Set 3 - British Prehistory & Ancient Britain

Estudios Interculturales IV
Assigned Reading 1 Arrarás P

Ancient Britain
Archaeologists working in Norfolk in the early 21st century discovered stone tools that suggest
the presence of humans in Britain from about 800,000 to 1 million years ago. These startling
discoveries underlined the extent to which archaeological research is responsible for any
knowledge of Britain before the Roman conquest (begun ad 43). Britain’s ancient history is thus
lacking in detail, for archaeology can rarely identify personalities, motives, or exact dates or
present more than a general overview. All that is available is a picture of successive cultures and
some knowledge of economic development. But even in Roman times Britain lay on the
periphery of the civilized world, and Roman historians, for the most part, provide for that period
only a framework into which the results of archaeological research can be fitted. Britain truly
emerged into the light of history only after the Saxon settlements in the 5th century ad.

Until late in the Mesolithic Period, Britain formed part of the continental landmass and was
easily accessible to migrating hunters. The cutting of the land bridge, c. 6000–5000 bce, had
important effects: migration became more difficult and remained for long impossible to large
numbers. Thus Britain developed insular characteristics, absorbing and adapting rather than
fully participating in successive continental cultures. And within the island geography worked to
a similar end; the fertile southeast was more receptive of influence from the adjacent continent
than were the less-accessible hill areas of the west and north. Yet in certain periods the use of
sea routes brought these too within the ambit of the continent.

From the end of the Ice Age (c. 11,000 bce), there was a gradual amelioration of climate leading
to the replacement of tundra by forest and of reindeer hunting by that of red deer and elk.
Valuable insight on contemporary conditions was gained by the excavation of a lakeside
settlement at Star Carr, North Yorkshire, which was occupied for about 20 successive winters by
hunting people in the 8th millennium bce.

Pre-Roman Britain

Neolithic Period

A major change occurred c. 4000 bce with the introduction of agriculture by Neolithic
immigrants from the coasts of western and possibly northwestern Europe. They were
pastoralists as well as tillers of the soil. Tools were commonly of flint won by mining, but axes of
volcanic rock were also traded by prospectors exploiting distant outcrops. The dead were buried
in communal graves of two main kinds: in the west, tombs were built out of stone and concealed
under mounds of rubble; in the stoneless eastern areas the dead were buried under long
barrows (mounds of earth), which normally contained timber structures. Other evidence of
religion comes from enclosures (e.g., Windmill Hill, Wiltshire), which are now believed to have
been centres of ritual and of seasonal tribal feasting. From them developed, late in the 3rd
millennium, more clearly ceremonial ditch-enclosed earthworks known as henge monuments.
Some, like Durrington Walls, Wiltshire, are of great size and enclose subsidiary timber circles.
British Neolithic culture thus developed its own individuality.
ancient Britain - Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc.

Bronze Age

Early in the 2nd millennium or perhaps even earlier, from c. 2300 bce, changes were introduced
by the Beaker folk from the Low Countries and the middle Rhine. These people buried their dead
in individual graves, often with the drinking vessel that gives their culture its name. The earliest
of them still used flint; later groups, however, brought a knowledge of metallurgy and were
responsible for the exploitation of gold and copper deposits in Britain and Ireland. They may also
have introduced an Indo-European language. Trade was dominated by the chieftains of Wessex,
whose rich graves testify to their success. Commerce was far-flung, in one direction to Ireland
and Cornwall and in the other to central Europe and the Baltic, whence amber was imported.
Amber bead spacers from Wessex have been found in the shaft graves at Mycenae in Greece. It
was, perhaps, this prosperity that enabled the Wessex chieftains to construct the remarkable
monument of shaped sarsens (large sandstones) known as Stonehenge III. Originally a late
Neolithic henge, Stonehenge was uniquely transformed in Beaker times with a circle of large
bluestone monoliths transported from southwest Wales.

Little is known in detail of the early and middle Bronze Age. Because of present ignorance of
domestic sites, these periods are mainly defined by technological advances and changes in tools
or weapons. In general, the southeast of Britain continued in close contact with the continent
and the north and west with Ireland.
From about 1200 bce there is clearer evidence for agriculture in the south; the farms consisted
of circular huts in groups with small oblong fields and stock enclosures. This type of farm became
standard in Britain down to and into the Roman period. From the 8th century onward, British
communities developed close contacts with their continental European neighbours. Some of the
earliest hill forts in Britain were constructed in this period (e.g., Beacon Hill, near Ivinghoe,
Buckinghamshire; or Finavon, Angus); though formally belonging to the late Bronze Age, they
usher in the succeeding period.

Iron Age

Knowledge of iron, introduced in the 7th century, was a merely incidental fact: it does not signify
a change of population. The centuries 700–400 bce saw continued development of contact with
continental Europe. Yet the greater availability of iron facilitated land clearance and thus the
growth of population. The earliest ironsmiths made daggers of the Hallstatt type but of a
distinctively British form. The settlements were also of a distinctively British type, with the
traditional round house, the “Celtic” system of farming with its small fields, and storage pits for
grain.

The century following 600 bce saw the building of many large hill forts; these suggest the
existence of powerful chieftains and the growth of strife as increasing population created
pressures on the land. By 300 bce swords were making their appearance once more in place of
daggers. Finally, beginning in the 3rd century, a British form of La Tène Celtic art was developed
to decorate warlike equipment such as scabbards, shields, and helmets, and eventually also
bronze mirrors and even domestic pottery. During the 2nd century the export of Cornish tin,
noted before 300 by Pytheas of Massalia, a Greek explorer, continued; evidence of its
destination is provided by the Paul (Cornwall) hoard of north Italian silver coins. In the 1st
century bce this trade was in the hands of the Veneti of Brittany; their conquest (56 bce) by
Julius Caesar, who destroyed their fleet, seems to have put an end to it.

By 200 Britain had fully developed its insular “Celtic” character. The emergence, however, of the
British tribes known to Roman historians was due to limited settlement by tribesmen from Belgic
Gaul. Coin finds suggest that southeast Britain was socially and economically bound to Belgic
Gaul. The result was a distinctive culture in southeast Britain (especially in Kent and north of the
Thames) which represented a later phase of the continental Celtic La Tène culture. Its people
used coins and the potter’s wheel and cremated their dead, and their better equipment enabled
them to begin the exploitation of heavier soils for agriculture.

From: Whitelock, D. y Chaney, W. (2022). Ancient Britain. En Encyclopaedia Britannica.

Recovered on 01/06/2022 from: https://www.britannica.com/place/United-Kingdom/Ancient-
Britain
Assigned Reading 2

British Prehistory
Introduction

The story of early Britain has traditionally been told in terms of waves of invaders displacing or
annihilating their predecessors. Archaeology suggests that this picture is fundamentally wrong.
For over 10,000 years people have been moving into - and out of - Britain, sometimes in
substantial numbers, yet there has always been a basic continuity of population.

Before Roman times, 'Britain' was just a geographical entity and had no political meaning and
no single cultural identity.

The gene pool of the island has changed, but more slowly and far less completely than implied
by the old 'invasion model', and the notion of large-scale migrations, once the key explanation
for change in early Britain, has been widely discredited.

Substantial genetic continuity of population does not preclude profound shifts in culture and
identity. It is actually quite common to observe important cultural change, including adoption
of wholly new identities, with little or no biological change to a population. Millions of people
since Roman times have thought of themselves as 'British', for example, yet this identity was
only created in 1707 with the Union of England, Wales and Scotland.

Before Roman times 'Britain' was just a geographical entity, and had no political meaning, and
no single cultural identity. Arguably this remained generally true until the 17th century, when
James I of England and VI of Scotland sought to establish a pan-British monarchy.

Throughout recorded history the island has consisted of multiple cultural groups and identities.
Many of these groupings looked outwards, across the seas, for their closest connections - they
did not necessarily connect naturally with their fellow islanders, many of whom were harder to
reach than maritime neighbours in Ireland or continental Europe.

It therefore makes no sense to look at Britain in isolation; we have to consider it with Ireland as
part of the wider 'Atlantic Archipelago', nearer to continental Europe and, like Scandinavia, part
of the North Sea world.

First peoples

From the arrival of the first modern humans - who were hunter-
gatherers, following the retreating ice of the Ice Age northwards -
to the beginning of recorded history is a period of about 100
centuries, or 400 generations. This is a vast time span, and we
know very little about what went on through those years; it is hard even to fully answer the
question, 'Who were the early peoples of Britain?', because they have left no accounts of
themselves.

We can, however, say that biologically they were part of the Caucasoid population of Europe.
The regional physical stereotypes familiar to us today, a pattern widely thought to result from
the post-Roman Anglo-Saxon and Viking invasions - red-headed people in Scotland, small, dark-
haired folk in Wales and lanky blondes in southern England - already existed in Roman times.
Insofar as they represent reality, they perhaps attest the post-Ice Age peopling of Britain, or the
first farmers of 6,000 years ago.

From an early stage, the constraints and opportunities of the varied environments of the islands
of Britain encouraged a great regional diversity of culture. Throughout prehistory there were
myriad small-scale societies, and many petty 'tribal' identities, typically lasting perhaps no more
than a few generations before splitting, merging or becoming obliterated. These groups were in
contact and conflict with their neighbours, and sometimes with more distant groups - the
appearance of exotic imported objects attest exchanges, alliance and kinship links, and wars.

Before Rome: the 'Celts'

At the end of the Iron Age (roughly the last 700 years BC), we get
our first eye-witness accounts of Britain from Greco-Roman
authors, not least Julius Caesar who invaded in 55 and 54 BC.
These reveal a mosaic of named peoples (Trinovantes, Silures,
Cornovii, Selgovae, etc), but there is little sign such groups had
any sense of collective identity any more than the islanders of AD 1000 all considered
themselves 'Britons'.

However, there is one thing that the Romans, modern archaeologists and the Iron Age islanders
themselves would all agree on: they were not Celts. This was an invention of the 18th century;
the name was not used earlier. The idea came from the discovery around 1700 that the non-
English island tongues relate to that of the ancient continental Gauls, who really were called
Celts. This ancient continental ethnic label was applied to the wider family of languages. But
'Celtic' was soon extended to describe insular monuments, art, culture and peoples, ancient and
modern: island 'Celtic' identity was born, like Britishness, in the 18th century.

However, language does not determine ethnicity (that would make the modern islanders
'Germans', since they mostly speak English, classified as a Germanic tongue). And anyway, no
one knows how or when the languages that we choose to call 'Celtic', arrived in the archipelago
- they were already long established and had diversified into several tongues, when our evidence
begins. Certainly, there is no reason to link the coming of 'Celtic' language with any great 'Celtic
invasions' from Europe during the Iron Age, because there is no hard evidence to suggest there
were any.

Archaeologists widely agree on two things about the British Iron Age: its many regional cultures
grew out of the preceding local Bronze Age, and did not derive from waves of continental 'Celtic'
invaders. And secondly, calling the British Iron Age 'Celtic' is so misleading that it is best
abandoned. Of course, there are important cultural similarities and connections between
Britain, Ireland and continental Europe, reflecting intimate contacts and undoubtedly the
movement of some people, but the same could be said for many other periods of history.

The things we have labelled 'Celtic' icons - such as hill-forts and art, weapons and jewellery -
were more about aristocratic, political, military and religious connections than common
ethnicity. (Compare the later cases of medieval Catholic Christianity or European Renaissance
culture, or indeed the Hellenistic Greek Mediterranean and the Roman world - all show similar
patterns of cultural sharing and emulation among the powerful, across ethnic boundaries.)
Britain and the Romans

The Roman conquest, which started in AD 43, illustrates the

profound cultural and political impact that small numbers of
people can have in some circumstances, for the Romans did not
colonise the islands of Britain to any significant degree. To a
population of around three million, their army, administration and carpet-baggers added only a
few per cent.

The province's towns and villas were overwhelmingly built by indigenous people - again the
wealthy - adopting the new international culture of power. Greco-Roman civilisation displaced
the 'Celtic' culture of Iron Age Europe. These islanders actually became Romans, both culturally
and legally (the Roman citizenship was more a political status than an ethnic identity). By AD
300, almost everyone in 'Britannia' was Roman, legally and culturally, even though of indigenous
descent and still mostly speaking 'Celtic' dialects. Roman rule saw profound cultural change, but
emphatically without any mass migration.

However, Rome only ever conquered half the island. The future Scotland remained beyond
Roman government, although the nearby presence of the empire had major effects. The
kingdom of the Picts appeared during the third century AD, the first of a series of statelets which,
during the last years and collapse of Roman power, developed through the merging of the
'tribes' of earlier times.

The 'Dark Ages'

In western and northern Britain, around the western seas,

the end of Roman power saw the reassertion of ancient
patterns, ie continuity of linguistic and cultural trends
reaching back to before the Iron Age. Yet in the long term,
the continuous development of a shifting mosaic of societies
gradually tended (as elsewhere in Europe) towards larger
states. Thus, for example, the far north-western, Irish-ruled
kingdom of Dalriada merged in the ninth century with the Pictish kingdom to form Scotland.

The western-most parts of the old province, where Roman ways had not displaced traditional
culture, also partook of these trends, creating small kingdoms which would develop, under
pressure from the Saxons, into the Welsh and Cornish regions.

The fate of the rest of the Roman province was very different: after imperial power collapsed
c.410 AD Romanised civilisation swiftly vanished. By the sixth century, most of Britannia was
taken over by 'Germanic' kingdoms. There was apparently complete discontinuity between
Roman Britain and Anglo-Saxon England; it was once believed that the Romano-British were
slaughtered or driven west by hordes of invading Anglo-Saxons, part of the great westward
movement of 'barbarians' overwhelming the western empire. However, there was no such
simple displacement of 'Celts' by 'Germans'.
Conclusion

How many settlers actually crossed the North Sea to Britain is disputed, although it is clear that
they eventually mixed with substantial surviving indigenous populations which, in many areas,
apparently formed the majority.

As with the adoption of 'Celtic' cultural traits in the Iron Age, and then Greco-Roman civilisation,
so the development of Anglo-Saxon England marks the adoption of a new politically ascendant
culture; that of the 'Germanic barbarians'.

Contrary to the traditional idea that Britain originally possessed a 'Celtic' uniformity which first
Roman, then Saxon and other invaders disrupted, in reality Britain has always been home to
multiple peoples...

Perhaps the switch was more profound than the preceding cases, since the proportion of
incomers was probably higher than in Iron Age or Roman times, and, crucially, Romano-British
power structures and culture seem to have undergone catastrophic collapse - through isolation
from Rome and the support of the imperial armies - some time before there was a substantial
presence of 'Anglo-Saxons'.

In contrast to Gaul, where the Franks merged with an intact Gallo-Roman society to create Latin-
based French culture, the new Anglo-Saxon kingdoms in Britain, although melded from
indigenous and immigrant populations, represented no such cultural continuity; they drew their
cultural inspiration, and their dominant language, almost entirely from across the North Sea.
Mixed natives and immigrants became the English.

Contrary to the traditional idea that Britain originally possessed a 'Celtic' uniformity, which first
Roman, then Saxon and other invaders disrupted, in reality Britain has always been home to
multiple peoples. While its population has shown strong biological continuity over millennia, the
identities the islanders have chosen to adopt have undergone some remarkable changes. Many
of these have been due to contacts and conflicts across the seas, not least as the result of
episodic, but often very modest, arrivals of newcomers.

Source:

James, S. (2011). “Peoples of Britain”. BBC – History Archive. Recovered on 01/06/22 from:
https://www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/british_prehistory/peoples_01.shtml#two