Prehistoric Britain

Ancient Britain is name for a period in the human occupation of Great Britain which extends throughout prehistory, ending with the Roman invasion of Britain in AD 43.

Preface

Britain has been inhabited by humans for tens of thousands of years. None of the pre-Roman inhabitants of Britain had any written language, so their history, culture and way of life are known only through archaeological finds.

Located at the fringes of Europe, Britain received foreign technological and cultural achievements at later dates than did mainland areas during prehistory. The story of ancient Britain is traditionally seen as one of successive waves of settlers from the continent, bringing with them new cultures and technologies. More recent archaeological theories have questioned this migrationist interpretation and suggest a more complex relationship between Britain and the continent. Many of the changes in British society demonstrated in the archaeological record are now suggested to be the effects of the native inhabitants adopting foreign customs rather than being subsumed by an invading culture.

The first written record of Britain and its inhabitants was by the Greek navigator Pytheas, who explored the coastal region of Britain in around 325 BC. Ancient Britons were however involved in extensive trade and cultural links with the rest of Europe from the Neolithic onwards, especially in exporting tin which was in abundant supply.

The Palaeolithic

Palaeolithic Britain is the period from almost three quarters of a million years ago until around 10,000 years ago. This huge length of time is saw many changes in the environment, encompassing several glacial and interglacial periods which greatly affected human behaviour in the region. Providing dating for this distant period of time is difficult and contentious. The inhabitants of the region at this time were bands of hunter-gatherers who roamed all over northern Europe following herds of animals.

Lower Palaeolithic

There is evidence from bones and flint tools found in coastal deposits near Happisburgh in Norfolk that homo erectus was present in what is now Britain around 700,000 years ago. At this time, south eastern Britain was linked to continental Europe by a land bridge allowing humans to move freely. The current position of the English Channel was a large river flowing westwards and fed by tributaries that would later become the Thames, and Seine. Reconstructing this ancient environment has provided clues to the route first visitors took to arrive at what was then a peninsula of the Eurasian continent. Early sites have been found located close to the course of a now lost watercourse named the Bytham River which indicated that it was the earliest route west into Britain.

Sites such as Boxgrove in Sussex illustrate the later arrival in the archaeological record of an archaic homo sapiens subspecies called Homo heidelbergensis around 500,000 years ago. These early peoples made Acheulean flint tools and hunted the large native mammals of the period, they drove elephants, rhinoceroses and hippopotamuses over the tops of cliffs or into bogs to more easily kill them.

The extreme cold of the following Anglian glaciation is likely to have driven humans out of Britain altogether and the region does not appear to have been occupied again until the ice receded during the Hoxnian interglacial. This lasted from around 420,000 until 360,000 years ago and saw the Clactonian flint tool industry develop at sites such as Barnfield Pit in Kent.

A further period of cooling lasted until around 240,000 years ago and saw Levallois flint tools introduced, possibly by humans arriving from Africa. The more advanced flint technology may have permitted more efficient hunting, and therefore, made Britain a more attractive place to remain during this ice age. However there is little evidence of human occupation from the subsequent Ipswichian interglacial between around 180,000 and 70,000 years ago. Meltwaters from the previous glaciation cut Britain off from the continent for the first time during this period which may explain the lack of activity.

Middle Palaeolithic

From around 60,000 BC Neanderthal man inhabited southern, unglaciated Britain. From examination of earlier human remains and tools it seems that the Neanderthals evolved from their predecessors rather than representing an influx of new genes. They made more advanced Mousterian tools such as those found at the Oldbury rock shelters in Kent. Later British Neanderthals developed the sub-triangular bout-coupé handaxe around 50,000 years ago. A butchered mammoth found in Norfolk in 2002 may have been hunted and killed by Neanderthals or may have been scavenged. Other known occupation sites from this period include Kent's Cavern in Devon

Upper Palaeolithic

Neanderthal occupation of Britain was limited and by 30,000 BC the first signs of modern human activity through the Aurignacian industry are known. The most famous example is the burial of the Red Lady of Paviland in modern day Wales. The final ice age covered Britain between around 70,000 and 10,000 years ago, an extreme cold snap between 18,000 and 13,000 years ago may have driven humans south out of Britain, crossing the land bridge that had resurfaced at the beginning of the glaciation. Sites such as Gough's Cave in Somerset show people returning to Britain towards the end of the ice age although further extremes of cold right before the final thaw may have caused them to leave again. The environment during this ice age period would have been a largely treeless tundra.

Mesolithic

By around 6,500 BC, the rising sea levels caused by the end of the final Ice age cut Britain off from continental Europe for the last time. The warmer climate changed the environment to one of pine, birch and alder forest; this less open landscape was less conducive to the large herds of reindeer and horse that had previously sustained humans. These animals were replaced in people's diets by less social animals such as elk, red deer and aurochs which would have required different hunting techniques in order to be effectively exploited. Tools changed to incorporate barbs which could snag the flesh of a hunted animal, making it harder for it to escape alive. The dog was domesticated because of its benefits during hunting and the wetland environments created by the warmer weather would have been a rich source of fish and game. It is likely that these changes were accompanied by social changes with the nomadic groups that inhabited Britain at this time. Humans spread and reached the far north of Scotland during this period. Sites from the British Mesolithic include Star Carr in Yorkshire and Oronsay in Orkney.

The Mesolithic-Neolithic transition

It is likely that the bounteous nature of the Mesolithic environment and ancient Britons' success in exploiting it eventually led to exhaustion of many natural resources. The remains of an elk found caught in a bog at Poulton-le-Fylde in Lancashire demonstrated that it had been wounded by hunters and escaped on three different occasions indicating over-hunting during the Mesolithic. Hunter-gathering ways of life would have persisted into the Neolithic at first but the increasing sophistication of material culture with the concommitant control of local resources by individual groups would have caused it to be replaced. Farming of both crops and domestic animals was adopted in Britain around 4,500 BC at least partly because of the need for reliable food sources. Other elements of Neolithic such as pottery, leaf-shaped arrowheads and polished stone axes would have been adopted earlier as part of the Neolithic 'package'. The climate which had been warming since the later Mesolithic continued to improve and the earlier pine forests had been replaced by deciduous woodland.

The Neolithic

Traditionally the arrival of the Neolithic in Britain has been seen as a wave of immigration from the continent, supplanting the local hunter-gatherers. Modern archaeology now considers that farming along with pottery and settled living was in fact adopted by the native population who were related to the similarly newly farming Neolithic people across the water. Knowledge of farming and ceramics probably passed between kinfolk through intermarriage, trade and other cultural ties. Links with continental Europe are demonstrated by finds of axes made from exotic stone such as jadeite. The construction of the earliest earthwork sites began in the form of causewayed enclosures, sites which have parallels on the continent. Evidence of growing mastery over the environment is embodied in the Sweet Track a wooden trackway built to cross the marshes of the Somerset Levels and dated to 3807 BC.

The Neolithic Revolution as it is called brought about a more settled way of life and led to societies becoming divided into differing groups of farmers, artisans and leaders. Forest clearances were undertaken to provide room for cereal cultivation and animal herds.

Provided with reliable food supply, populations grew meaning time and manpower were available for building monumental sites such as stone circles, timber circles, henges and long barrows. Ritual deposition of tools and pottery often in or alongside water. More secular practices that developed during the Neolithic include the long house and industrial flint mining such as that at Cissbury and Grimes Graves.

The Bronze Age

In around 2,500 BC a new culture arrived in Britain by a group known as the Beaker people. Believed to be of Iberian origin (modern day Spain and Portugal) these people brought to Britain the skill of making tools and weapons out of metal. At first they made things from copper, but from around 2,150 BC, smiths had discovered how to make bronze (which was much harder than copper) by mixing copper and tin. And thus the bronze age arrived in Britain. Over the next thousand years bronze gradually replaced stone as the main material for tool and weapon making.

Britain had large reserves of tin in the areas of Cornwall and Devon in what is now southwest England, and thus tin mining began. By around 1,600 BC, the southwest of Britain was experiencing a trade boom, as British tin was exported across Europe.

The Beaker people were also skilled at making ornaments from gold, and many examples of these have been found in graves of the wealthy.

The Beaker people buried their dead in stone mounds known as barrows, often with a beaker alongside the body. They were also largely responsible for building many famous pre-historic sites such as Stonehenge (although an earlier wooden circle had existed at the site) and a number of other stone circles.

From around 1,500 BC, the power of the Beaker people began to decline.

There is some debate amongst archeologists as to whether the Beaker people were a race of people who migrated to Britain en-masse from the continent, or whether the Beaker "culture" (which was common across Europe) was spread to Britain's existing inhabitants through trade and cultural links. Modern thinking tends towards the latter view.

The Iron Age

In around 750 BC ironworking techniques reached Britain from southern Europe. Iron was stronger and more plentiful than bronze, and its introduction marks the beginning of the Iron Age. Ironworking revolutionised many aspects of life, most importantly agriculture. Iron tipped ploughs could churn up land far more quickly and deeply than older wooden or bronze ones, and iron axes could clear forest land far more efficiently for agriculture.

The Celts

About 900 BC a new wave of settlers began arriving in Britain. Known as the Celts, by 500 BC they had colonised most of Britain. The Celts were highly skilled craftspeople and produced intricately patterned gold jewellery and weapons in bronze and iron.

The Celts lived in highly organised tribal groups, typically ruled by a chieftain. Their groups were organised into an "upper class" of warriors (who typically grew long moustaches) and a "lower class" of slaves and labourers. Typically, Celts lived in simple huts.

Celtic warriors were renowned as being fierce and fearless. Female warriors and war leaders were not unknown, the most famous being Boudicca.

The Celts practised their religion under the guidance of druid priests. In Celtic tribes, the druids were almost as powerful as the warriors. Since Celtic culture had no written language, laws and rituals were passed on by word of mouth.

As Celts became more numerous, fights broke out between opposing tribes. This led to the building of hill forts. Although the first hillforts had been built about 1,500 BC, hillfort building peaked during Celtic times.

Typically hillforts consisted of an area of raised ground surrounded by a deep trench, with the earth heaped into a bank. There would also be a fence surrounding the area. This layout was easily defended from attackers. The hillforts were initially designed as temporary places of refuge, but in time the larger hillforts grew into permanent settlements and trading centres.

Most of these hillforts were built in western and south-western England, although examples have been found further north, such as the one at Wincobank in Sheffield, Yorkshire, and as far north as northern Scotland.

Late pre-Roman Iron Age (LPRIA)

The last centuries before the Roman invasion saw an influx of refugees from Gaul (modern day France and Belgium) known as the Belgae, who were displaced as the Roman Empire expanded.

From around 175 BC they settled in the areas of Kent, Hertfordshire and Essex and brought with them pottery making skills far more advanced than anything produced previously. The Belgae were partially Romanised and were responsible for creating the first settlements large enough to be called towns.

Although there was nothing approaching political unity amongst the various tribes which inhabited Britain, evidence suggests that life became more settled and less war-like.

The last centuries before the Roman invasion saw increasing sophistication in British life. About 100 BC, iron bars began to be used as currency, while internal trade and trade with continental Europe flourished, largely due to Britain's extensive mineral reserves.

As the Roman Empire expanded northwards, Rome began to take interest in Britain. This may have been caused by an influx of refugees from Roman occupied Europe, or Britain's large mineral reserves. See Roman Britain for the histroy of this subsequent period.

External Links

Bibliography

British History Encyclopedia Paragon 1999 ISBN 1405416327
Illustrated History Of Great Britain Octopus Books Limited 1982