Archaeology and Environment in Northumberland

Till-Tweed Studies Volume 2

D. G. Passmore, Tim Gates, Peter Marshall, Clive Waddington, Tim Gates

• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Year: 2012
• ISBN:
  9781842179307
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Archéologie

Eventful, influential and absorbing, the early history of Northumberland is a fascinating story that has rarely been brought together under one cover. In this authoritative historical account, the authors bring to bear a huge quantity of old and new data and craft it into an in-depth synthesis. The authors deliver this history in chronological order from a perspective that places human activity and environment at its core. The narrative extends from the Palaeolithic through to, and including, the Anglo-Saxon period. This enormous sweep of history is supported by a robust radiocarbon chronology, with all available dates for the region brought together and calibrated against the most recent calibration curves for the first time. The geographic focus of the volume is North Northumberland but the narrative frequently extends to cover the whole county and occasionally further afield into neighbouring areas so as to deal with key topics at an appropriate geographic scale and to take account of important information from nearby areas. This second volume in the Till-Tweed monograph series follows on from the first volume, Managing Archaeological Landscapes in Northumberland, which provided a considerable quantity of new field data, in addition to presenting a landscape management methodology based around the "landform element" approach.

TILL TWEED VOLUME I ERRATUM

Correct copyright attribution was omitted from a number of figures. The following lists the correct attribution by figure number:

By an oversight, Appendix F Table 8 as printed is a duplicate of Table 6. Table 8 should have appeared as follows:

PART 1

SETTING THE SCENE

1 INTRODUCTION

Clive Waddington and David G. Passmore

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It would be difficult to find any other part of Britain in which we can see at one view the characteristic monuments of Celtic Britons and Roman legions, of Saxons, Scandinavians and Normans

From William Sydney Gibson’s An Historical Memoir on Northumberland (1862, ix).

SETTING THE SCENE

In 1862, William Gibson wrote a very accessible historical narrative of Northumberland, dedicated to the Duke of Northumberland, but with the expressed intention of the work being “condensed into an inexpensive handbook, (which) might be made acceptable to every class of inhabitants and form good secular reading” (Gibson 1862, v). Needless to say William Gibson evidently prized the virtue of study and self-betterment for all at a time when the Liberal movement was in full flow, though he sadly died in the same year that the book was published and was therefore not able to observe the fruits of his endeavour. We hope to emulate this aim 150 years on in this synthetic work, although the thrust of this study is unashamedly more academic than popular. That said, a deliberate attempt has been made to write in a clear and accessible way, and with comprehensive referencing of sources, so that the study can be accessed by specialists and non-specialists alike.

The genesis of this work has been the two research projects undertaken by the authors on part of North Northumberland known widely as the Milfield Basin and the catchments of the Till and lower Tweed rivers upstream and downstream of the Milfield Basin (Figs 1.1 and 1.2). The first ‘Till-Tweed Studies’ volume (Passmore and Waddington 2009a) presented much of the body of field data and was focused towards the provision of a geoarchaeology-based management framework for the archaeology of the region. Following on from this, the present volume aims to draw on past as well as present information, including some of the latest results from commercial archaeological investigations, to provide an archaeological and historical narrative for the region, set within its wider geographical and national context. Because the study was undertaken as two projects with different funding streams, separate outputs were required and this division seemed the least awkward. Nevertheless, certain anomalies remain, such as the splitting of the aerial photographic discussion across the two volumes, but it is hoped this does not detract from the overall narrative.

Writing a synthetic history of North Northumberland from its earliest prehistory up to the beginning of the Middle Ages is certainly ambitious, probably quite brave, and possibly foolhardy. Given the plethora of information now available it is a considerable challenge for archaeologists to develop sufficient expertise across multiple periods so that they are able to synthesise existing information, present new information, articulate informed arguments and identify new questions and avenues for future research. We are certainly not expert in every period covered by this volume and neither is it possible to be expert in all the sub-disciplines and specialisms that support the study of the past. We have, nonetheless, made a concerted effort at bringing together an informed and up-to-date narrative that we hope will inform, challenge and encourage others. To this end we hope that the reader will find the following account stimulating and enjoyable. Perhaps the single most important benefit of undertaking this study is the provision of an up-to-date historical narrative for a geographically discrete region that provides a consistent flow and approach to all periods so as to produce, we hope, an engaging multi-period synthesis that can be read as a narrative or delved into for reference. In addition, the depth of research underpinning this volume has brought much specialist and disparate information together. We hope that this will not only provide new and useful insights, but that it will also assist current researchers, and encourage a new generation, in accessing the archaeology of the region without having to spend several years chasing arcane references and unpublished reports in order to get to grips with the state of current knowledge and understanding. With such a broad scope this volume should also complement the recently produced regional research framework for the North-East (Petts and Gerrard 2006) and the popular synthesis recently undertaken for the Northumberland National Park (Frodsham 2004).

Figure 1.1. Location of the Till-Tweed study area in North-East England.

At a time when knowledge and academic endeavour is becoming ever more fragmented, we think it is pertinent that a work of academic synthesis is produced for the region. Moreover, there has been a huge amount of new information acquired as a result of commercial archaeological investigations and fieldwork by the voluntary sector and it is timely that this is brought together. In recent years there has also been a trend in archaeological interpretation to emphasise the particular over the general, as can be seen by the focus on ‘biographies’ of individual monuments for example. Although such detailed insights can be instructive, this attempt at overview supplies a necessary counterpart to such studies. A concerted effort has been made to marshal all new information that has come to light up to the beginning of 2010. This includes not only a comprehensive synthesis, recalibration and modelling, where appropriate, of the reliable radiocarbon dates for the region, but also reference to and results from several recent, commercially funded, archaeological excavations whose impact is significant and the results of which will feed into the wider milieu of archaeological research. It is hoped that this volume provides something to stir the curiosity of most archaeologists, as not only does it cover a huge time period, but the North Northumberland story has resonance for other regions, both neighbouring and beyond. To this end we have related our study area to wider regional and national contexts throughout. This should ensure that not only is Northumberland better embedded into broader narratives and that future studies accommodate the Northumbrian evidence as a matter of course, but also that experts in other geographical areas will have access to useful regional comparanda and a work of reference.

Figure 1.2. The Till-Tweed Study Area.

The following chapters are arranged in two sections: the first consists of those chapters that set the scene and the second comprises those chapters that form the synthetic narrative arranged in chronological order. In the final chapter we have developed a short discussion of certain themes that grew out of the study and pursue these themes across different time periods. The volume extends across the prehistoric and historical divide so that the period chapters commence with earliest prehistory where we are solely reliant on objects, structures and environmental evidence to construct our understanding. For the latest periods, however, the archaeology can be considered alongside a small number of historical events and individuals, our knowledge of which comes from quarrying some classical and early medieval texts, which of course come with all their attendant caveats. The early text sources have been read only in their translated, published form and not in the original Latin, Welsh or Old English.

The most recent academic syntheses that have dealt with Northumberland are those of Burgess (1984) and Higham (1986), although the former only covered the prehistoric period and the latter covered all of northern England. Since then, there have been attempts to draw information together for the wider North-East region as part of strategic assessments (Clack and Gosling 1976; Brooks et al. 2002), the most recent being the regional research framework for the North-East (Petts and Gerrard 2006). In addition to these multiperiod syntheses, period-specific syntheses have also been produced, which are referred to in the various chapters that form Part 2 of the volume. These early works were of considerable use in their time and were regularly referred to in subsequent research. Since the early 1980s, however, there has been a considerable increase in the amount of data available. In particular, from the 25 radiocarbon dates from specifically archaeological contexts (as opposed to those derived from palaeoenvironmental investigations) dating to the prehistoric and Roman Iron Age periods within Northumberland listed by Burgess in his 1984 article, this volume presents more than 230 radiocarbon dates for the same periods and types of contexts. To this can be added a further 33 dates from the Mesolithic house at Howick which are not included here as they have already been published in full elsewhere (see Waddington 2007a), bringing the current total to around 270. Although in some ways a crude measure, this vast increase in dates provides a sense of the scale of increase in artefacts, structures and scientific data now available for the archaeologist to study since the publication of these earlier synthetic works. As a result the need for synthesis has now become acute.

The approach adopted for this study follows on from that outlined in Volume 1 with the focus placed on human-landscape interactions. This is not to deny the importance of contextual study, social theory and so forth but, rather, to place centre stage throughout this sweep of human history the sense of how people have interacted with their environment. Though it cannot be denied that landscape and environment, at certain levels, provide a backdrop for human action (the inexorable rise in sea levels and the drowning of the North Sea basin being a case in point; see Gaffney et al. 2009), landscape and environment in other contexts formed an arena of interaction where both landscape and human actions became agents, promoting either change or continuity in the other. Over short timescales human action in relation to the environment is often, though not always, a culturally mediated set of behaviours. When viewed over long time scales, however, the trajectory of human interactions and adaptations can sometimes be seen as a reaction to, or consequence of, environmental change. In the case of the drowning of Doggerland by the North Sea, the displacement of human groups inhabiting this area was undoubtedly a consequence of environmental change, although the way it was conceived at the time would have been very much through a set of culturally mediated beliefs.

Throughout this study we have attempted to draw together a sound evidence base, accommodating results from various scientific disciplines and adopting an inclusive approach to archaeological data so as to avoid the selective use of evidence. Although interpretive leaps are made it is hoped that this open approach will provide a clear insight into how various interpretations have been arrived at, leaving the readers to assess for themselves the merits, or otherwise, of the argument. The use of assertion has been avoided and we have sought to use plain and clear language where at all possible. If this synthesis can still be of use to researchers in 25 years time then we will be satisfied that we have succeeded in our efforts, but in any case, as more results of archaeological endeavour are forthcoming, much of what is contained in this work will be modified, changed and, undoubtedly, rejected.

AIMS AND RESEARCH THEMES

The overarching aim of this study has not been merely to document and describe the data sets available for North Northumberland, but to combine the available information into a historical narrative that engages with debates and offers interpretation and insight where appropriate. Furthermore, this account seeks throughout to place North Northumberland into the context of its adjoining areas, and occasionally further afield, so as to view Northumbrian history within a broader historical frame, though always being aware of the regional character of the Northumbrian evidence. Particular themes that run throughout much of the narrative include:

• the establishment of a more detailed chronological framework for the region
• assessing the character and chronology of environment...