BRITAIN AD EPUB ED EB

Francis Pryor

• Publisher: Harper Perennial
• Year: 2009
• Print ISBN: 9780007181872
• eBook ISBN: 9780007347582
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: British History
• Index: History

Leading archaeologist Francis Pryor retells the story of King Arthur, legendary king of the Britons, tracing it back to its Bronze Age origins.

The legend of King Arthur and Camelot is one of the most enduring in Britain's history, spanning centuries and surviving invasions by Angles, Vikings and Normans. In his latest book Francis Pryor – one of Britain's most celebrated archaeologists and author of the acclaimed 'Britain B.C.' and 'Seahenge' – traces the story of Arthur back to its ancient origins. Putting forth the compelling idea that most of the key elements of the Arthurian legends are deeply rooted in Bronze and Iron Ages (the sword Excalibur, the Lady of the Lake, the Sword in the Stone and so on), Pryor argues that the legends' survival mirrors a flourishing, indigenous culture that endured through the Roman occupation of Britain, and the subsequent invasions of the so-called Dark Ages.

As in 'Britain B.C.', Pryor roots his story in the very landscape, from Arthur's Seat in Edinburgh, to South Cadbury Castle in Somerset and Tintagel in Cornwall. He traces the story back to the 5th-century King Arthur and beyond, all the time testing his ideas with archaeological evidence, and showing how the story was manipulated through the ages for various historical and literary purposes, by Geoffrey of Monmouth and Malory, among others.

Delving into history, literary sources – ancient, medieval and romantic – and archaeological research, Francis Pryor creates an original, lively and illuminating account of this most British of legends.

CHAPTER ONE
Origin Myths: Britons, Celts and Anglo-Saxons

THE EARLY HISTORY of southern Britain has often been portrayed as particularly tumultuous and difficult. Sir Roy Strong has summarised the conventional picture in characteristically elegant fashion:

The fifth and sixth centuries still remain ones of impenetrable obscurity, fully justifying their designation as the Dark Ages. Britain was only one of many countries which suffered the consequences of the collapse of the Roman Empire. In England’s case the effect was far more dramatic, for there was no continuity as two-thirds of the eastern parts of the island passed into the hands of German pagan and illiterate warrior tribesmen. Urban society collapsed, and the Latin language was abandoned in favour of British or primitive Welsh. Under the aegis of the British Church some form of Latin learning survived, but in the east a series of Anglo-Saxon petty kingdoms emerged whose cultural status can only be categorised as barbarian.¹

If we examine the archaeological record it is hard to find convincing evidence for the picture of post-Roman disjunction, anarchy and chaos that is supposed to have led to the Anglo-Saxon invasions of the fifth and sixth centuries ad. It is even harder to find actual evidence for these invasions themselves. Instead, archaeology paints a picture of rural stability in those parts of southern and eastern Britain that were to become Anglo-Saxon England in the early seventh century.

This stability should be set against a background of increasing contacts with the Continental mainland that had been underway since at least the Iron Age, and that continued throughout the Roman period. After the departure of the Roman field army in AD 409, order in the one-time province of Britannia was maintained by existing local élites and by elements of the erstwhile Roman army who effectively ‘privatised’ their services. The Christian Church most probably played a significant role in local administration, even in the east of England, where Anglo-Saxon paganism was once believed to have reigned supreme. This picture differs dramatically from the conventional image of the period known, inappropriately, as the Dark Ages.

I believe that a number of long-held and popular, but ultimately false beliefs are obscuring what is actually a fascinating and highly creative period of British history. It was a time of huge change, but not of chaos. It was a period which witnessed the creation of a distinctive post-Roman European civilisation, and which also gave rise to some brilliantly executed and beautiful objects. Above all, it was never a Dark Age.

In the version of the past taught at most British schools in the second half of the twentieth century, and still widely accepted by the population at large, British history begins with the Ancient Britons. One would suppose these to have been the indigenous or ‘native’ people of the British Isles, who had been living there since they became islands after the Ice Age, around nine thousand years ago. It was believed, however, that Britain had been subject to a number of invasions from the Continent in pre-Roman times: first, a wave of people who brought with them the arts of farming and pottery manufacture in the Neolithic or New Stone Age; then another, smaller, influx of new and genetically distinctive people known as the Beaker folk, who were believed to have introduced the skills of bronze-working. The third and perhaps most significant invasion, or invasions, was supposed to have taken place in the Iron Age, after about 500 bc. These newcomers were known as the Celts. In addition to these three main ‘invasions’ there were a number of others of less significance—making a total of eight or nine.

It is not the purpose of this book to examine the earlier two of these three hypothetical prehistoric waves of immigration.² Suffice it to say that while modern archaeology does still accept that some incomers helped establish farming in Britain, the so-called ‘Neolithic Revolution’ was far more an invasion of ideas than of people. The later invasions of Beaker folk are simply discounted, although personally I believe that something was going on in the Early Bronze Age, which may well have involved high-status individuals travelling to and from Britain. This is supported by a number of scientific tests and other archaeological indications which suggest that the population of prehistoric Britain and Europe was far more mobile than would have been supposed fifty years ago. But while mobility—where people travel hither and thither—is one thing, prehistorians today are reluctant to attribute most major changes to a single cause, such as mass migration.

In the accepted picture of early British history, Iron Age (by now ‘Celtic’) Britain was visited by Julius Caesar in 55 and 54 BC, and was finally conquered by the Romans in AD 43. There was a major revolt against Roman rule, led by the East Anglian queen of the Iceni, Boadicea (today Boudica) in AD 60—61. Christianity was made legal in the Roman Empire by the Emperor Constantine the Great in AD 324, with the Edict of Milan. The Roman period in Britain ended nominally in or just before the year AD 410. There was then a period of about four decades, sometimes known as the ‘sub-Roman’ period, when a sort of insular Roman rule continued; but Anglo-Saxon migration had started, and the Romanised British population in eastern England were powerless to resist it.

The following period, of two or so centuries, was known variously as the Pagan Saxon period or the Dark Ages (today most scholars prefer the term ‘Early Saxon’). It was characterised by waves of invasion by various people, including Angles, Saxons and Jutes. This was the age of the legendary King Arthur. Arthur was supposed to have been a Romanised Briton, based in the West Country, who led British/Celtic resistance to the Anglo-Saxons, who were expanding their domination of England westwards. He won a famous victory at the Battle of Mount Baddon or Badon, some time at the beginning of the sixth century, but was eventually defeated and slain at the Battle of Camlan in AD 539.

Missionaries under St Augustine reintroduced Christianity to Britain in AD 597, and the Pagan Saxon period was followed by the Christian Saxon period, which came to an end with the Norman Conquest of 1066. Differences between St Augustine’s Roman Church and the British or Celtic Churches were resolved, largely in favour of the Roman Church, at the Synod of Whitby in 664. The Christian Saxon period witnessed the birth of England; its first widely acknowledged king was Alfred, who ruled from his capital Winchester in Wessex from 871 to 899. Alfred’s reign was largely given over to wresting eastern England back from Viking domination. Viking raids had become a serious problem from the late eighth century: the famous abbey on Lindisfarne island was sacked in 793, and the ‘great raiding army’ of Viking warriors invaded East Anglia in 866.

It will be clear from this highly compressed synopsis of conventional British prehistory and early history that the Arthur stories are not the only examples of what one might term British origin myths. None of them attempts to explain British origins directly. In other words, they are not British equivalents of the biblical story of Creation. But they do nonetheless address themes that are closely bound up with a sense of emerging national identities. The problem is whether they are actually about the time in which they are supposed to have taken place, or the times in which they are told, retold or elaborated. My own view is that it’s the latter, if only because the real origins of British culture—whether or not it was ever perceived by prehistoric people as such—lie hidden in the mists of antiquity.

I do not believe that it is necessary to define a culture to be part of one; it would be absurd to suggest that the people who created Stonehenge five thousand years ago were without a developed culture—indeed, a highly developed culture. It probably had many points in common with similar cultures in Scotland, Ireland and Wales, but we do not know whether these communities saw themselves as either British or as part of a series of insular cultural traditions. I believe that the many parallels that can be observed in the layout of ceremonial and other ritual sites and monuments across Britain and Ireland reflect a shared cosmology or system of beliefs. That, however, is not to say that they shared a common culture. Take language. The people of the various tribal kingdoms of Britain would have understood the dialects of the kingdoms around them, but the leaders of, say, the Iceni in Norfolk would probably not have understood their equivalents in Wales, Northumberland or Devon.

It is unlikely that the Ancient Britons saw themselves as Britons. By the Later Iron Age, in the century or so prior to the Roman Conquest, the upper echelons of southern British tribal societies would have been aware of the Channel and of Gaul (France) beyond it. Some would probably have had relatives there. At what point did a sense of ‘Britishness’ develop? If we are to answer that, which is essential to a proper understanding of Arthur’s role, we must first tackle the vexed question of the Celts, who are often seen as being synonymous with the Ancient Britons. Arthur was a Romanised Briton, and it follows that he must also have been a Romanised Celt. Who were they, then, these romantic-sounding Celts?

They have had an excellent press. In 1970 the historian Nora Chadwick wrote, in a best-selling paperback on the subject:

Celtic culture is the fine flower of the Iron Age, the last phase of European material and intellectual development before the Mediterranean world spread northwards over the Continent and linked it to the world of today…Common political institutions gave them a unity bordering on nationality, a concept which the Mediterranean peoples could understand. They realised that the Celts were a powerful people with a certain ethnic unity, occupying wide and clearly defined territories, in process of expansion, and that they were possessed of internal political organisation and formidable military strength.³

At this point I should say a few words about culture and ethnicity, as they are understood in archaeology. ‘Culture’ is the harder of the two to pin down. At times I will use the word in its accepted contemporary sense: as a description of a given group of people with shared outlooks and values. At other times it will be clear from the context that I am using it in its narrower, archaeological sense. An archaeological ‘culture’ is one represented by a recurring assemblage of artefacts which are believed by archaeologists (although not necessarily by the people who made and used them) to represent a particular set of activities, or a particular group of people. For example, the widespread occurrence in Early Bronze Age Europe of highly decorated drinking vessels, together with bronze and copper daggers, was believed to represent people of the distinctive ‘Beaker Culture’. Today the word ‘culture’ is finding less favour; most archaeologists try to avoid it, as it carries so many other meanings. This has led to unhappy-sounding terms such as the ‘Beaker phenomenon’ or the ‘Beaker presence’, neither of which has any meaning at all.

The term ‘ethnicity’ is less vague, and does not have a specialised archaeological definition. Nonetheless, the one I prefer is taken from the Oxford Dictionary of Archaeology: ‘The ascription, or claim, to belong to a particular cultural group on the basis of genetics, language or other cultural manifestations.’⁴

The Celts were seen as an ethnically distinct group of people whose origins lay around the upper Danube and Alpine regions. There are passing references to them by the great classical Greek historian Herodotus, writing in the fifth century bc. Their presence was also noted near the Greek colony atMassilia (Marseilles) by a slightly earlier writer, Hecataeus.⁵ From Greek colony at Massilia approximately the fifth century BC it was believed that they spread north, east, south and west from their central European heartland.⁶ By the end of the third century BC the process of expansion was drawing to a close. Then the Roman Empire came and went, and in post-Roman times Celtic culture continued to flourish mainly in western Britain and in neighbouring parts of north-western France.⁷ Given this view of history we can only assume that elsewhere in Europe Celtic culture simply vanished in the centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire (the Eastern or Byzantine Roman Empire continued until the fall of Constantinople in 1453).⁸

The identification of the Celts as a distinct entity was largely based on a wonderful art style that came into existence in Early Iron Age Europe.⁹ Celtic art, as it is generally known, did indeed begin in Continental Europe—as, centuries later, did Impressionism—but the spread of neither style of art involved the migration of people. Art is, after all, about ideas which can be communicated both by example and by word of mouth. The term ‘Celtic art’ has, however, stuck, and I do not think it can easily be dislodged. Personally, I would prefer a less culturally loaded term, like ‘Iron Age art’. But whatever one calls it, it is superb: it features vigorous, swirling plant and animal figures that possess an extraordinary grace and energy. The standards of design and craftsmanship are outstanding. Some of the finest examples of Celtic art were produced in Britain in the decades prior to the Roman Conquest of AD 43.¹⁰

The art was both very distinctive and widespread throughout Europe, but there is little evidence for the spread of an actual people. This fact first came to prominence in 1962, when Professor Roy Hodson published a paper in the learned journal the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society. Two years later he wrote another in the same journal. In essence his argument was simple: the numerous invasions of Iron Age Britain that had been suggested by leading scholars such as Professor Christopher Hawkes of Oxford simply hadn’t happened. Hodson proposed that the changes in, for example, pottery styles that are evident in the British Iron Age merely reflect changes in style, taste and sometimes in technology (for example the introduction of the potter’s wheel in the first century BC). He argued persuasively that an invasion of new people from abroad would have brought with it widespread changes: in house shape, in burial customs, in farming practices and so forth—but that had not happened. British Iron Age houses remained resolutely round, whereas their counterparts on the Continent, where the invaders were supposed to have originated, were rectangular. It wasn’t enough to base the existence of hypothetical migrations on such slight evidence. Today Roy Hodson’s reinterpretation of the British Iron Age as a largely insular phenomenon is universally accepted by prehistorians. It has become the new orthodoxy.

If there were no Iron Age invasions, then how did the Celts reach Britain? The answer can only be that they didn’t come from outside. In other words, they were always there. In that case, what was happening on the Continental mainland? What about the art? What about classical references to Celts in, for example, the area around Marseilles? How one answers these questions depends on one’s point of view. If you believe in an ancient people that shared a common ethnicity, and perhaps similar Indo-European languages and culture, it doesn’t really matter what you call them. ‘Celts’ will do nicely. ‘Prehistoric Europeans’ would be even better—or worse. The point is that retrospectively applied labels that are believed to have cultural or ethnic validity are pointless.

In common with most of my colleagues, I take a position which acknowledges, for example, that there may indeed have been a tribal group living near Marseilles who called themselves Celts, but that the evidence for a vast pan-European Celtic culture simply isn’t there. Certainly people were moving around, as they have always done and will continue to do, but there is no evidence for large-scale, concerted folk movements in the fifth to third centuries BC. If you examine a given tract of landscape, as I have done in the Peterborough area over the past thirty years, there is no sign whatsoever that the population changed some time in the mid-first millennium BC with the arrival of the Celts. It simply did not happen. Everything, from the location and arrangement of fields, settlements and religious sites to ceremonial rites, bespeaks continuity. In Chapter 3 I will look at another, very different, Iron Age landscape in Hampshire, and again there is no evidence for a change of population.

Today most prehistorians take the view that changes in the archaeological record are a reflection of technological advance, population growth and evolving social organisation. Societies were becoming more hierarchical and their leaders were becoming more powerful. These élites maintained contacts with each other by various means, such as the exchange, often over long distances, of high-status objects, many of which were examples of the best Celtic art. In short, one can substitute the words ‘Iron Age culture’ for ‘Celtic culture’. The big difference is that Iron Age culture was actually Iron Age cultures—plural. That applied in Britain as much as anywhere else. Archaeologically speaking, it would be misleading to talk about pre-Roman Celtic Britain as if it was a unified society. In fact the reverse was true, as we will see in Chapter 3.

A side-effect of the debunking of the ancient Celts has been to deprive us of a species of archaeological book that was often very well-written and coherent. As the authors of Cel...

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Table of Contents
• INTRODUCTION
• CHAPTER ONE Origin Myths: Britons, Celts and Anglo-Saxons
• CHAPTER TWO The Origins and Legacy of Arthur
• CHAPTER THREE Ancient Britons
• CHAPTER FOUR My Roman Britain
• CHAPTER FIVE Late- and Post-Roman Britain: The Situation in the South and East
• CHAPTER SIX The 'Anglo-Saxon' Origins of England
• CHAPTER SEVEN Arthurian Britain: The Situation in the West and South-West
• CHAPTER EIGHT The Making of the English Landscape
• CHAPTER NINE Continuity and Change
• Conclusion
• Keep Reading
• Plates
• Text Illustrations and Maps
• Notes
• Index
• Acknowledgements
• About the Author
• Other Books By
• About the Publisher