Rees: Tools for Cultivation in prehistoric Britain 111
Fig. 10 Iron shares: a. Bigbury b. Crayford, c. Hunsbury
used in the prehistoric period in Britain. It is made of maple
wood, 1.275 m in length with two gently curving neck
pieces. Two oxen would appear to have been the common-
est draught team to judge from the yokes available to us and
the probably prehistoric rock engravings from Scandinavia
(e.g. Gelling and Davidson 1969, figs. 37, 38), but both
sources of evidence are as yet only very imprecisely date-
able; more than two, however, were sometimes used (e.g.
Fenton 1971–72, fig. 1, 12; also Payne 1947, 84, pl. V).
Efficacy of the ards
Judging the efficacy of these ards is difficult, as the evidence
is somewhat unreliable. Firstly we have the ard parts them-
selves and we can experiment with their reconstructions.
Secondly, we have archaeological evidence of the effect of
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(x ½)
ards in the actual tracks of the ards in the ground, in traces
of old field systems, and in the examinations of the buried
plough soil. Thirdly, we have the distribution of the ard
parts and the evidence that this can give us for the type of
terrain and soil on which an ard was practicable.
Plough marks
Some of the most informative ploughing experiments were
performed by Hansen in North Denmark in the years 1962
to 1968 with a reconstruction of a Hendriksmose ard
(Hansen 1969). Among other results the experiments
showed that the Hendriksmose ard was made for a team of
two animals with a low shoulder height — probably cows.
Walking speed during ploughing was found to be between
3.6 and 4.6km per hour. The position of the share was
 112 Rees: Tools for Cultivation in prehistoric Britain
found to be most effective 100 mm in front of the ard head.
The ard was found to be incapable of ploughing parallel
furrows close together without slipping into the furrow
previously ploughed. This is presumably the reason that
cross-ploughing was practised in prehistoric time. Excava-
tions at two sites in the northern isles, Skaill in Orkney
(excavation by P S Gelling 1962–77, continuing) and
Sumburgh in Shetland (excavation by R G Lamb 1974)
have produced traces of ard marks in the sub-soil as well as
large numbers of stone ard shares. The traces are generally
250–350 mm apart in the sub-soil, although this does not
necessarily mean that there were untouched areas in the
soil, as the breaking action of the share, especially an arrow-
shaped share, widens upward in a funnel-shaped spread.
At Skaill the traces are older than the late Bronze Age
houses under which they run; at Sumburgh the earliest are
probably previous to the retarded late Neolithic and they
continue through the Bronze Age. Excavation of these
traces shows in their cross-sections an asymmetric V profile,
Measurement of the angle between the vertical and the bi-
sector of the V gives what Neilsen, while excavating the
ard traces at Store Vildmose in Denmark, called the angle
of tilt (Nielsen 1970, fig. 5), i.e. the angle to which the ard
was tilted to one side during ploughing. The traces at
Sumburgh, for example, showed angles of tilt of 6°–18°
It is worth noting here that both the Virdifield arrow-shaped
ard-heads, and one in particular, show severe asymmetric
wear.
By examining the junctions of cross-ploughings, it is poss-
ible to see which cuts the other, and thus which is later; as
the sand from the side of the furrow is dragged into the
(generally) darker earth of the earlier furrow, it is possible
to see in which direction the ard was travelling, and thus by
examining the cross-section to see to which side the ard
was being tilted. It is notoriously difficult to separate
traces representing one year’s ploughing, but as far as can
be judged, evidence at Gwithian at least (Megaw et al.
1961) suggested that furrows were ploughed twice, once
in each direction, so that the earth was thrown to each side
of the furrow. In many instances, however, so many traces
of isolated ploughings can be seen superimposed upon one
another that it is impossible either to work out the system
of ploughing or to tell how long the field has been in cul-
tivation. Neilsen makes the very pertinent point that the
ploughing process even in a single year could have been
complex enough to have left many plough marks; for in-
stance, in the process of breaking fallow ground, three or
four ploughings could have been necessary, and further
ploughing later in the year would break up the clods and
make a good tilth. Thus it is impossible to tell how many
years’ cultivation prehistoric agricultural techniques would
allow an individual field. It may be interesting to note in
this context the evidence for prehistoric manuring, for
example in a field at Gwithian (Megaw et al. 1961, 9–10).
It would appear from Celtic field remains that from the
Middle Bronze Age, at least, fixed field systems were being
laid down (Bowen 1961, 36) and some have lynchets of
such a height that many years’ ploughing must have been
necessary to produce them. Whether or not the lynchets
were formed as a result of one continuous ploughing pro-
cess or of several shorter processes, by the Middle Bronze
Age, agricultural practices must have been sufficiently
sophisticated in some areas at least to make a fixed field
system a practical proposition. Neilsen remarks upon the
erosion of the sub-soil in the iron Age fields at Store
Vildmose (Nielsen 1970, 152) as repeated ploughings
hollowed it out. In one instance there was a difference of
up to 80 mm between the height of the sub-soil under the
field boundary and in the field beyond, At the Sumburgh
excavation at least three levels of ard marks were seen in
the ploughsoil, whenever, because of sand blow for example,
the difference in colour allowed them to be seen. Ard
marks were criss-cross under the house and then, contem-
porary with the house, followed its wall around, in
one direction only. Both the experiments of Hansen with
a reconstruction of a bow ard and those of Megaw et al.
with a crook-ard reconstruction show that to break up a
fallow field with an ard was virtually impossible. This
suggests that the ard might have been used in conjunction
with other manual implements in the cultivation process.
Types of soil cultivated
The criss-cross traces so far excavated in Britain have
appeared on a variety of soil types from chalk (Fowler
and Evans 1967, table 1) to clay (Jobey 1964; Breeze
1974; Gillam et al. 1972), so the ard was presumably quite
capable of taking on the heavier soils. The iron shares have
a south-eastern distribution in the Iron Age, but the num-
ber found elsewhere in Britain and on heavier soils increas-
es dramatically in the Romano-British period; this wider
distribution is reflected in all iron implements and thus
does not necessarily have anything to do with any previous
inefficiency in the ard. The distribution of stone ard
shares, in Shetland particularly, is interesting. They show,
both in casual finds and in excavated sites, a marked pre-
ference for the lighter soils – the sandy soils of
Dunrossness, the limestone of Tingwall and the Weisdale
valleys – and the large majority are found on land below
200ft (see distribution maps, Figs. 11 and 12). The
earliest dated shares seem to be associated with the oval
or heel-shaped houses, often on higher ground which are
wide spread in these areas and dated to the retarded Late
Neolithic culture of Shetland (Calder 1955–56).
Associated fields are curvilinear, bounded by stone walls,
often display lynchets and often are littered with stone
clearance cairns. At a later period these higher areas would
appear to have been deserted. Later Bronze Age village
sites which produce ard shares, such as Jarlshof in Shetland
(Hamilton 1956) and Skaill in Orkney, are on low land by
the sea shore where soils are light and sandy, and diet may
be supplemented by fishing, fowling and the gathering of
shell fish. How late the stone shares were used in the
Northern Islands is difficult to say. A few used in broch
sites as pinning stones in walls can be no indication of
date; others are found in modern stone field walls. Their
gradually diminishing presence into Iron Age levels at
Skaill, and at the Calf of Eday site (Calder 1938–39),
probably means that they were still used towards the end of
the first millennium BC, but there is little to suggest that
they survived any later than this.
Other tools used in cultivation
Having described in some detail the prehistoric ard in
Britain, it might be worth mentioning briefly other tools of
cultivation for which we have evidence. It is probable that
manual tools such as hoes and mattocks were employed
alongside the ard for soil cultivation. Such tools were pro-
bably mainly of wood, now all lost to us, but doubtless also
included the non-specialized antler picks found on prehistoric
sites in varied contexts (e.g. agricultural, mining). Also there
is an increasing amount of evidence for spade cultivation
being employed in Britain. Shallow parallel furrows tenta-
tively interpreted as spade marks were found in square plots
at the Late Bronze Age house site at Weston Wood, Surrey
(Harding 1964) and similarly at a barrow site at Ascot
(Bradley and Keith-Lucas 1975). Ridge-and-furrow spade
tillage dating from the prehistoric period has been found in
County Mayo (Caulfield 1974), though reliably dated re-
Rees: Tools for Cultivation in prehistoric Britain 113
 114 Rees: Tools for Cultivation in prehistoric Britain
mains of the presumably wooden spades employed have not
yet been found in Britain in a prehistoric context (but see
Thomas 1970, 16). Steensberg’s invaluable experiments
with a reconstruction of a spade from Satrup Moor near
Schleswig (Steensberg 1973) show that the interpretation of
the tool as a drag spade pulled by humans for soil cultivation
is most suitable and its employment would result in the
shallow wide furrows found at the sites mentioned above.
The sub-triangular marks of spade cuts were found clearly
showing in the soil at Gwithian in a Bronze Age context
(Megaw et al. 1961, 208).
Acknowledgements
I am extremely grateful to Mr P S Gelling and Dr R G Lamb
for their kindness in allowing me to examine unpublished
material from their sites, and particularly to Mr Gelling for
the unfailing kindness and encouragement he has shown me
throughout this work. Also I would like to thank Mr A
Fenton and Dr W Manning for their helpful advice and Dr
J Close-Brooks, Dr E Mackie, and Mr T Henderson for their
kindness in helping me with material in the National
Museum, Edinburgh, the Hunterian Museum, Glasgow, and
Lerwick Museum, respectively.
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