The Painted Isles)

The Celtic British established themselves on the great isles, while another; non-British branch of
Celts took over the green isle. Together they established Celtic supremacy, which lasted 6/7
centuries until the coming of the Romans.
Celts dominated much of Europe. Their language and culture united them (they were found from
Britain and Ireland to France and Spain in the south and east as far as the Balkans and turkey)
The story of Celts is rooted in language. they are a linguistic group. They were a conglomeration of
peoples speaking a series of related languages. Pytheas of Massila noted the following names:
Pretaniké for the isles as a whole, Irene for the smaller Western isle and Nesos Albion for the larger,
Eastern isle.
Insular Celts divided among themselves into fiercely competing tribes
They did not take to letters until Christian times, they laid great importance on language and in the
culture it conveyed.
Celtic influences spread by movement of people, export of culture and language. The classical world
acted as a great stimulus for trade beyond the frontiers of the growing Roman Empire. In addition,
the Celts acted as the intermediary between the Mediterranean and the peoples of the north and
west
They traded mainly salt, slaves, swords, and fine jewelry
Celtic conquests had three stages
1. Stage 1: invasion
2. Stage 2: settlement
3. Stage 3: assimilation
Re-approachment between Albion and Gaul in the first century was political, economic and cultural.
Economic life was affected by Roman advance. Roman life stimulated trade. Celts offered slaves,
metals, agricultural products while Rome offered manufactured products
Cultural re-approach was based in the belief in a world filled with supernatural and inhabited by a
vest array of deities by magical spells and curses and tribal heroes
Celtic Romans encountered the Celts. They assumed that the multiplicity of Celtic gods was
organized in a way similar to their own. The Celts did recognize a pantheon of the sort, but had few
featured in common with their Olympian counterpart. For Celts, the concept of divinity encompassed
high-intensity magic.
Insular Celts recognized major gods who were received throughout the Celtic world. There were
insular gods with no known continental equivalent. The Celts believed that the essence of a person
resided in its head.

Celtic beliefs
The supernatural
Deities: polytheism
► Shape shifting
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► Triplicity
► Popularity
► Presented in pairs
Essence of a person = in the head =oral tradition
Druids – Male or female – greatest authorities in Celtic society (priests, judges, shamans, magicians,
etc.)
Myrdain / Merlin
Celtic tradition held that particular forms or ritual murder – drowning, hanging or burning, could only
propagate particular gods
The labour force was organized in a system of age-cohorts who worked their way through a
succession of social tasks suitable for third age strength rather than a permanent arrangement of
fixed classes
The collective realm dominated over the individual one
Writing
Mostly illiterate – there are some inscriptions
Bards: oral traditions, which survived in Eire
Rome never conquered Ireland, that is why language lasted + in Eire.
First contacts with Rome
The first direct Roman contact was when Julius Cesar undertook two expeditions in 55 and 54 BC
as part of his conquest of Gaul, believing that Britons were helping Gaelic resistance. Both these
expeditions were unsuccessful.
It was in 43 AD that Claudius managed to conquer Britain and make alliances (divide and you will
conquer) – Gaul and England were no longer allies so it was easier for them to conquer England.
Rich British families wrote and read Latin but this was biased by Julius Caesar.
The Iceni community – Boudicca (wife of chief) organizes a rebellion against the Romans. The deal
was that they should have a commercial relationship with Rome and Europe until her husband died.
When he died, half of the community would go to Boudicca and her daughters and the other half
would go to the Roman Empire. When he died. The Romans moved into the kingdom, looted
buildings, and took people as salves. Boudicca claimed that the Romans flogged her and raped her
daughters. This caused her to lead a rebellion.
Build a wall in Scotland – Adrian’s wall – If you were Celtic, you could go to the Picts in Scotland

Incorporation of Britannia to the Roman Empire

Benefits of this:
 Trade
 They can read and write
 Military defense and protection
 They have laws
Small town and villages grew with the development of the Roman provincial economy
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They lost oral and fighting tradition

ROMANIZATION, ORGANIZATION AND EXTENTION OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE

(Britain After Rome: the fall and rise 400-1070 – Robin Fleming – Chapter 1: The rise and fall of
late antique Britain: the second to early fifth century)

Roman Britain’s first economy

Classical style cities had amenities
 Grid planned streets
 Aqueducts
 Baths
 Forums
 Amphitheaters
Urban communities in Britain grew and prospered because they were centers of massive
international commerce. Some of it was stimulated by networks of taxation and exploitation used to
transfer wealth from the conquered province and bringing it back to the core Empire.
Consumer habits and Romanizing of small, native elites also encouraged elite trades.
Britain had a large army, 40.000 men at least, an eighth of Rome’s militia. An army the size of Britain
required funding and constantly provisioning with a wide range of god: food, clothing, arms, transport
animals, building materials (some from local lands, some from further fields)
Britain’s economy of governmental expenditure and privileged continental trade created wealth. The
majority of Britannia’s rural settlements remained un-Roman during these years- however; this
system could not be sustained. The beginning of the third century witnessed the last major campaign
in Britain, in addition to various attacks in the Danube, the Rhine and the Persian frontiers, let to
reduction of troops in Britain and the dominant patters of the trade and expenditure, in which Roman
life depended.
 Change in military contracts
 Continental trade went into crisis
 Barbarian incursions
 Civil war which increased prices
 Coastal piracy arisen in coastal shipping
Roman trade had privileged continental trade. Military contracts changed, so the parasitic trade in
continental good went into crisis. Those who policed, administered, and did business in Britain took
most of the benefits.
Barbarian incursions disrupted inter-provincial trade – goods were at risk as they moved to the
Western Empire (raising the costs)

The rise of Roman Britain’s second economy

The transition from the old economy to the new one was hard and slow. After the crisis, people had
to make do. It took mucho of the third century. Most of the things they imported couldn’t be planted
in rainy Britain so they had to substitute imported goods with local goods:
 Beer replaced wine
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 Lard and butter replaced olive oil

 Candles and braziers replaced oil lamps
Romano-British people provided quantities of Roman style tableware and made up for failed
continental supplies. The tableware industry brought fortune to English potters, traders, and
entrepreneurs. Pottery business had broadened in Britain itself
Although British cities no longer sat in the heart of the economy, they remained alluring places: they
acted as centres of social and cultural lives
Settlements developed organically and on their own.
Min the late 3rd and early 4th century there was a shift in crops. Bread wheat and hay began being
harvested. This changes result from the use of heavier imported ploughing animals, which allowed
exploiting fertile clay soil, and the appearance of long scythes.

The living and the dead in late antique Britain

Peaceful lives – hard physical labor
Infectious disease – early deaths – small pox – tuberculosis – most deaths were because of
malnutrition and flawed diet (not starvation)

The beginning of the fall of the Roman Empire

The fall of ancient Rome started about 190. Tribes attacked the Roman Empire and civil wars in
parts of the Empire further weakened the rule of Rome and respect for Roman law dwindled as a
result
Tribes such as the Goths wanted to move south into parts of Europe that experienced a better
climate that would assist their farming. This could only bring them into conflict with the Romans. At
about AD 190, Rome also experienced a succession of poor emperors who were not capable of
doing their job
The Roman army was spread throughout Western Europe
In AD 284, the emperor Diocletian decided to divide the Roman Empire in two to make it easier to
rule – he created the Western Empire and the Eastern Empire, each with its own leader.
He had administrative problems, military defenses has to be built across the whole Empire. This
cost money that Rome did not have. To pay for these, taxed were raised and extra coins were
minted, which lead to inflation. The people of Rome were less than favorable towards those who led
them.
In AD 307, Constantine became emperor. He ruled from AD 307 to 337. He was Rome’s first
Christian emperor.
He believed that Rome was too far away from vital areas. Constantine moved the capital of the
Empire to a new city – Constantinople. This new city was built on the old city of Byzantium. However,
whatever the motives were, Constantinople was a poor decision.
Constantinople was much further west than Rome and firmly in the Eastern Empire. This left the
Western Empire very vulnerable.

Implosion
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From 340 on, periodic but serious raiding distracted imperial politics and demanded money for
defense
After raiding in 343, the frontier stabilized and peace returned
In 360, there was a serious incursion – the Picts and scots embarked in a series of raids and hit-
and-runs. From this point on, things that made Britain Roman ceased and faltered.
367 – Barbarian conspiracy – the Picts and the Atacotti attacked Britain, franks and Saxons attacked
Gaul (Bonafide Invasion). Britain’s own garrison had to be supplemented with troops brought from
afar – it took two years for the country general to restore order and rid Britain of was bands.
By late 360/370 the economy of Roman Britain and its culture has entered into decline,
396/8 – pics, scots and Saxons – sea raiders
401 – Italy was threatened so troops were removed to protect Rome
Military costs were mounting across the west and there was little aid for projects, so local
communities had to shoulder the burden themselves. The rich evaded taxes, so the expenditures
would have fallen on ordinary people and this compromised their ability to buy goods.
By 420, Britain’s villas had been abandoned and its towns and industries were dead.

Legacy
 Grid planned streets
 Aqueducts
 Baths
 Forums
 Amphitheaters
 Laws
 Militia
 Weapons
 Pottery

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