The term ‘prehistoric’ was coined by the French researcher Paul Tournal to describe articles found in French caves that were made by man more than 10,000 years ago. What he meant by prehistoric was merely ‘something created before written history began’. Generally speaking, in the British Isles this would refer to anything that came before the Roman invasion of these islands in AD 43 because prior to that time there was no literate culture living in Britain.
Bearing in mind that man first came to Britain about 500,000 years ago, it is fair to say that for our species in this particular location there have been about 2,000 years of recorded history and, according to the latest thinking, close to 498,000 years of prehistory! In terms of prehistoric monuments this isn’t quite as daunting as it sounds because for a very long time our ancestors did not build any sort of structure that was durable enough to stand the test of time. Evidence of humanity in this extremely remote period comes from finds of ‘edged tools’ mostly made from flint, the earliest of which come from Norfolk and Suffolk. The people who made these tools were hunter-gatherers, who earned their living foraging for plants, seeds and roots, as well as harvesting shellfish and hunting larger species of prey. As the name hunter-gatherer implies, it is unlikely that such groups would have stayed in any particular place for very long. Communities were probably extremely small and they were tied to the availability of potential food sources in any given location.
This general pattern of existence for early humans in the British Isles was heavily affected by climatic conditions. Repeated cold snaps and major ice ages came and went, forcing early human communities south and back into the slightly warmer areas of continental Europe. The last ice age finally retreated about 10,000 years ago and, once it finished, humans flooded back into the British Isles again to take advantage of the natural resources that gradually became available once more. During this whole fantastically long period of time very little altered in terms of human advancement, probably because, as the saying goes, ‘if it isn’t broken don’t fix it’. In other words, the hunter-gatherer’s life worked well for the communities in question. Population levels probably remained more or less stable and there was not much reason for anything to change. We might take an example from the indigenous people of Australia who, until the arrival of Europeans in the late 18th century, lived a life that had probably changed very little in tens of thousands of years. Why should it? Australian Aborigines were the masters of their environment – skilled at all the tasks necessary to maintain the population and well able to earn a living from the land.
The situation in Britain was probably very similar, except for the interruptions caused by periodic ice ages, and there is no reason to believe that anything would have changed right up to the present time, had it not been for something that took place much further east. Around 10,000 years ago, in parts of what is now Syria and also along the Nile in Egypt, someone decided to break from the normal routines of hunter-gatherer life in a way that would have a profound bearing on our entire species. Instead of simply harvesting what nature was good enough to supply, they decided to lend a hand. There is strong evidence that people in these two locations began to deliberately plant cereal crops.
There were distinct advantages to the first attempts at agriculture. Crops deliberately planted could be kept safe from grazing by wild animals, ensuring that the bulk of the crop would be available for human use. Also, with a surplus of grain it became possible to store food against leaner times to a far greater degree than had been the case for the hunter-gatherers. But it did mean a dramatic change in lifestyle. Although hunting forays could still be undertaken – and were for thousands of years after farming began – communities had to remain in one place, in order to benefit from their hard work.
Another important change was the ‘ownership’ of land. It wouldn’t have made any sense whatsoever to clear land and plant crops, only to allow the next roving band of people who happened to wander by to reap the benefit of one’s ingenuity and toil. If necessary, violence might be the only recourse to prevent theft of crops, especially in times of famine.
Farming brought about a fundamental change in the way human communities thought and acted, and it arrived in the British Isles around 6,500 years ago, in the period we refer to as the Neolithic. Although Britain was still in the Stone Age at this time, people began to make clearings in the lush forests in order to plant the first crops of wheat and barley. At the same time a more settled existence allowed the domestication of animals such as sheep, goats, cattle and pigs. And perhaps not surprisingly it was soon after this period that people began to create structures that can still be found on the British landscape today.
Why should this be the case? There are probably a number of reasons and proclaiming ownership of a particular location surely had to be one of them. A really impressive structure, be it for practical or ritual purposes, might tell any would-be passing opportunist a great deal about a community. If it had been possible for a village or a collection of villages to cut and face wood, dig deep ditches and erect banks or even cut and drag stones across the landscape, the same people would probably represent a formidable foe and so it might be more prudent to leave them alone.
Such are the range and type of structures that have been left to us from prehistoric times it is impossible to generalize about either the motivation that caused them to be built or, in many cases, their true intended function. Some of these structures, even the very early ones, are massive in scope. As an example we might mention the first super-henges. As I will explain more fully in due course, a henge is usually circular and consists of one or a series of ditches and banks. The intended purpose of henges is somewhat contentious but of their scale there is little doubt. Sometime around 3500 BC, both in the south but especially in the north of England, a positive frenzy of henge building took place. An array of three such super-henges near Ripon in Yorkshire is so large that St Paul’s Cathedral could easily be fitted inside any one of them. The ditches of these Class IIA henges (see Henges) were once very deep and the banks commensurately high. They must have represented a great effort on the part of the communities that created them and they were obviously not undertaken without a great deal of thought and planning.
One thing is more or less certain; people wanted to belong to a particular location and to respond positively to a specific landscape. They almost certainly also wanted to talk to their gods in a language they thought those selfsame gods would understand – ‘Gods are self-evidently big, and so, in at least some cases, the structures built for them should also be large.’
Of course many of the enigmatic prehistoric structures dotted about the landscape of the British Isles had a very practical purpose. Hill forts were used to defend territory, and were probably a means of demonstrating potential power and fighting acumen. Barrows and burial chambers were the abode of the dead, and simple enclosure banjos or other banks and ditches were almost certainly created to protect animals and to keep them restricted to a specific area.
It may well be that some of the structures which are generally considered these days to be of purely ‘ritual’ or ‘religious’ importance may also have had very practical applications in the everyday lives of prehistoric communities. Together with my colleague Christopher Knight, I have demonstrated that this was certainly the case with the super-henges.
Developing research is now beginning to show that there was a great deal of continuity in terms of the population of the British Isles. A recent genetic study has shown that a man who died in Cheddar, Somerset, 9,000 years ago, and whose bones were discovered recently, has a direct descendant still living in the locality. Cheddar Man is related, through his mitochondrial DNA, to a history teacher who still resides in the same town!
Nevertheless, such an amazing and quite unexpected discovery should not blind us to the fact that new peoples were arriving in the British Isles regularly throughout the Stone Age, the Bronze Age and the Iron Age, supplementing the local population, bringing new innovations, changing religious patterns and instigating the creation of perpetually new and different structures.
Archaeology has come on in leaps and bounds across the last few decades. It has ever more techniques at its disposal that can be used in teasing out the truth of any prehistoric site. Reconstructive archaeology in particular has been an invaluable tool in terms of finding out what our ancestors were really thinking and doing, by thinking and doing it ourselves. We have to try and get ourselves into the mindset of people who in many ways were a great deal like us, but whose motivations, religious beliefs and practical necessities were sometimes dramatically different. If we can do that, we stand a chance of understanding exactly what many of the prehistoric structures were really about.
There is no doubt that when one talks about prehistoric monuments in the British Isles, many people’s minds turn to the really impressive structures such as Stonehenge, Avebury or Silbury Hill, all in Wiltshire. However, and despite the impressive nature of these creations, the whole body of England, Wales, Scotland and Ireland are positively awash with prehistoric monuments, dating from the Stone Age, right up until the arrival of the Roman legions in the 1st century.
From the tiniest fairy ring, right up to the most complex and massive hill fort, all these ‘scratchings in the soil’ have something important to tell us about the way our direct ancestors thought, acted and lived their lives. To my mind nothing is better or more exciting than struggling across some muddy field or up a precipitous hill in order to look directly at something that may have been created in that spot as much as 6,000 years ago. I hope that what is contained in this book allows people who have these same fascinations to better understand what they are looking at when their goal is reached.
I have tried to bring together the most up-to-date explanations for all the types of prehistoric monument I mention, but there is nothing at all wrong with using the same intuition, imagination and logic that went into their creation. There is surely little in this world more thrilling than being able to answer a question that remains a puzzle, even to the experts.
Using How to Read Prehistoric Monuments, you will be able to find your way to a vast storehouse of history written large on the landscape. I hope that to do so brings you closer to the soul of our long-lost grandfathers and grandmothers. Like us they lived their everyday lives. They had their joys and sorrows; they feasted and starved, loved and hated and, just like us, they sought to make sense of the vast starry skies and the caprices of nature. In terms of intelligence they were no different than we are today because our brains have changed very little during what seems to us to be a vast span of time; they could be ingenious and were able to come up with answers to problems that we might find difficult to address in our highly technological world.
Before you start looking at the many classifications and explanations that follow, take a peek at ‘About the Book’ so that you can get the most out of what is on offer. It is my intention that this book will bring you as much pleasure to read and to refer to as it has brought me to research and write. There is nothing more rewarding than the puzzle of the past and certainly nothing more enigmatic than the many thousands of often misunderstood prehistoric monuments that positively litter the landscape of the British Isles. Wherever you are, you will never be more than a few miles from one, so get on your boots, pack a few sandwiches and go on a journey in time.