8 : Bronze and Iron

Must Farm

The last post saw the rise and fall of England's last Stone Age populations. They had replaced earlier hunter-gatherer populations and were in turn replaced by lighter-skinned farmers who introduced bronze tools. You make bronze by adding a small amount of tin to copper. Both were mined in Cornwall. Handy! 

It is hard to determine what actually happened. The changes seem to have been gradual but eventually profound. They could have resulted from the incomers simply breeding more quickly, aided by a better food supply. The region might have acquired its first blonde, as well as one of the earliest forms of the Indo-European group of languages, which predominates today. 

One of their villages has been unearthed in Norfolk and tells us a lot about them. See (Link) 

Must Farm.  If you are interested in pre-history, you could also check out (Link) Flag Fen, 

which is nearby and where some of the local archaeological finds are exhibited.  Again, the way the huts are built remains common in Africa. 

These people added the Sarsens to the already ancient monuments at Stonehenge, the King's Men to the Rollright Stones and, later, some of the 'hill forts' to local hills, together with many more Barrows and Tumuli. They probably also dug out from the chalk scarp at Uffington, the surprisingly stylised White Horse. At a more humdrum level, there is plenty of evidence of their surprisingly complex and regular field systems in the more fertile areas, with crops like spelt wheat and barley being grown and sheep, pigs, goats and horses being reared, as well as cattle.

The Rollright Stones are on my Nobs & Yobs cycle route. Link : Nobs & Yobs
Uffington is on my Wessex Downs West Cycle Route: Link  Wessex Downs (West)

Uffington White Horse.

The photo below is a reconstruction of a Bronze Age man, based on remains found in the South Downs. If you are interested in what the people looked like, I recommend the small gallery devoted to this stuff at Brighton Museum. 

Bronze Age Man /  Brighton Museum

This constant muddying of the ancestral waters continued through the Bronze Age and into the Iron Age that followed, when another significant migration from Europe brought people who might well have been speaking Brythonic, a branch of the language family that some now (inaccurately) call Gaelic or Celtic. Cue more hillforts, ancient dykes and ditches, which perhaps served as boundaries. Many of these are visible and identified in OS Maps. Many more can only be seen in aerial photos. Keep in mind that these places were constantly being modified, so it can be difficult to determine when they were built. You have to search for clues. 

The details of all this are a bit of a mystery. Were these peaceful and gradual or violent transitions? Where did the incomers originate from? New evidence keeps changing the story. You get the impression that these folk 'did' hillforts like nowadays the tweed-adjacent brigade do gardening. They are not always on hills and not always (or even often) forts. Their origins and purpose remain mysterious. I have written a short post specifically on them. Link: A Hillfort Near You

Whoever they were, we know they were keen on horses and chariots since these were sometimes buried with them as company on their journey into the afterlife. (Will I be buried with my bike?!) The Romans referred to them as Brittani or Britons.

I was taught at school that these people were the original inhabitants of Britain. You now know better.  Most of what I was taught has turned out to be wrong. As usual. They were just the next immigrant horde in the queue. My apologies to those who valued the idea of a collective, deep ancestry based on a continuity of occupation and settlement dating back to Stonehenge and beyond. In fact, there has been a slow but constant churn of people; we are all mongrels.

In the later Iron Age, the picture comes into marginally sharper focus. This is mainly thanks to texts left by the invading Romans. We can start to identify the various tribes that greeted them. Around North and West London, the two major players were supposedly 'Belgic'. They had arrived from....you guessed it....maybe a hundred years before the Romans turned up, probably chattering away in a Germanic language. These tribal labels can be confusing. There is no rule saying they should follow where people came from, rather than where they settled. Maybe when the Romans referred to Britons or Brittani, they were referring to the current inhabitants of our island rather than where they originated.  

The major players north of the Thames were the Catuvellauni, centred on St Albans (Verulanium). They eventually subsumed the land of the neighbouring Trinovantes, who were centred on Colchester (Camulodunum). To the South were the Atrebates, focused on Silchester (Calleva), near Reading. (You can visit it on my 'Calleva' bike route. Link: Calleva  

Both later became Roman 'Civitas', with a degree of local self-government. Both have visible Roman remains and some rather indistinct pre-Roman ones as well. I believe that the 'border' between the two was the Thames, which perhaps explains the fortifications at Dyke Hills by the river at Dorchester on Thames.

It would be wrong to assume that these were all primitive savages compared to the Romans. Evidence from Calleva suggests that they shared the relatively sophisticated lifestyles of their Romanised cousins across the water in Gaul. Some at least ate well, with various meats and fish flavoured with spices and herbs, served on plates and accompanied by wine drunk from a glass. They had well-crafted tools and ornaments, some sourced by trade across Europe. Their settlements or 'oppida' were planned, their houses were substantial, and their streets surfaced, even if not as well built as the Roman efforts. More limited evidence from Braughing in Herts paints a similar picture. 

I am not going to go on about the Romans here. I am sure you know the story. As Jules said, they came, they saw, they conquered. Three cheers for Jules. Except that he didn't really; his expedition was more of a recce than a takeover and probably aimed at winning him some political brownie points in Rome. To this end, he wrote his own promotional material. No doubt it was self-serving, but I choose to believe the story that he biffed the Catuvallauni and their King Caratacus at their stronghold near Wheathampstead. This 'oppida', now marked by a large ditch & embankment, is on my 'Giro de Lilley Valley cycle route. (Link) Lilley Valley Route.  The real 'hard yards' in the Roman imperial conquest of Britain were covered a century later by Emperor Claudius. 

Incidentally, Caratacus's son was the model for Shakespeare's Cymbeline. And thanks to the Bard and Hollywood, we know what he and his Queen looked like. 

The Romans certainly left us a few mementoes of their visit. Even apart from St Albans and Silchester, some Romans lived the good life. Traces of several of their 'villas' can still be seen, but the later pillaging of useful stone perhaps explains the lack of much apart from the outlines and some flooring. If you are interested (and I am not), take a look at these three examples from our area.

Gadebridge Villa

Littlecote Villa

North Leigh Roman Villa.

None seems very atmospheric, partly due to the English habit of tidying the rubble and mowing the grass. The immense network of allegedly Roman Roads is more impressive. They are often marked on OS maps and go way beyond the well-known trunk roads like Watling and Ermine Street. 

Don't assume that every straight road is Roman or that every Roman Road is straight! Often, straight roads in flatter arable countryside were built when farmland was enclosed in the 16th to 19th centuries. Elsewhere, the Romans were not so daft as to ignore existing routes and used the best fords or valley routes to avoid wet feet or a climb if they could. 

The year 409 is generally seen as the end of Roman rule in Britain, but by that time, the place was in a sorry state. Their influence and impact decayed into oblivion in the following century. Governance became fragmented and localised. There was a switch away from an economy based on trade and its underpinnings, like crafts and coins and towards a more hand-to-mouth existence. The landscape changed. Their stone buildings were already falling into disrepair, the villas shrinking into farms, the towns squatted rather than lived in and marginal farmland reverting to scrub or woodland. 

Roman walls at Silchester

Once again, the population was changing. There had never been many Romans, as in 'from Rome' or even from Italy. Rather, there were people from all over their Empire, and beyond its 'Limes', or limits, from the Baltic to Africa. Maybe they were employed as mercenary soldiers, traders or migrants, and many of them would have settled and adopted the Empire's way of life. 

More arrived. The land had for some time been suffering from the raids and depredations of the neighbours, the Irish, Scots and the Germanic and Frankish tribes from across the North Sea. All of them were quick to take advantage of the departure of the Roman legions.  

Before 400 A.D., the land was probably well-populated. Afterwards, looking down from a hill at the Roman legions leaving with their families, their hangers-on and the wretched grammar they bequeathed to public school boys, the landscape might have looked emptier than when they arrived. And in the distance, you could see more dinghies full of German-speaking immigrants sneaking in through the back door. They were coming to stay and would have the most profound and long-lasting effect on the countryside we see today. 

The Next Post in the Series: Link Britons & Saxons