History Unlimited: The Megalithic West

History Unlimited

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Recommended Reading:

Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic & It’s Peoples / Barry Cunliffe

Anything by Aubrey Burl

The Bluestone Enigma: Stonehenge, Preseli and the Ice Age / Brian John

These and many more titles available from our Prehistory Bookshop,

The Peoples of the Sea

The Atlantic fringe of Europe, through centuries almost beyond counting, has rejoiced in a distinctive individuality that has marked it out as a place separate from the rest of the continent. Here was, and will ever remain, the last dramatic interface of land and Ocean - the land constantly under attack by wind, tide and storm, the sea an ever-present reminder of forces far beyond the control of human agency. The wild peninsulas and promontories of the Atlantic seaboard could not fail to make impression on the peoples who inhabited them. Over thousands of years the communities of the Atlantic were formed, in their development and beliefs, by their relationship with the sea.

From earliest times the sea gave them sustenance. As their understanding of tides and weather grew they ventured from their coastal havens and broad river estuaries onto the open sea beyond, tentatively tracing the line of the coasts, negotiating the currents, tidal races and other hazards of the Atlantic shore. Coastal exploration brought communities into contact. Communication and gift exchange led to trade and a sharing of values. Over time these people of the sea developed a common world view that was fundamentally different from that of the inland communities of Europe. We can imagine that endless ocean, turbulent horizons and open skies produced a keener sense of the infinite than the limited perspectives open to the inhabitants of the dense primaeval forests of the interior. And the recurrent violence of the sea on which they depended gave the Atlantic communities an appreciation of supernatural potency (and their own mortality!) far beyond the experience of the societies of the more placid, tideless, Mediterranean.
Well before the beginning of the early Neolithic (New Stone Age) era in the west (around 4000 BCe) it seems that the Atlantic zone had a well-established degree of cultural exchange and common identity, developed independently of the rest of the continent. Even before the spread of the Neolithic, some settlements had begun constructing elaborate burials. But between the 6th and 3rd millennia BCe, Atlantic communities, from the Iberian Peninsula in the south to Scandinavia in the north, evolved a common practice of constructing monumental tombs and megalithic monuments, evidence of a degree of cultural cohesion. By the mid-point of this era of architectural innovation the Neolithic lifestyle had penetrated much of the Atlantic periphery, but seemingly without submerging its cultural identity.

Settlements & Networks

The interface between land and ocean gave early hunter-gatherers in the west a fertile living space. To the riches of the temperate forest - the plant foods and smaller mammals that replaced the barren tundra and giant creatures of the last post-glacial period - were added the fruits of the sea. Estuaries and foreshore were a perpetual and abundant source of food, from seaweeds and salt-loving plants to fish, molluscs, crustaceans and wildfowl. Constancy of supply throughout the year may have led to permanent settlements well in advance of the spread of agriculture and the herding of food animals.
      Lasting evidence of early permanent settlements is furnished by the shell middens that litter the western seaboard. These middens, comprising discarded shells, animal bones and other domestic refuse accumulated over many hundreds of years, can be up to 200 - 300 metres across and several metres deep. It now seems probable that they became symbols of a bond between the people and the land they occupied: in many instances shell middens were used for human burials, suggesting a sense of ancestral continuity; and the ceremonial inclusion of shell midden material in later Neolithic burial mounds strengthens the likelihood of their symbolic significance. The ritualistic adoption of these prominent landmarks may indicate a growing tendency towards the monumental, precursor of things to come.
      From remote antiquity the settlements of the Atlantic coast developed local networks that overlapped in such a way that the whole coast, from north-west Africa to the Shetlands, was loosely linked together. Whilst regions within the coastal zone had individual characteristics, there was sufficient conformity in systems of gift exchange, burial customs, beliefs and other social constructs to show that information, goods and ideas were able to pass rapidly amongst these communities. All this activity indicates the early emergence of the primary requisite for long term cultural interchange - a rudimentary lingua franca, or common language, that was well developed long before the advent of the Neolithic. Through its various refinements and variations, fragments of this language were to evolve and survive in the Atlantic west down through the millennia to the present day.
      Within the long Atlantic littoral there were core zones where the lie of the land and sea favoured innovation, based on especially close contact and communication. These zones were at maritime 'pinch-points' where traffic was concentrated and interchange was especially intensified. In the south a core zone extended from the mouth of the River Tagus (site of modern Lisbon) to the Moroccan coast. Central to this zone are the Straits of Gibraltar, the restricted maritime gateway to the Mediterranean. Further north a more complex zone evolved around the Armorican Peninsula (Brittany) and the British Isles, where two major seaways converged.
      Between Brittany and the south west peninsula of England lies the western entrance to the English Channel. The Dover Strait provides a more constricted transit at the eastern extremity. The Channel was the major route between communities to the south and the Low Countries to the north.

The Irish Sea appears to have been the preferred sea route from Armorica and the south west to the northern ocean - Scotland, the Hebrides, Orkney and Shetland. The southern passage is via the St. George's Channel between St. Davids Head in Wales and Carnsore Point in SE Ireland; and between Holyhead and Dublin Bay. The northern passage is the North Channel between Stranraer and Larne. Between the two, the Irish Sea formed a cultural province in its own right. This 'Mediterranean of the West' teemed with traffic and developed its own variants along the inward facing seaboards of Britain and Ireland, somewhat different in character from, say, the Irish communities that overlooked the Atlantic in the west.
Along with the wider benefits arising from its position at the pinch-points of major sea routes the Armorican-British axis was a sub-region of rich internal cultural exchange. But the Armorican region was also connected to inland Europe and the western Mediterranean by the valleys of the Seine, Garonne and Loire, routes which were to assume increasing significance as contacts with the interior developed.

The Impact of the Neolithic

At around 7000 BCe the techniques of food production began their long 3,000 year journey from the Middle East across mainland Europe. By this time the post-glacial deciduous forests of the temperate zone, annually shedding their leaves and other detritus, had formed a nutrient-rich loam, eminently suitable for crop production. Farming moved slowly westwards from the Balkans and the Aegean via the Danube Valley and the Hungarian Plain, partly through migrations into the thinly populated continental interior, partly by dissemination from one community and forest clearing to the next. By the end of the 6th millennium the hunter-gatherers of the Atlantic fringe had come into contact with groups who grew cereal crops and herded animals.
      Early Neolithic agri-pastoralism found a receptive climate amongst the established social networks of the west. Seed, breeding stock and pottery-making techniques spread across the Atlantic seaboard although, as always, there were regional variations in the mix between hunter-gathering and agriculture. The settled communities of the Atlantic coast were already rich in food resources that had released them from day-to-day and hand-to-mouth subsistence. Now, with the addition of agriculture and corresponding population growth, an increasingly stable socio-economic system made for an unparalleled release of manpower and a new energy and purpose. There followed an explosion of creativity aimed at the monumental recognition and celebration of ancient ancestry and ancestral possession of the land - a maturing of the impulses first manifest when shell middens were transformed into ritual sites. By the middle of the 5th millennium (4700-4400 BCe) some communities in the Morbihan (just south of the Armorican Peninsula) were building long barrows with associated menhirs (standing stones) set up as single monoliths or in multiple alignments. By 4000 BCe this kind of grave architecture was also present in Wessex and elsewhere. These long mounds enclosed stone chambers containing collective burials with grave goods, notably stone axes, thought to have been symbols of potency and empowerment in many ancient societies, that had already been featuring in gift exchange.
      The construction of these large tombs indicates another maturation - that of local elites that were capable of motivating (or coercing) and directing workforces at an unprecedented scale. The early Neolithic thus seems to have generated a change of world view and social organisation that generated a burst of construction in the northern Atlantic Zone. But by around 3800 BCe the earlier large mounds were beginning to coexist alongside simpler portal dolmens and (slightly less simple) passage graves that evolved in Brittany, West Wales, Scotland, Orkney and Ireland. That this development heralded another shift in world view is suggested by the deliberate sealing of earlier tombs; and in Brittany there are examples of the destruction of earlier menhirs to provide material for the new passage graves. There emerged a more sophisticated megalithic landscape: portal and passage graves containing collective burials and valuable grave goods, enclosed by large circular mounds; standing stones in varying combinations; with the whole linked by clear alignments and focal points. Some authorities have argued that by this time, possibly around 3500 BCe, the funerary function of these complex sites was being replaced by that of the shrine and ritual centre. Certainly from 3500 BCe onwards burials were further simplified in western France with the introduction of the basic elongated chambers known as gallery graves, sometimes only partly covered by earthen mounds, which coincided with the spread of settlement into the hinterland.
      Any attempt to interpret the events of the latter half of the 4th millennium must be conjectural at best. But it may be that, as population increased and areas away from the main coastal regions were brought under cultivation, burials ceased to be symbolic of local ancestral connections and were gradually replaced by regional centres in the primary areas of settlement. These centres may also indicate the growth of a more profound religiosity, and a new curiosity and receptiveness to new belief systems in the cultural clusters of the west. By the end of the millennium the first timber henges were appearing in Wessex and the earliest stone monumental structures in the British Isles were under construction in treeless Orkney. There has been much speculation on the functions of these emerging megalithic landscapes, and especially on their relationship with astronomical bodies and events. However wild some of the theories, the fact remains that alignments based on major astronomical bodies and recurrent events exist, and to degrees of accuracy that seem inconceivable at so early a date and so early a stage of social development. But we must bear constantly in mind that the architects of these landscapes were, or had close contact with, people of the sea.
      Throughout the history of maritime settlement, lore has been passed down from generation to generation. It is scarcely possible that astronomical phenomena will have escaped notice through successive centuries of foraging and inshore fishing, where lives and livelihood depended on close observation and inherited knowledge. Inland agricultural societies formulated calendar systems around the agricultural year, based on their gradual awareness of the relationship between astronomical events and seasonal cycles. How much more rapidly will this awareness have impinged upon the consciousness of coastal communities, exposed as they were to immediate cause and effect? The tidal range varies constantly between spring (largest) and neap (smallest) tides as the moon moves through its phases. If the concept of lunar gravitation was beyond the reach of ancient peoples the empirical evidence of a relationship between moon and tide was not. Similarly, the equinoxes would have assumed especial significance as the periods when the highest tides of the year coincided with equinoctial storms, amplifying the hazards of the tide races of the western promontories. The corollary was the period of calm at the solstices, when the sun reached the limits of its transit, marking the waxing or the waning of the year, when the tidal range was at its lowest. Add to this the sun and stars as aids to navigation. Add, again, the seasonal migrations of shoaling fish and wildfowl, and it seems evident that a sophisticated appreciation of seasonal and the heavenly cycles would have been handed from father to son. And from community to community: although incapable of proof, this knowledge perhaps added an intellectual commodity to the more material gift-exchange goods.
      So that it is entirely plausible that, as some recent authors have argued, the move from elaborate burials to astronomically aligned monumental landscapes indicates a shift in religious focus from the cthonic (the underworld and underworld gods) to the celestial. And if this shift marks a milestone in spiritual evolution, other factors were soon to coalesce and accelerate the social and religious development of the peoples of the west.

Beakers & Battleaxes

Some time around 3000 BCe Northern Europe, from the Middle Rhine to the western Ukraine, saw the introduction of a new and distinctive type of burial. Known in its formative stages as the 'Corded Ware-Battle Axe' culture and generically as the 'Beaker' culture, this burial-type spread eastwards towards modern Moscow, westwards along the Danube and northward along the Rhine. By the middle of the third millennium beaker burials had spread (probably by emulation, rather than by the mass migration of a 'Beaker People' as previously thought) to a line drawn roughly from Denmark and the Netherlands to the Western Alps.
      The large handle-less pottery vessels that gave the burials their name were mutated into several distinct types and were a consistent feature of a grave goods 'parcel'. At the beginning this cultural parcel included superbly finished polished stone axes and flint daggers, but supplementary grave goods varied as beaker patterns and regional distribution developed. Along the western seaboard the typical burial parcel evolved to include archers' equipment - flint arrowheads, stone wrist guards, copper and bronze tools. The latter artifacts give evidence that metal-working techniques, spreading westwards along the well-worn path from the Black Sea and the Aegean, had reached the Iberian Peninsula at the south of the Atlantic networks by around 2700 BCe. From this time onwards the maritime communities were to become more firmly bonded to the rest of the continent.
      The greatest immediate change in the Atlantic zone was the gradual replacement of collective burials by the Beaker practice of separate single interment. The body was buried with a standardised grave set - the large beaker a remnant, perhaps, of a communal funerary rite, the accompanying goods reflecting the status of the deceased. The advent of beaker burials in the west marks a transition from the celebration of ancestry to glorification of the individual. We have noted that that the Neolithic lifestyle led to the growth of local elites. Now, on the cusp of the full flowering of the megalithic, funerary practice points to the emergence of social organisation based on elite groups and individuals of new potency and power. And with the contemporary shift in emphasis from elaborate collective tombs to great megalithic landscapes, it seems that the process of emulation that had spread the beaker phenomenon westwards was here, at the west's last limits, superseded by innovation.
      Thus the fusion of outside influence with local traditions seems to have fired religious and social impulses that permeated the communities of the Atlantic west and inspired a swathe of monumental building, in the northern core zone as elsewhere. The northern zone network extended from Armorica into south-western Britain and along an Irish Sea-Boyne Valley-Orkney axis that included Northern Ireland, the Western Isles and northern Scotland. The relics of this effort can be seen at Carnac in Brittany, in the ritual landscapes of Wessex, in the later development of Newgrange in the valley of the Boyne, at Callanais (Callanish) in the Outer Hebrides and at the Ring of Brodgar on Orkney.

The Wessex Connection

Wessex was a major hub of the networks of mainland Britain. On first sight the inland location of Salisbury Plain and its environs, home to some of the best known megalithic monuments in the world, argues against the acquisition and application of the knowledge accumulated in the coastal zones. Only upon closer consideration does the strategic strength of the location for communication, trade and intellectual exchanges become apparent: equidistant from the south coast and the Bristol Channel and straddling the watershed at the base of the south-western peninsula. To the south there are river connections to the Solent, facing the coast of France. To the west the rivers drain into the Severn Estuary at the southern pinch-point of the Irish Sea, and give access to a further river system that feeds from Wales and northern England. The River Kennett opens a route to the Thames Valley and the east coast, where extensive 'Bell Beaker' distribution evidences contact with the Low Countries and the northern European seaboard. Wessex was also linked to the north-east, including the monumental sites of Yorkshire, by overland routes that followed the line of the Jurassic limestone ridge that extends from the Exe to the Humber Estuary.
In itself the strategic location explains the wide variety of commodities that have been revealed by archaeology. But Wessex may also have been a ritual site of inter-regional importance and a centre of pilgrimage that brought the usual benefits - an influx of votive and trade goods and a consequent retention of riches. As the third millennium progressed we find jet from the Yorkshire coast, amber from Jutland and the Eastern Baltic, and faience beads, manufactured by processes that had passed down the networks from the Near East and Central Europe - perhaps another example of an intellectual commodity. As metals come into use we find silver from Iberia and links to the developing 'gold routes' of the Atlantic seaways. We can only speculate on the perishable goods, long since disintegrated into dust, which were part of this traffic. We can suppose that the resulting prosperity allowed the Wessex region to maintain its pre-eminent position through the continual refinement of architecture and ritual. At the same time the availability of valuable commodities reinforced the elite hierarchy through the material expression of status and conspicuous consumption in the form of rich grave good deposits.

Stonehenge is an example of refinement through the centuries that was, in various ways, repeated throughout the Atlantic fringe. Tentative datings suggest that by 3000 BCe the site was already a basic henge, evolved from a simple outline ditch, one of many in the region: an open space defined by a circular ditch and internal bank, surrounding a circle of 56 pits which held large upright timbers. There is evidence that throughout its further development there were substantial periods when the site fell into disuse. But some time around the early to middle third millennium the ‘bluestones’, including spotted dolerites originating in the Preseli Hills of North Pembrokeshire, were erected within the early henge. The final major phase, begun in the latter part of the millennium, saw the construction of the unique sarsen trilithons and circle that give the monument its familiar profile. Through the same period other monuments in the region were developed with varying degrees of sophistication, dominating the natural routes. And around these centres of ritual and power, round barrows, containing single interments or cremations, were constructed in their thousands, suggesting that the landscape had achieved eminence as a regional or inter-regional necropolis.
The beliefs that motivated all of this tremendous effort are beyond our reach or imagining. An expanding archaeological record and advances in scientific methodology can merely help us to sketch out the broad sequence of events. Through an imperfect accumulation of sometimes ambiguous or contradictory data we catch tantalising glimpses of hidden meanings, patterns and subtle transformations in an era of major innovation that exceeded the timespan between the Battle of Hastings and the present day.
For instance, are there implications arising from the presence of the so-called ‘bluestones’, that featured in the first and final development phases at Stonehenge? The prevailing archaeological wisdom is that the spotted dolerites in the bluestone settings were manhandled laboriously from a single source in the Pembrokeshire uplands to the great estuary of Milford Haven, and thence along the coast and waterways to their permanent home on the southern fringes of Salisbury Plain. If so, what body of belief gave the Preseli Hills such special distinction? There has been speculation that this area of West Wales served a similar function to the great southern plain as a cult centre and necropolis, with a religious significance that called in some way for a physical expression of a spiritual relationship. More recently it has been suggested that the dolerite source region and the stones themselves were imbued with therapeutic properties, and that the relocation was intended to transform Stonehenge into a healing centre, equivalent to modern-day Lourdes. But if the bluestones had such special significance, why was the first bluestone circle demolished before it was complete, with the implication, perhaps, that the later internal concentric bluestone circle was constructed from material that happened to be on site?

      Many geologists and geomorphologists dismiss all of this as the product of fervid imagination. Analysis shows that the bluestones are not a unique homogenous set but comprise a number of geological types from a number of source regions, in the Preselis and elsewhere. And current research on ice flows indicates that glaciation and glacial erratics from South West Wales reached as far as, or close to, Salisbury Plain. In which case there is no need for a theory of human transportation, and for speculation on the belief systems that motivated it.
       Strangely, archaeological investigation of Stonehenge and the Wessex region has been limited and intermittent. Only in recent years has there been a resurgence of activity. There are still secrets to be revealed. For example, what interpretation can be placed on the large beaker burial discovered three miles from Stonehenge in May 2002? The occupant was a lame man, 35-40 years old when he died. The grave has been dated to around the beginning of the final phase of the monument's construction and is the richest from this period so far found in Britain, indicating that the occupant was of extremely high status. The grave goods, totaling around 100 items, included an unusually high number (5) of beakers together with flint tools and arrowheads, wristguards and other hunter's equipment. Significantly, the burial also contained copper knives, a cushion stone (used for working metal) and two hair tresses fashioned from the oldest worked gold ever found in Britain. More interesting still, analysis of the oxygen content of his teeth enamel shows that the 'Amesbury Archer' came from the north western Alpine region. The nature and dating of the burial places the Archer at the threshold of the early Bronze Age. Archaeologists have speculated that he may have been amongst the first to introduce the art of metal working to mainland Britain and that this new technology accorded him the social standing that is evidenced by his burial. Later European myths and legends, those lasting repositories of folk memory, speak of itinerant metalworkers whose skills, incomprehensible to indigenous populations, imparted an aura of the magical that had previously been the preserve of the shamanistic leaders that in some cases they replaced.
       The mystery deepened with the discovery of a second burial nearby. The skeleton was of a man of 25-30 years, from roughly the same period as the Archer. Anatomical evidence showed that the man was a relative of the Archer, probably his son; and a similar pair of gold hair tresses confirmed that the burials were connected. The 'companion' had, however, grown up in southern England and spent his late teens in the English Midlands or north east Scotland. The Archer had, therefore, been settled in the Wessex region for sufficient time to begin a family before his demise. As a technocrat of the time, had he contributed to the planning or building of the last trilithic phase, even, as the media would have it, as the 'King of Stonehenge'? If so, the culmination of the megalithic would appear to be linked to the introduction of metallurgy and beaker burial. And if the companion had spent time in areas that were integral with the megalithic network, was this part of a system of information or ceremonial exchange? Further: do the elite burials of father and son point to the emergence of an hereditary principle?

The Warrior Aristocracies

The Bronze Age marks a further stage in the long progression. As metal became more widely adopted for practical use and adornment, so elite burials increased in extravagance, reaching a peak at around 2000 BCe. But the westward spread of metal working technology went hand in hand with the technology of metal extraction. It was soon apparent that the Atlantic zone was rich in the raw materials necessary to feed burgeoning consumption in the rest of Europe. In the northern zone Armorica, Cornwall and Ireland's Wicklow Mountains yielded tin and alluvial gold. North Wales, mid-West Wales and the south west of Ireland were major sources of a scarce commonity – copper - which was highly valued as the principle constituent of alloyed bronze. Now, the demand for luxury goods as symbols of status, particularly from the developing Minoan and Mycenaean power centres in the Aegean, stimulated innovation, production and the exploitation of land and maritime communication networks. Thus a system of two-way traffic grew up, innovation and innovative goods moving westwards and raw materials moving in the opposite direction.
Amongst the most dramatic artefacts from this period are the bronze daggers, swords and axes that are found in elite burials and votive sites. The use of weaponry in ceremony and ritual points to a celebration of militaristic power and to growing conflicts between communities that were reaching new levels of chauvinistic self-awareness. Demand for cultivated or cultivatable land, and for other resource-rich territory, was increasing with population pressure. Opportunities for plunder grew as prosperity increased: livestock and harvested crops; luxury goods and raw materials in transit; the hoards and treasuries accumulated by more advanced communities; slave labour and women to add to the prestige of emerging political entities and their rulers. Finally, we should not discount competition for status, influence and territorial control between these political entities; and the corollary of aggression is defence. So that a new kind of leader became more prominent, whose magical/religious attributes were less important for status than his ability to raid or to repel. Warrior chieftains and societies in conflict were the stuff, dimly remembered, of the epic poetry of a later age:

"… The broken wall, the burning roof and tower /

And Agamemnon dead."

Through all of this turmoil the resource-rich Atlantic zone became linked more and more strongly with the rest of Europe; and these linkages were to survive the collapse of the Mycenaean world in 1200 BCe and the wide-ranging destruction that followed. The peoples of the Atlantic, no longer living in a circumscribed network of communities, were drawn irreversibly into the mainstream of European history. And if they benefited from their increasing exposure to outside influence, they reciprocated with a particular and individualistic outlook that contributed to the cultural evolution of the continent.