Image Source - my own, taken today, of a flint blade from an old finds box. Thetford Forest. It would have been recorded as a snapped blade, possibly transitional Mesolithic-Neolithic. Now in the 21st Century I understand that this blade was strictly, Mesolithic. I no longer believe there was transition.
I've written a novel. The story provided me with an escape from unbearable life. The tale has two primary settings, both circa 6,000 years ago. One in what is now South Iraq on the edge of the marshes where civilisation starts to take shape, and the other in South East Britain, as Mesolithic hunter-gatherers meet Neolithic farmers. It is a little play on parts of the Genesis story.
I was cut off from all Nature. I am only just now starting to reconnect. It will be a very long healing experience if I decide to maintain it. Because I'm running short of hope. I had very little access to data. I had to scrap around in order to attempt any understanding of how the Mesolithic British may have experienced life, and was left with little more than contemplation. This is how I reconstructed a fictional South-eastern British environment 6,000 years ago:
Natural Britain during the Early Holocene
Birch scrub advanced first. Followed by pine, yew, and other evergreens. This is the Age of Star Carr. The tundra grasslands receded with this rapid advance. Temperatures increased annually. Waters began to rise.
The birch grew taller. Alder joined them. Willow and holly. Followed by oak. Lime and hazel arrived on the British peninsular of North West Europe. Wych elm, hawthorn, blackthorn then ash. In South Eastern Britain, it was the lime which dominated as the most common tree.
Tree biodiversity was actually quite limited in Late Mesolithic Britain. Because the North Sea (Doggerland), and the English Channel, flooded with thawed out glacial waters to make Britain an island, before more species could shift across any land-bridge.
Later Mesolithic SE Britain. Wild-woods or temperate-forests?
I suspect that the term temperate rainforest should be reserved for the wetter parts of the British Isles. Particularly for the west. Across the drier south-east of Britain, I propose that it would be better to describe it as wildwood. Even here I suspect that the ecology was incredibly rich, with mosses, lichen and fungi. Some areas of the wildwoods were kept quite open by the actions of large wild bovines that generated their own woodland pastures. Others were more dense.
The British canopy was not continuous. Breaking it were small glades, and some larger plains. These were kept open by browsing and grazing herbivores that herded in the open - aurochs, red deer, bison, roe deer. A distinct ecology existed on these small scrubs and prairies.
Equally there were lowland marshes and fens of reed bed with water-logged islands of alder carr. Often, belts of these ran up the riparian terraces of river valleys to provide rich habitats for birds, beavers, and pig. The rivers were clean, and ran naturally within their floodplains except for the works of beavers. Upper stretches of chalk streams would have been choked by Summer watercress. Alder and willow trees dominated the riparian belts. Banks were not cut, and rivers wider, bordered by the roots of alder, or by gravel shores. They often flowed around riverine islets and over gravel banks. Water channels changed their many courses through the marshes of deltas.
Bird-life was devoid of some species that have adapted to and follow human agriculture, but could have included some surprise species no longer in the British Isles such as black woodpecker, black stork, and European eagle owl. These in addition to species such as titmice, woodcock, wood pigeon, tawny owl, bustards, and cranes. Goshawks would have been a widespread raptor across the forests, and white tailed eagles not an uncommon site.
Mammalian predators included wolf, brown bear, lynx, fox, badgers and martens
Image Source - taken on the phone today.
I've demonstrated in recent posts that the Mesolithic hunter-foragers in Britain, most likely descended either from the Ice Age Epigravettians of Italy and South East Europe. They or / and perhaps recent arrivals from South West Asia, who had crossed a dry Aegean. A recent study of ancient genomes supported the former population.
We know that they appear from genetics to be dark skinned and possibly with light coloured eyes. That is just a fine detail. To those people that make a deal out of it, I ask why? And I love the reconstructions of western hunter-gatherers by Tom Björklund.
What was the environment in South East Britain, 6,500 years ago? How had they adapted to the changed environment? Their ancestors had survived the Ice age mammoth steppe. They had survived so long on the tundra. What challenges had the Holocene's new forests thrown at them? Their ungulate prey species had dispersed from herds in the open, and into the woods. There, they were more difficult to locate, and could quickly disappear into cover. They had less need to form large herds. Temperate forests release a lot of their calories only during the autumn. To survive, Mesolithic hunter-foragers needed to be exceptionally intelligent. They needed to break up into smaller bands, and adapt to a forest way of life
How I portray Late Mesolithic Britons in fiction
The wild-woods may not have always been dense. Yet they would have been difficult for humans to traverse by foot. Deadwood would have laid across everywhere. Its rot fed the ecology. Moss and dead leaf-mould, deep. Some alder rain-forests would have been likely waterlogged and swamped. Walking across these environments uses a lot of calories that are otherwise precious.
It was probably easier to travel by waterway whenever possible. Although upper rivers might be seasonally clogged by growth, and beaver dams a trial. Watercraft include dugouts, but also canoes of bark or animal skin. It would have been the way to travel.
During this travelling, few people would have been encountered. The bands dispersed in order to make best use of resources. Human population was likely very sparse across Britain.
Image Source. 11,000-year-old skull headdress from Star Carr.
Food opportunities were seasonal:
Late Winter / Early Spring. Bands would have radiated out of winter encampments, hunting deer, pig, among other prey species. But these themselves were losing all winter fat. The Mesolithic people may have relied heavily on caches of roasted nuts and other preserves. Or chewed tree resin and inner bark to stave off hunger. Fish were available, through traps, nets, spears. Eel, chub, and pike. This may have been the lazy time, when they sat around hearths, preserving expensive energy.
Late Spring. Wild greens, pignuts, tubers, flowers, cat-tails, buds, even young tree leaves of elm and hawthorn. Slow game - birds eggs and chicks. Possibly European pond turtles. Roots such as those of cat tail could be dried and ground into flour.
Summer. I have my fictional hunter-foragers moving to the coast during summer, where they meet up with other bands for sports and social networking. There they could have foraged sea beet, sea lettuce, samphire, buckthorn berry, and shellfish. Mussels, oysters, clams, cockles, razor shells, whelks, crabs. Perhaps hunted seals on the beaches and sea flats. Cetaceans would have been vastly more abundant in the seas, and whales would beach, providing opportunities. Sea canoes might have provided the opportunity to fish with nets, or to hunt small cetaceans. Late summer inland, and wild berries - raspberry, mulberry, sloe, brambleberry, elderberry, buckthorn, hawthorn. Early fungi such as puffballs, parasols, chicken-of-the-woods.
Autumn / Early Winter. Busy squirrels and martens could be snared. Game is now at its fattest. The salmon run on more British rivers than today. But this would also be a time for foraging nuts and seeds. The hazel-nut may have almost been a staple, at least as a preserve. It would have been roasted. It can be ground into flour to make bread and biscuits. Acorns were also abundant. They could be rinsed and soaked to remove excessive tannins, then added to flours. Pine nuts if many of their trees remained in South East Britain. Wild grass seeds could be harvested. Beech probably arrived with the Neolithic. I imagine the small camps being busy at this time of year, processing acorns and nuts to be cached as food reserves. Edible fungi including bollettes, ceps, chanterelles, deceivers, and many more will carpet the wildwoods.
The dark honeybee was most probably abundant in the lime tree forests. I’m sure that their hives in dead trees would have been exploited for honey and wax. The honey could be eaten, or used to make mead - perhaps adding some berries for yeast. Birch and tree sap could also be enjoyed, and fermented to make alcohol. Hallucinogenic mushrooms would have been exploited. The beeswax would also be added to tree resins to make their glues.
Favoured prey species for hunting would have been the red deer, also roe deer, wild boar, aurochs (enormous wild cattle), European bison if they remained, tarpan / wild horse, fox, badger, beaver, etc. Bird species on the menu probably included geese, ducks, cranes, swans, bustards, wood pigeons, turtle doves, woodcock, snipe, etc. My savages had the domestic dog, but it is a laika-type, that does not bark. It is useful for tracking prey by scent. Dogs also provide companionship and warmth in a den.
The belief system that I designed for my fictional savages was animist. The sense of self, and of afterlife, is projected onto everything natural - prey, trees, tools, the forest, and otherwise. Areas of natural resources became sacred. My fictional savages had female shamans, and were matrilineal. Celebrations and feasts would be frequent. They would engage in sports. I also suggested some ritual cannibalism, if only to prevent the ghosts of enemies from extracting revenge on the living. I portrayed them as very egalitarian, with little personal property, and no chieftains. But they had different roles for either gender, and the elders were respected.
My fictional savages have a totem-identity, but I'm not sure that would have been the case. Again, my choice was to tie them to local nations set into a larger territory called a wilderness. These nations I divided into smaller more practically sized family bands. None of this is based on any strong anthropological evidence, and was entirely my own creativity. In reality, bands could have had a wider more homogeneous identity, and ranged wider across the British Isles, free of tribal territorial restrictions. Yet I see this as leading to conflict.
Birth rate in my savages was controlled by extended nursing and delayed weaning in comparison to the Neolithic farmers. This reduced fertility. Otherwise competition would grow for limited natural resources, and local prey extinctions. Conflict between bands would follow as an ultimate population control.
Have I romanticised my Mesolithic Britons? Absolutely I have. I am envious of their freedoms, their relationship with Nature. I see progress as degenerative.
That is how I creatively wrote the British Late Mesolithic.
The Forgotten Contribution to the South British Genome.
A research team looking at ancientDNA led by David Reich had already detected a 97% population replacement across Britain at the close of the Neolithic period, circa 2,300 BCE. They proposed that the Earlier, European Neolithic Farmers of Britain, were replaced by a new people, associated with the Bell Beaker artefact culture. These new people had previously been admixed between European Neolithic Farmers living on the Continent, and recently migrants from the Pontic & Caspian Steppes of Eurasia.
Northern Europe has more of this migrant Yamnaya / Steppe ancestry which arrived during the 3rd Millennium BCE, while Southern Europe (peaking in Sardinia, then Iberia) has more residual ancestry from the earlier, European Neolithic Farmers. Yet the South British (English) have rather more Neolithic ancestry than other Northern neighbours. This raised questions concerning where had this DNA come from.
Reich's team speculated on this result, and investigated the remains of ancient DNA further. This was later reported on:
Large-scale migration into Britain during the Middle to Late Bronze Age
In the above paper, the research team suggest a secondary migration event, that followed the Bell Beaker population replacement. They date it to the end of the Middle Bronze Age / start of the Late Bronze Age circa 900 BCE, although proposed that it had slowly been arriving for some time, before a surge of new arrivals to Britain. They do not pinpoint where these immigrants come from, but by their heavier Neolithic ancestry, it is proposed that they had moved up from further south, most probably from France. How many? The study proposes a 50% DNA replacement in Southern Britain, across England & Wales. I think that is probably comparable to the most recent, highest estimates for the much later Anglo-Danish immigration event.
From this it has further been proposed, that it may have been this forgotten immigration which brought the p-celtic and / or q-celtic languages to Britain. If you subscribe to identifying Iron Age Britons as Insular Celts then this could represent the arrival in Britain.
Personally I feel that what we 21st Century CE people believe to be Insular Celtic, reflects a much longer, older exchange of people and ideas across Britain, Ireland, and the Western Seaboard of Europe during the Bronze and Iron Ages. The Romans did much later, claim more recent Belgae migrations into Britain, some tribes even shared names with tribes in France and Belgium. These could represent a continuation of migration, possibly of elites. Prehistoric Britain was very much in contact with the nearby Continent, and a part of Europe.
Conclusion
Those socketed axe heads, and other artefacts of the Late Bronze Age may now be identified as representing a new culture and people, admixing into Southern Britain.
Through studies of ancient genomes, we are witnessing the reveal of a number of prehistoric migration events into Britain. These above, contribute to the modern British genome. Earlier migrations than these are also known. The Bell Beaker folk may have replaced to builders of Avebury, but those Neolithic Farmers had previously replaced the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers already here. Ancient DNA of Neolithic Britons is markedly different to that of any Mesolithic remains, and carries genetic markers from South West Asia.
Neither were the Mesolithic Britons aboriginal. The DNA of Cheddar Man (and others of his time from around Western Europe), originates from Arabia / Asia, and is different to any earlier so far sequenced. They were possibly not of the Magdalenian Culture. The story of the Europeans has often been a series of migrations from regions of Asia, both north and south of the Caucasus.
From this we should judge the Anglo-Danish (Anglo-Saxon plus later Danish arrivals) immigration, as being no more than one of several such events, with earlier examples until recently, lost in prehistory.
The above is a link to a reconstruction by Tom Björklund of a Mesolithic girl who lived in what is now Denmark. It is a very unique and creative reconstruction, because nothing physical of this girl nicknamed Lola survives into our archaeological record! She is only known by her DNA (and that of recently eaten food) that she left on a lump of birch tree pitch that she had chewed as a gum some 5,700 years ago. But I really like this reconstruction. I think that she makes a beautiful wild child. Straight out of the lines of a novel that I'm trying to write.
Analysis of her DNA strongly suggests brown toned skin, if not dark brown. Her hair dark brown. The DNA supports that her eyes were light coloured. Perhaps blue, blue-green or hazel? I'll return to Lola, but first these features correspond to those suggested by the genomes of other Mesolithic remains scattered around Europe.
Cheddar Man who lived in South West Britain around 10,000 years ago is the best known. The revelation several years ago that the DNA sequenced from his genome, suggests both dark skin and blue eyes caused quite a commotion. A lot of people didn't like it, and accused the geneticists of woke.
We always knew that the earliest modern humans were likely to have plenty of melanin. Subsisting on a hunter-gatherer diet that was rich in dietary Vitamin D meant that there was little adaptive pressure for them to lose this dark skin in a hurry. Just as some hunters in the far north and far south have retained dark skins into recent times. The emphasis to reduce melanin may not have arrived until following major shifts to a poor, agricultural diet in northern zones. The DNA associated with very light skin of modern Western Europeans may not have arrived until quite recently (prehistorically speaking).
We also had Villabruna Man in Northern Italy. His presence and DNA is less known to the general public. But even before the controversy of the Cheddar Man reconstruction, we knew from Villabruna and other remains that he lacked certain genetic indicators of light skin and:
Additional evidence of an early link between west and east comes from the HERC2 locus, where a derived allele that is the primary driver of light eye color in Europeans appears nearly simultaneously in specimens from Italy and the Caucasus ~14,000-13,000 years ago.
But one recent study proposes that there were at least two distinct clusters of hunter-gatherers around Europe at the close of the last Ice Age:
On the basis of the genetic variation of present-day Europeans, this could imply phenotypic differences between post-14 ka hunter-gatherer populations across Europe, with individuals in the Oberkassel cluster possibly exhibiting darker skin and lighter eyes, and individuals in the Sidelkino cluster possibly lighter skin and darker eye colour.
I think that may be close to the truth, that there was most likely a variation in skin tones and eye colours across Europe during late prehistory.
Then we met 'Elba the Shepherdess' from Galicia, Spain. She dates to around 9,300 years ago. Analysis of Elba's ancient DNA suggests that she was dark-skinned and haired, and brown-eyed. Her remains had spectacularly been excavated along with three aurochs (wild cattle). Her relationship to these aurochs has raised extremely controversial questions about possible domestication. I do like the aurochs. I might make them the a subject of a later post.
British Archaeology has long been going through a struggle where it tries to lose its roots within the Arts, and relocate itself within the (social) sciences. Clinging vigorously to data, they fear telling any stories (which is what hi-story does). In my own creative writing, I have my British hunter-gatherers at the close of the Mesolithic as shameless animists, who see themselves very much as a part of Nature. Mine are trapped into nations or tribes, divided into semi-nomadic bands who wander a larger region that I call a wilderness. In the background (but no longer in the novel) from their own golden age, they look back through folklore to an earlier time when they were more free, to wander further, one nation, following herds of steppe and forest bison.
In their own contemporary wilds 6000 years ago, I have them hunting red deer, roe deer, wild pig, aurochs (wild cattle), red squirrel, martens, seal, porpoise, whales, beaver, fox, waterfowl (ducks/geese), bustards, cranes, wood pigeon, woodcock, fishing/trapping eel, salmon, trout, chub, pike. Foraging for hazelnut, acorns (which they need to process to reduce tannin), cat-tails, wild garlic, pig-nuts, harvesting wild grass seeds, tubers, roots, tree sap, flower buds, lichens, sea lettuce, samphire, berries (blackberry, raspberry, elderberry, hawthorn), black bee honeycomb (yes they make berry mead and alcoholic birch sap), greens (including some springtime tree leaves), tree inner bark (in desperation or to chew), fungi (bollettes, blewitts, ceps, chanterelle, puffballs, chicken-of-the-woods and many more), mussels, sea molluscs /shellfish, crustaceans. I did also include beechnuts, but then found that the beech may have only just arrived with the Neolithic. Ugh!
One thing that this creative writing has helped me understand about the British Late Mesolithic, is that the forests at that time lacked a wealth of biodiversity. Britain had parted from the European Continent too soon following the glaciers - Ireland more so. Few tree species had made it here. The temperate wild-woods (I don't think all of those in the south-east could have been classed as rain-forests) could be very mean with any calories between early winter and mid spring. I emphasise that in the story, the need to gather in late summer and through the autumn, and to process and store what they could. Acorns and hazel nuts could be roasted and even ground into a flour to make breads. Wild grass seeds may have been added. The game would have been fatter at that time of year, and the salmon would run. Oh, I dare to suggest that my hunter-foragers are also gardeners of their wilds, encouraging hazel and birch to spread and survive.
Late winter may have been comparatively miserable, where the bands would laze close to hearths. Conserving valuable calories of their energy.
I enjoy imagining the wild-woods of SE Britain 4000 BCE. Perhaps not all temperate rain-forest, but neither anything like a modern day woods. Deadwood, flooding, saplings, rot, deep ferns and mosses. They would have been difficult to pass through by foot. Waterway would have been preferred. Trees with mosses and octopus boughs. Lime (linden) trees, elm, wych elm, oak, birch, alder, willow, ash, pine. Wolves, lynx, brown bear. Eagles, black woodpeckers, and goshawks. But I don't imagine it all as wild-wood. I have opted in my imagined Britain 4000 BCE, for lots of small glades, and larger open plains that in the story, I call prairies. Here herds of aurochs join those of red and roe deer, to keep this scrub and grassland opened up. Bustards parade by orchids, while the cuckoo calls.
But all in my imagination. Not fact.
Returning to Lola in Denmark. The gum also revealed that she was lactose intolerant, and this has also been found in other genetic remains of this period. The DNA of hazel and mallard duck was also on the gum, and it is thought that hazelnut and duck may have been her recent meals. I think it is incredible archaeology that a lump of birch pitch could produce such a result. The 5,700 ybp was based on radio carbon dating of the lump of Mesolithic chewing gum.
When I was a voluntary archaeologist and field walker, I would treasure any microliths, microlith waste cores (I had a few), and a tranchet axe head (below) that I found from the Mesolithic. It was always my favourite period of prehistory. When people would have related to other species as a part of the Natural World to which they belonged. Innate animism that I strongly relate to as an autistic biophilliac. Or did they? Next post I will look at Gobekli Tepe and other sites of this same period across Anatolia. Have we simplified the savage?
So for all of their imperfections and inaccuracies, here are the faces of the Mesolithic. The last truly free wild people of European Nature. The last savages of Europe. Before we started to screw it all up. Lola is my favourite.
My latest tattoo. Black and grey realism work by Ross Lee of Ink Addiction tattoo studio in Norwich. This is the first phase of a full sleeve project on my right arm and shoulder. Hopefully complete by Summer 2019. If you can't see it - then you're not a NW European prehistorian. It's a British landscape scene, with boulder rocks in the foreground. On those rocks are a series of carvings pecked into rock, during the Later Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age. They consist of a class of Rock Art markings known as cups and rings, or cup and ring markings.
No-one really knows what they symbolised. I can't think of a more worthy tattoo for a time traveller.
My right arm will eventually be covered with a series of panels displaying cup and ring marks in British landscapes.
I took the above photo of a Roman tombstone at Colchester. It's the image of a Roman cavalry officer, ruling over a defeated Briton. It had apparently been damaged during the following Boadiccan Rebellion. No doubt the Iceni-led rebels against Roman authority would have found this image a tad humiliating. The point that I want to make here though, is that the cavalry soldier that this tombstone commemorates, may have been Roman, may have died in South-East Britain, but actually hailed from what is now Bulgaria!
The archaeological and historical evidence suggests that as a foreigner in Roman Britain, he was far from alone. There are a number of similar stories, that suggest that Roman Britain was visited by many other people from across the empire - not only people from what is now Italy and Bulgaria, but also from what is now the Netherlands, France, Greece, Syria, Lebanon, Germany, Spain, Tunisia, Algeria and Iraq. Visitors appear to have included not just military, but merchants, specialists, politicians - they all occasionally stare out at us from the archaeology and histories of Roman Britain.
We know that they were here.
Previous anthropological investigations at Trentholme Drive, in Roman York identified an unusual amount of cranial variation amongst the inhabitants, with some individuals suggested as having originated from the Middle East or North Africa. The current study investigates the validity of this assessment using modern anthropological methods to assess cranial variation in two groups: The Railway and Trentholme Drive. Strontium and oxygen isotope evidence derived from the dentition of 43 of these individuals was combined with the craniometric data to provide information on possible levels of migration and the range of homelands that may be represented. The results of the craniometric analysis indicated that the majority of the York population had European origins, but that 11% of the Trentholme Drive and 12% of The Railway study samples were likely of African decent. Oxygen analysis identified four incomers, three from areas warmer than the UK and one from a cooler or more continental climate. Although based on a relatively small sample of the overall population at York, this multidisciplinary approach made it possible to identify incomers, both men and women, from across the Empire. Evidence for possible second generation migrants was also suggested. The results confirm the presence of a heterogeneous population resident in York and highlight the diversity, rather than the uniformity, of the population in Roman Britain.
I could have alternatively used more historical evidence of individuals - the General from Tunisia, the Syrian in Northern Britain, with a Southern British born wife, the York woman that appears to have had mixed African ancestry, etc, the recurrent Greek names, the Syrians, Algerians and Iraqis that patrolled Hadrians Wall. As Charlotte Higgens stated in Under Another Sky, Journeys in Roman Britain 2013:
"In Roman Britain, you do not have to look far to find traces of people sprung from every corner of the empire. Because of the Roman's insatiable desire to memoralise their lives and deaths, they left their mark. Some fell in love, had children, stayed. Many no doubt to, were brief visitors, posted to Britannia and then off to the next job, in Tunisia, perhaps, or Hungary, or Spain. In the Yorkshire Museum is an inscription made by a man called Nicomedes, an imperial freedman and probably Greek, to go by the name. He placed an altar to the tutelary spirit of the provenance - 'Britanniae sanctae', sacred Britannia. Also in York, a man called Demetrius erected two inscriptions in his native Greek - one to Oceanus and Tethys, the old Titan spirits of the sea; the other to the gods that presided over the governer's headquarters. The Roman empire was multicultural in the sense that it absorbed people of multiple ethnicities, geographical origins and religions. But Roman-ness - becoming Roman, living as a Roman - also involved particular and distinctive habits, architecture, food, ways of thinking, language, things that Romans held in common whether they were living in York or in Gaza.".
South east Britain was a part of the Roman empire for no less than 370 years, and was strongly influenced by it both before and after that membership. That represents quite a few generations, maybe around 12 to 18 generations. So in AD 410, as locals in Britannia fretted about their Brexit, Germanic immigration, and were petitioning Rome to send the troops back, some of their pretty distant ancestors, had witnessed the arrival of Rome with the Claudian Invasion. That's a long time for contact and admixture to drip feed.
Did this long membership of the empire leave a genetic signature in Britain? The current consensus is no! We have not yet found anything in the British admixture, that can be ascribed to Roman Britain. Not on an autosomal DNA level. The given explanation is that the Romano-British admixture experience was so cosmopolitan, and diverse, that no one contributing population managed to leave a lasting signature. Each case was apt to be washed away by the phenomena of genetic recombination. It hasn't left a background admix in modern South-East British populations that has yet been detected and recognised.
However, enthusiasts that test their DNA haplogroups do often find results that are not easily explained by conventional British population history. Odd haplogroups turn up. My own Y-DNA, L-SK1414, with a Western Asian origin, is just one example. Perhaps some of these rogue haplogroups in Britain, are a smoking gun of Roman Imperial experience.
As I've recently walked the Boudicca Way, the Late Iron Age people that inhabited Northern East Anglia during the 1st century BC have been on my mind. Subsequently, I've made a little personal investigation, which included studying from several books on the matter.
The Boudican Revolt
This article is principally about the Iceni people of the Later Iron Age. However, I feel that first of all mention needs to be given of the event that brought the tribal name Iceni into the public sphere. The Boadican Revolt.
Boudica, Boudicca or Boadicea, was the queen of the Iceni, when they led a rebellion against Roman rule across early Roman Britannia. According to Roman historians, the Iceni were among a number of British tribes that surrendered to Rome, following the Claudian Invasion of AD 43. In exchange for peaceful surrender, the royal family of the Iceni were rewarded with client-king status. The Romans then went on to found a Colonia at Colchester, in the former Trinovante lands south of the Iceni. Tribute and taxation raised among local tribes to fund the new Roman town, and a massive new temple dedicated to the now deified Claudius, may have increased anti-Roman sentiment.
The ruler of the Iceni, Pasutagus, died circa AD 60. Properties of the family then became designated as property and loan repayment of Rome. His widow, Boudica, protested. The Romans responded by flogging her and raping her daughters. Boudicca then raised an army of rebellion among the Iceni. They marched south towards Colchester - the Trinovante joined. They sacked Colchester.
Above. Molten artefacts from the burning of Roman Colchester.
Boudica's rebel army enlargened as it moved. They then marched onto the Roman towns of London, and St Albans, with an estimated army now of 100,000. They killed an estimated 70,000 to 80,000 Romans and Britons in those three towns.
The remaining Roman forces in Britannia finally rerouted, and defeated the Boudican Revolt Army somewhere near to Watling Street. Boudica is rumoured by Roman historians to have subsequently committed suicide. The Roman occupation recovered, and over 320 years of the Romanisation of South-east Britain resumed. Now onto the main theme of this article - who were the Iceni?
The Iceni.
The Iceni is the name that Roman writers gave a tribe, or maybe tribal federation, that inhabited Norfolk, and at times, north west Suffolk, and north east Cambridgeshire. I say the Romans gave it to them, Caesar, writing in 54 BC, may have described them, when he referred to a tribe north of the Thames as the Cenimagni. Then their own coins started to use the name ECE or ECEN. During following centuries, Roman historians were addressing them, and the Roman civitas where they lived, as the Iceni.
Who were they? These Late Iron Age people of Norfolk? Where did they come from? Economically they were agrarian farmers, cultivating small fields of wheat and barley. Sheep may have been important to their economy as well. The Later Iron Age peoples of Eastern England, and certainly those that became known as the Iceni, appear from the archaeology to have lived in small unenclosed farmsteads, with no ring ditches, or archaeologically visible defenses. This marks the Later Iron Age peoples of this regions as being different from other British regions, that featured more rigorously defended farmsteads, villages, or classic hill fort settlements.
Where the South Eastern farmsteads do correlate with a wider British picture, is that the farmsteads consisted of a small number of large round-houses. These round-houses were well built for British weather. A strong, high thatched roof that smoke could vent through. Posts around the circumference supporting dried mud and dung plastered wicker walls. Then quite often, a small porch over the door, which usually faced south-east. So often, that it is thought that it must have been a strong religious taboo for a round-house door to face anything but the rising Sun.
Small numbers of round-houses in a farmstead could suggest that they lived in small, but extended family groups. It is possible that the Eastern style Later Iron Age farmsteads did have defenses, that do not leave an archaeological trace, however, otherwise, they looked like small 'open' settlements. An additional feature that turns up on Norfolk sites are strange four-post features. It has been suggested that they could represent raised granary houses.
Horse symbols appear almost universally on the reverse of Iceni coins, and a large number of terrets, bits, and horse harness fittings associated with the Late iron Age, have been found by metal detectorists across Norfolk. Horses, horsemanship, and charioteering, appear to have been important to the Iceni. The harness fittings, as with a minority of local brooches, were sometimes artistically styled in the La Tène tradition.
Where did they live? An early focus, and a continued power base may have been Western Norfolk, close to the Fen Edge, from the Brecks of north west Suffolk, and south west Norfolk, up along the Fen edge to north west Norfolk. There are five rounded earthworks in Norfolk, dated to the Iron Age. Four are in north west Norfolk, near to the Wash and north Norfolk coast. the other one is located at Thetford in the Brecks. Another, Stonea Camp, is located further to the west, on an area of dryland in the Fens itself. These six large, prominent rounded bank and ditch defensive systems are often referred to as "Iron Age hill forts", although they differ to the classic hillforts of Southern England in style, artefact deposit, and certainly in terrain - they are not on hills. There may have been further enclosures of this class in Norfolk, that have been lost.
The ramparts of Thetford Castle Hill - refortified during the Medieval.
Warham Camp, in north Norfolk.
The soils of West Norfolk and the Brecks are light - the Brecks excessively drained, but these light soils may have suited the needs of Earlier Iron Age farmers, more so than the heavy soils to the east, on the East Anglian boulder-clay plateau. However, both coin evidence, and other metal detector finds, suggest a possible major expansion during the Late Iron Age, onto all soils and facets of Norfolk, even onto those heavy clay soils of the interior. None-the-less, we continue to see some sort of importance held in West Norfolk, and north-west Suffolk. Late Iron Age hoards concentrate there, particularly the spetacular Snettisham hoards in north-west Norfolk.
I described the local "lowland" hill forts as rounded enclosures, making the assumption that they were defensive structures. During the Mid Iron Age onwards, a new style of enclosure emerged in the region. Shallower dug, and square or rectanglar series of ditches. The classic was discovered by aerial reconnaisance, then excavated at Fison Way, Thetford, where the 1970s media named it "Boadicea's Palace". A square multiple ditch enclusure, with buildings at it's centre, one with posts so grand that it has been suggested that it could have been multi-level. Radio carbon dating suggests that the buildings were burnt down, and ditches filled in, shortly after the historical Boadiccan Rebellion. However, aerial reconnaisance has suggested a number of these square or rectangular enclosures scattered across the region. Including one at Barnham, Suffolk, on the opposing side of the Little Ouse valley to Fison Way. Test digs suggest a Mid Iron Age date. Perhaps it was replaced by Fison Way? The Iceni square enclosures have been compared to a number in France and Germany, often called Viereckshanzen, where it is assumed that they had a cult, or ritual purpose.
I mentioned 'tribal federation'. A number of local archaeologists during the 1980s to 1990s, that particularly saw the Iceni as a sedentary people, with a culture that adapted locally - argued that there was evidence that Cenimagni (Greater Iceni), and another Roman reference, infered that the Iceni may have pulled together from smaller groups in the area, in response to Roman, and Romo-Gallic contact.
As for who were the Iceni, my personal feeling, is that they were largely the local population, that had descended from earlier Iron Age, and Later Bronze Age peoples of Northern East Anglia, and south east Britain. Recent population genetic studies such as The Beaker Phenomenon And The Genomic Transformation Of Northwest Europe by Olde, Haak, Reich etal, propose an almost complete replacement of the British Neolithic population during the Later Neolithic, by a people that we identify archaeologically with the Bell Beaker Culture. There is support both genetically, and archaeologically, that the practioners of the British form of Bell Beaker Culture, migrated there from the Lower Rhineland area of the Continent. No genetic survey yet, has found significant later migration into late prehistoric Britain, nor in the Romano-British period, following this population replacement event. The majority of Irish and British Y-DNA haplogroups, particularly in areas of Britain, further away from later Anglo-Saxon, and Danish immigration, appear to have originated in Britain with Bell Beaker.
However, do I think that there was any Iron Age "Celtic" migration to south east Britain? Yes, my suspicions is that there would have continued to have been some migrations and exchanges with the nearby European Continent during the Later Bronze Age and the Iron Age. There may well have been some migration of groups for example, from what we now call north-east France, to some areas of Britain, that admixed with locals. If you wish, call it La Tène. Howabout the "Belgic migration as described by Caesar. No, the Iceni was outside of the direct influence of Rome, Gaul and the Belgae. Their artefacts were native, their pottery not Belgic. There is nothing Belgic about the Iceni.
This brings me to the Schiffels, Haak, etal study 2016:
The Hinxton Rings Iron Age cemetery is unusual. It doesn't really follow funerary conventions in Eastern England, so it is possible, that it's DNA isn't completely representative of all Iron Age populations in SE England. It's an unusual site. Delineated inhumations from the 1st century BC, surrounded by an large ring ditch. The Iron Age samples from Hinxton (including one from nearby Linton) consisted of four females, and two males. Male 1. Y-DNA was was R1b1a2a1a2c1 with CTS241/DF13/S521+ according to Jean Manco's excellent Ancient DNA reference web pages, while Male 2 was R1b1a2a1a2c with L21/M529/S145+, S461/Z290+. That's all that we have for Iron Age Y-DNA in England.
The POBI (Peopling of the British Isles) Study 2015, mentioned something else on Page 5. "A subsequent migration, best captured by FRA17 (France), contributed a substantial amount of ancestry to the UK outside Wales. Although we cannot formally exclude this being part of the Saxon migration, this seems unlikely (see Methods) and instead it might represent movement of people taking place between the early migrations and those known from historical records.". Garrett Hellenthal, on the Youtube presentation said that there was a pattern found both in England, and Scotland, that relates to France, but appears to predate the Anglo-Saxon:
36 minutes 20 seconds.
What else can I conclude from my venture into Iceni lands?
References and quotes
East Anglia: R. Rainbird Clarke. 1960. S.R Publishers Ltd. "Rainbird" was a local Norfolk "old school" archaeologist, and his theories followed the older invasion hypotheses that are now coming back into fashion in population genetics circles. Chapter VI "The Iron Age" starts like this: "In the last chapter we have noted that raiders, based in Belgium, harassed the East Coast during the sixth century B.C. About 500 B.C., peasant farmers, driven by the mounting pressure of migrating tribes, came to East Anglia from southern Holland, and central and eastern Belgium. These displaced persons brought with them a knowledge of iron, the use of which had been general in central Europe for three centuries. The arrival in England of these new Iron Age A people opened the first phase of the Iron Age, which lasted till c. 300 B.C.".
"the presence of Iron Age A immigrants is chiefly indicated by their domestic pottery, mainly jars and bowls of both coarse and fine fabric, which are found on the earliest sites.".
"Variations in pottery form and decoration establish that this invasion was a gradual infiltration of family groups or small clans. Sometimes they settled down peaceably alongside Bronze Age farmers, as at Snettisham, Norfolk; other settlers selected sites some distances from any known Late Bronze Age farms, as at West Harling, where the plan of the round-houses indicates the peaceful absorption of native architectural ideas.
"The invaders from the Low Countries who settled in Breckland are clearly related to communities round the Fenland basin in Cambridgeshire and Northamptonshire, though the Fenland itself was uninhabitable owing to a minor rise in sea level. The settlers in the Ipswich region, related to those in the Colchester Loam area and in the Lower Thames area, came from other parts of the Low Countries.
I think that it's fair to compare Rainbird's idea of an "Iron Age A" people, with Continental Hallstatt Celtic Culture.
"The peaceful development of this pleasant society of the Iron Age A culture, engaged in tilling small plots, pasturing sheep, oxen, and horses, was rudely shattered in the middle of the third century B.C. by the arrival of aristocratic warriors and their retainers, hailing from the Marne region of France, who introduced to eastern Britain the first of our Iron Age B cultures. These people, known to archaeologists as Marnians, raided East Anglia probably along rivers leading inland from the Wash, or overland from the Thames estuary.".
Substitute Rainbird's "Iron Age B" for La Tène Celtic Culture. He goes on to suggest, or rather, to state: "The success of the Marnians was due to their military prowess and to the superiority of their equipment, for they introduced chariot warfare to Britain, as devastating an innovation as that of the tank in modern times.".
Rainbird then sees a third "invasion". "The Belgae were a powerful confederation of tribes of Germanic origin, though their language was Celtic; they came from eastern France and Belgium, chiefly south of the Ardennes. Alone among the tribes of Gaul they were able to repel the assaults of the Cimbri and Teutones in 110 B.C., but the insecurity of this invasion may have influenced many of them to cross the Channel about ten years later and settle in south-east England, thus introducing our Iron Age C culture..".
"We have noted, during Phase II, the arrival of the Marnian warriors who established themselves as a ruling class over the Iron Age A peasantry and minor chiefs of the Cambridge region, Breckland, and west Norfolk, while the inhabitants of south-east Suffolk remained immune from their influence. The cultural distinctions between these two areas, separated by the afforested belt of High Suffolk, are reflected by Caesar. In 54 B.C. he mentions the Trinovantes whose tribal area probably included the Ipswich and Colchester regions, while the 'Cenimagni' who sent envoys to Caesar with their submission, are probably identified with the Iceni, whose sway extended over Norfolk and north -west Suffolk. The beginning of this tribal system is uncertain and may go back to the initial Iron Age A occupation, reflecting the diverse origins of the settlers in the two regions. The independant cultural development of the Breckland and Ipswich regions has been shown in earlier chapters to be a distinctive feature of East Anglian pre-history - it survives today as two county councils for Suffolk. Though the Trinovantes were one of the most powerful tribes in the south-east of England during the mid-first century B.C., they were obviously being harassed by their Belgic neighbours of Hertfordshire, since Caesar records the arrival of a Trinovantian king as a refugee from the attacks of Cassivellaunus, king of the Catuvallauni.".
So there you have it. Plain as A, B, C. Such a different interpretation of the archaeology to the views of archaeologists from the 1970s on. Later archaeologists avoid all mention of invasion or occupation. They only see continuity. They avoid comparing finds in East Anglia, with those found on the Continent, under the "pots are not people" warning. Rainbird saw it very different. Warrior elites from Marne. A lot of romantic assumptions and even certainty, although read between the lines, he does see admixture, and some continuity for the "peasants".
Iron Age Communities in Britain. Barry Cunliffe. 1975. Book Club Associates. I'll go straight to Chapter 11: "The Settlement Pattern and Economy of the South and East".
"To the Roman military mind the south-east was clearly the part to become a province, for grain was an immensely valuable commodity, and arable farmers, because of their dependence upon the seasons, were sedentary and thus easier to control.". Cunliffe goes on to describe the types of Iron Age settlement found in South-East Britain. There is a general agreement that the archaeology of Iron age Britain is very regionalised in style. The South-East for example, being very different in it's nature to that of the North or West. Generally speaking, Iron Age settlements in what is now East Anglia, typically consisted of a farmstead or small village - a cluster of round houses, that is not surrounded by any earthwork or defensive system. They were open. No souterrain or other features. This is in contrast to settlements elsewhere in Iron Age Britain. However Cunliffe does illustrate the plan of one site at West Harling in Norfolk, that contradicts this pattern, a single domestic round house, surrounded by a circular ditch with two wide causeways and an internal bank.
The Norfolk Landscape. David Dymond. 1985. Alastair Press. A local landscape history. Doesn't really focus much on the Iron Age in Norfolk, except to discuss Iron Age agricultural evidence. Pollen analysis suggests significant deforestation in Norfolk during the Early Iron Age. He discusses the evidence of surviving coaxial field boundaries in parts of Norfolk, that appear to underlay known Roman road systems that cut across the pattern. "By the early first century AD., all the various ethnic and cultural groups which existed in northern East Anglia had fused to form a tribe and kingdom known as the Iceni. Derek Allen attempted to reconstruct their fluctuating boundaries and internal organisation: for example, he suggested that the political centre of the kingdom was originally the Breckland of Norfolk and Suffolk. However, shortly before the Roman conquest of A.D. 43, Belgic immigrants from the south may have pushed the boundary back to the line of the Little Ouse-Waveney valley. The Iron Age fort, which Rainbird Clarke confirmed under the Norman castle at Thetford, deliberately commanded the Icknield Way as it crossed the Little Ouse, and it's secondary refurbishing may be connected with this phase of political contraction. The southern boundary of what later became Norfolk (or a part of it) may therefore go back to the political and military frontier of the late Iron Age.".
The Origins of Norfolk. Tom Williamson. 1993. Manchester University Press. Professor Tom Williamson is a leading landscape historian, based from the local University of East Anglia. His approach focuses on landscape history methods.
I'll start with the Iron age chapters. Evidence of unprecedented deforestation during the Iron Age. A number of coaxial "Celtic field", boundaries dated to late prehistory, have been proposed across parts of Norfolk, cut through by known Roman roads. Williamson goes on to describe the Iron Age "hill forts" of Norfolk - Narborough, South Creake, Holkham, Warham, Thetford, and possibly Tasburgh. Four of which are clustered up in North West Norfolk, by the North Sea coast, the Wash, and the Fens. He suggests place-name evidence of other lost hillforts in Norfolk.
Then he discusses Iceni coinage: "Coinage came rather late to the Iceni, first appearing in their area around 10 BC. The first coins were of gold, copies of Trinovantian and Catuvallaunian types; but silver soon became universal.All the coins carry a horse on the reverse, but the obverse takes three distinct forms: a wild beast (a boar?); a badly drawn head; and a design based on two conjoined, mirror-image crescents.".
After coinage, he goes on to describe the federal hypothesis, popular among local archaeologists: "But, we must be careful not to exaggerate the territorial cohesion, the political centralisation, of the 'Iceni'. They may, in fact, have been a loose group of tribes, rather than a centralised polity. When the Cenomagni surrendered to Caesar in 54 BC, they did so with a number of other tribes, the Segontiaci, the Ancalites, the Bibracti, and the Cassi. These groups are never mentioned by name again in classical sources; but subsequent references to the Iceni show them, once again, acting in association with unnamed allies or neighbours. Thus according to Tacitus, when the Iceni revolted in AD 47 they carried a number of neighbouring tribes with them, while their revolt in AD 60 was supported by the Trinovantes and other unnamed neighbouring tribes. Moreover, the suffix magni, 'greater', appended by Caesar to his rendering of the word 'Iceni' suggests the existence of more than one group bearing this tribal name.".
This is interesting. "This kind of loose political structure seems to have been a feature of other areas of late Iron Age Britain. Caesar himself made a distinction between those regions nearest the Channel - comparatively civilised and settled (he believed) by recent immigrants from the Continent; and the more socially and economically primitive areas of the interior. In archaeological terms, a similar distinction is apparent, between the south-east of the country - which was actively involved in contact and exchange with Gaul and the Roman Empire - and the areas further to the north and west, which were marginal to or excluded from such contacts (Darvill 1987: 166-80; Haselgrove 1982). It was in the former region, in the Home Counties, northern Northamptonshire, and Essex that coinage was first used, and that the so-called oppida were developing in the late first century BC: large, sprawling, semi-urban agglomerations of settlement, usually defended by long stretches of linear earthwork. It is in this area too, that foreign imports, especially amphorae which once contained wine, are most frequently discovered in graves or in settlements of late Iron Age date. Here the tribal groups who are named by Roman writers, or who gave their names to the administrative subdivisions of the Roman province of Britannia, were comparatively small and centralised polities. Their elites had grown wealthy and powerful through contacts with, and control of the exchange of luxury items with, the Roman world. Outside this core zone were less civilised, less centralised tribal federations. The line between these two broad zones runs through the middle of East Anglia. The Trinovantes belonged firmly to the 'core zone' of the south-east; they were a comparatively centralised polity with a great oppida, Camulodunum, at Colchester (Dunnett 1975: 18-27). The Iceni, in contrast, lay outside the main sphere of economic exchange; they had no true oppida, and no imported amphorae or other foreign luxuries.".
Williamson goes on to explain, that the Iceni were not however poor, with an abundance of precious metals, including an abundant use of torcs. He then goes on, as in repeated above in "The Land of Boudica. Prehistoric and Roman Norfolk. John Davies 2009", to mention a paper in 1970, that suggested that the three common obverses of Iceni coins, reflected three sub-tribes. The boar-obverse being most common in the Norwich area, the face obverse in North West Norfolk, and the pattern obverse most common in South West Norfolk / North West Suffolk.
The Boudican Revolt against Rome. Paul R Sealey. 1997 Shire Publications. This small book focuses on the Iceni revolt against Rome of AD 60. Once again, the author emphasises how different that the Iceni were in comparison to their more Belgic and Romanised neighbours, the Trinovantes, to the south. "One major area of difference in the archaeology of the two nations was their pottery. The Trinovantes used wheel-thrown pottery called Belgic; among the Iceni more traditional hand-made wares remained in use right up to the time of the Boudican revolt. In both regions the forms of the vessels are also distinct, although on some Icenian settlements there is a gradual adoption of Belgic pottery in the fifty years or so before AD 60. These developments are illustrated by the pottery from the Icenian farmstead at West Stow, Suffolk. The Trinovantes and Catuvellauni had important trade links with the Roman world in the century before AD 43. Icenian participation in this exchange was negligible. The tribe apparently denied access to Roman merchants in the late iron age, a policy also followed by some tribes in Gaul and Germany who believed that wine and other imports with the Roman world undermined traditional values.
The author discusses the hypothesis that the three obverses on Iceni coins represented three sub-tribes, but dismisses it "but no geographical clusters that would support this are now apparent. Sealey then discusses the first Iceni revolt, of AD 47, believed to be at Stonea Camp, the furthest west "hill fort" (I've been there, it's in the Fens and other than the earthworks, the area is flat as a pancake) credited to the Iceni. I remember on my visit there, information boards explained that there was archaeological evidence of the Roman attack on the hill fort, in the form of human remains and Roman artillery missiles.
Land of the Iceni. The Iron Age in Northern East Anglia. Edited by John Davies and Tom Williamson (eds), etal. Centre of East Anglian Studies. 1999.
John Davies was curator for Norfolk Museum Services. I'd say that he has spent many years as a local professional archaeologist. Tom Williamson is a UEA (University of East Anglia) lecturer in Landscape Archaeology. Different background and perspective, but still local based.
The book starts out by discussing and accrediting the work of field walkers. This might seem a strange methodology to forum members. I was a field-walker with several years experience, before I decided to start living more. I prefer the description "surface collection survey". It involves simply walking ploughed or otherwise disturbed top soils, and recording / plotting any archaeological evidence (artifacts) that you spot looking down at the ground. It's far less evasive and more quantitative than excavation. It complements other landscape history methods such as old map study, place name study, or metal detection survey. Did I find much Iron Age? No. I found some sherds of pottery that appear most likely Iron Age here and there, but most prehistoric ceramic is very frail in top soils. I found lots of very roughly knapped flint, and burnt flints - some of which could be Iron Age, or alternatively, a little earlier. The idea of Bell Beaker folk arriving some 1,600 years earlier, and totally replacing all stone tools with beautiful bronze is absolutely incorrect. Sorry R1 guys. " (sic) ... by classical writers like Caesar, Tacitus, Cassius Dio and Strabo. Our view of Iron Age society is still considerably coloured by these writers, who presenta picture of a Britain populated by warlike tribal states dominated by warrior nobilities. Popular images of Boudica, Queen of the Iceni, leading her army against the Roman invaders, have done much to fuel this conventional view.".
"Archaeology is currently showing that the communities living in the various regions of Iron Age Britain had, in fact, limited contacts beyond their immediate localities. It is becoming clear that communities living in the various regions of Britain were neither unified nor uniform". "Of the tribes named by Caesar at the time of his British expeditions of 55 and 54 BC, only the Trinovantes and Atrebates are referred to just a century later.".
Davies goes on to explain that a lot of archaeology has been discovered since Rainbird Clarke's time, through a range of methods from excavation, through field walking, to metal detection. He points out that for territorial limits, we've looked too much at those suggested by Roman writers, and by coinage, that largely reflect the early Roman period. He suggests earlier territorial boundaries could have been wider, before Roman influence or campaigns. He then goes on to attack the traditional neat packaging of late Iron Age Britain into centralised tribal kingdoms as presented by Roman writers.
"Torcs are a form of hoop shaped jewelry associated with Late Iron Age people, apparently used as neck ornaments. The name, which derives from Latin, actually describes one of the more common varieties, which is formed from twisted strands of metal. These rings were visually impressive: the Classical writer Dio describes Queen Boudica wearing 'a large golden torc and a voluminous patterned cloak with a thick plaid fastened over it'. Torcs are frequently found on the Continent but they are seldom recovered from such contexts in Britain.".
Davies goes on to map the distribution of recovered torcs in Norfolk. They are concentrated in the west of the county, in the north west near to the Wash, and alongside the Fen edge. He then goes on to describe a more common metal find - chariot and horse fittings. These are more widespread across Norfolk. There appeared to be an importance on horses, horsemanship, and chariot driving among the late Iron Age Iceni.
"More sites are known from the Middle Iron Age. Settlement still appears to appears to have been dense across west Norfolk, but sites now appear further to the east, away from the Fen-edge, although still avoiding the heavier soils. Indeed, the only certain example of a clayland site of this period is that recently excavated at Park Farm, Wymondham, and this seems to date to rather late in the middle Iron Age (Ashwin 1996)."
"The Late Iron Age saw increased population growth and this is reflected in the greater number of known settlements. Some of the earlier sites remained in use, while many new ones appeared. Sites now spread onto the heavier boulder-clay soils of central and southern Norfolk, and onto the high interfluves, resulting in a more even spread of settlement across the county."
"The model proposed is one of settlement expansion over time, with people moving across the landscape, from west to east, and eventually into the more remote and less hospitable interior regions. It appears that the Early Iron Age landscape was a fairly empty one: people preferred to live on the lighter and better drained soils. The Middle Iron Age saw an expansion of settlement. People were moving onto, and exploiting the resources, of the claylands, but there is of yet no evidence for occupation here. During the Late Iron Age, however, settlements began to appear right across the claylands, and eventually covered the whole county (Davies 1996). The overall picture is one of a predominantly agrarian society whose members lived in open settlements, engaging in a successful farming regime able to produce a significant surplus.".
Next, the book looks at artifact evidence, starting with metal objects. The local government archaeology unit, has had a long history of working alongside metal detector enthusiasts, in order to encourage the voluntary submission of finds to be examined and added to the public record. Finds of torcs are considered. "In Norfolk they have been found at twelve locations, their distribution displaying a western, and essentially north-western, bias. Snettisham appears to have had a focal role in their distribution: a number of hoards were discovered in this parish between 1948 and 1990 (stead 1991).".
"Some of the most common Late Iron Age artefacts are various forms of chariot and horse harness fittings. In particular, D-shaped bronze rein-rings, called terrets, have been discovered at a number of locations in Norfolk. Each chariot was fitted with a set of five terrets. Four, of similar size, were strapped to the yoke and a fifth, the largest of the set, was fixed to the central pole."
"They have been recovered from locations scattered right across Norfolk, with a major concentration - comprising around a third of the total number known - coming from Saham Toney and its immediate vicinity in central Norfolk.
Davies then goes on to look at the evidence of Iceni coins. The evidence of coin obverses representing different sub tribes is reassessed in light of so many more Iceni coins on the record, from submissions made by metal detectorists. 65 Icenni types are now recognised. Some 500 "stray" (not in a hoard) coins so far recorded at time of publication. The earliest date to circa 65 BC.
There are patterns to where the different coin obverses are scattered, but it's complex. Gold coins were slightly concentrated in the north west but almost not at all in the South west (Breckland). Silver coins, 'Bury' types found in the south, 'Boar-horses' in the south, Face-horses all over except the north west. That gold coins tend to be a little earlier, made up to 40 BC, and silver later, could indicate that the power base was moving out of NW Norfolk, across the region. What does Davies have to say about it?
"The evidence outlined above appears to indicate diverse behaviour by some groups occupying different regions of Norfolk for the whole of the Iron Age. Yet more order and coherence emerges when a tighter chronological framework is applied. In the Early Iron Age, occupation seems to have been concentrated in the Breckland and Fen-edge of south-west Norfolk. By the 1st century BC, Snettisham in the north west, had become a focus of artefact deposition: the Snettisham torcs have been dated to the first half of the 1st century BC (Stead 1991). The gold coin hoards from north-west Norfolk, in contrast, date from the middle of the 1st century BC. The absence of gold coins, and the presence of later silver coin hoards and artefacts, at the Breckland sites of Thetford and Saham Toney/Ashill suggest that this area became prominent some what later, perhaps replacing Snettisham as a major tribal centre during the later 1st century BC. The prominence of 'Pattern-Horse' coins at Caister St Edmund, and the lower percentages of 'Face-Horse' and 'Boar-Horse' varieties recovered from here, suggests that this site came to prominence later still, during the 1st century AD.".
The book also explores the Iron Age enclosures of Norfolk. Tasburgh has been dismissed as Iron Age, dating much later to Anglo-Saxon or Anglo-Danish. That leaves the four "hill forts" of North west and Western Norfolk, close to the Wash, and Thetford, down in south-west Norfolk (Breckland). However, there is another type of enclosure in Norfolk, dated to the Iron Age. These usually only survive as crop or soil marks. The "hill forts" are rounded or oval. These field marks are square or rectangular! The suggestion is that these shallower rectangular enclosures had very different purposes to the hill fort type enclosures, and may have had ritual uses. They are found in North, West, and South west Norfolk, and north west Suffolk (Breckland). Davies makes a rare association with a Continental class of Iron Age earthwork, known as Viereckshanzen. Possibly belonging to this group is the Fison Way site at Gallows Hill, Thetford. This was a very late, magnificant, multiple ditched square enclosure with central buildings, one of which could have had more than one level. There is evidence that it was purposely destroyed after the Boudican Revolt during the second half of the 1st century AD. Square enclosures on the Continent in the Cologne Basin, Moselle, and in the Champagne regions, were used as burial enclosures. Fison Way could also relate to a rectangular enclosure, found on the opposite ridge of the Little Ouse valley, at Barnham in Suffolk. This has been dated to Middle Iron Age.
Now Oppida Those sprawling Late Iron Age settlement and activity sites most famously represented by the oppida in Essex, close to Colchester. My other, earlier text books have stated that no oppida have been found associated with the Iceni lands. However, largely through coin and artifact survey - several have now been proposed, including at Saham Toney, Thetford, and finally, Caister St Edmund, where the Roman authorities laid down the foundations of the town of Venta Icenorum.
In later chapters by other authors. More settlement has been detected from the Iron Age in Norfolk. Rescue archaeological digs of two Early Bronze Age round barrows that were going to be destroyed by the Norwich Bypass road development, revealed SE facing Iron Age round houses in between them, apparently respecting the earlier mounds in their boundaries. A number of four poster features have been discovered at numerous sites, of unknown use. A favoured suggestion is raised granary buildings. At a rescue dig at the Wymondham bypass road development, a site already recorded through field-walking (Iron Age pottery and burnt flint scatter), revealed a multiple industry site, with pits accredited to softening bones, antler, and horn for processing as raw material, and a lot of flint knapping. The site serves to remind us that flint tools and use did not end with the discovery of metal-working. Something that I was always aware of when I use to survey worked flint scatters in Thetford Forest. In another essay, two parishes were fieldwalked for Iron Age potsherds. The parish in west Norfolk, between the North-West Norfolk and Breckland Iron Age hot spots produced far more clusters indicating settlement, than did the parish, further to the east on the clay soils.
A Gallo-Roman dated shipwreck off the coast of Armorica, France, produced 271 lead ingots. Most were stamped with BRIGANTES, but five were stamped with ICENES or similar. They appeared to be on their way from those Roman civitas in Eastern Britain. That suggests that they were being marketed in Northern East Anglia perhaps for roof tile manufacture, but as the region doesn't have local lead, it suggests middle man trading. "Whatever the case, this may have been a well-established trade route with antecedents in the Iron Age - perhaps some of the silver in Icenian coins came from similar ingots from the Continent or Britain.". Chapter 7. Tasking the Iron Age: the Iceni and Minting. Amanda Chadburn.
The Land of Boudica. Prehistoric and Roman Norfolk. John Davies 2009. Oxbow Books in association with Norfolk Museums & Archaeology Service. "A complex social structure had become established during the Bronze Age. Power had grown through the control of long-distance trade networks which had ensured the provision of the raw materials used to make bronze. Then, as ironworking was adopted, this system fragmented. As the supply and production of metalwork became easier, the basis for the organisation of society changed.
"As the Iron Age progressed, society became organised into chiefdoms and tribes. These groupings fluctuated in size and composition over time and were associated with territories. At the same time we can also detect an increase in warfare, which was to play a significant role in social relations. Fighting seemed to have been common practice within and between tribal societies.".
"Then around 400 BC, the previously close relations with the Continent appear to have lapsed and European artifacts were no longer being brought to Britain. It was at this stage that developed hillforts dominated the landscape in parts of the country. There was also an appreciable growth in the number of settlements and population pressure began to develop on the better agricultural land.
"By the 2nd century BC, increased economic specialisation can clearly be seen in the archaeological record once again. Special items such as glass and beads were made at some places and not others. Salt was produced at coastal sites. Some chalkland sites specialised in different types of cereals. A system of weights was developed and artifacts were produced for exchange. It is at this stage that we have evidence for increasing conflict within society."
Later in the chapter: "A number of brooches of Middle Iron Age date have been found in Norfolk. Although not common, the La Tène -style forms have been found at Caistor St Edmund, Wicklewood, Gayton, Beachamwell, Hockering, and at Narborough."
The book reports that only 14 Iron Age human remains have been recovered in Norfolk, and suggests that funerary rights such as excarnation must have been employed. Of the 14 remains, 5 are only skulls. This could suggest that these remains that have been found are not typical. The book goes on to describe Norfolk's linear earthworks (usually on a North-South alignment, dividing East and West, with suggestions of a series in alignment dividing West Norfolk from the Fens.) that have been proposed as Iron Age in date, then moves onto Norfolk's six peculiar "lowland" Iron Age hillforts, concentrated on the North West coast of Norfolk near to the Wash, facing what is now the Fens and Lincolnshire.
This is a theme that constantly rises in Norfolk - that the archaeology of Norfolk, East Cambridgeshire, and North Suffolk (the area that roughly correlates to the spread of Iceni coins), is different. There is a saying that "Norfolk do different", and it appears to have been the case during the Iron Age. Different coinage, the highest density of torc finds (even my late father once found one), small roundhouse farmsteads that were unenclosed, open, and this array of river valley "hillforts". The reluctance to use wheel thrown Belgic pottery - clinging onto hand moulded ceramics. I've more than once pointed this out to posters - that it wasn't a blanket Celtic Culture across the British Isles.
"More torcs have been found in East Anglia than in the rest of Britain".
The book then turns to another popular trend in norfolk Archaeology over the past thirty years. That the Late Iron Age area of northern East Anglia, that was to become associated with Iceni coinage, was fragmented, into at least three smaller groupings, each with their own tribal centre of influence marked in archaeology. The suggestion is that the Iceni were a federation of smaller local societies with a common interest. Caesar had referred to a group north of the Thames that he called the Cenimagni. "The name used by Caesar may have been a version of the name, meaning Eceni Magni or the Great Iceni.". "It may be that Caesar's Cenimagni were one of the smaller social groups. These groupings would have come together under a single senior leader at times of stress, coalescing into larger regional entities whose organisation was based on kingship and associated client networks.
"With the external threat from Rome, the loose decentralised communities within northern East Anglia came together as a single larger unit, under a senior chieftain or king. It was at that stage the grouping recognised as the Iceni became identified by Roman writers.".
Gold Iceni coin found and recorded by my late father at Morley St Botolph, Norfolk.
The die is cast. Investigating Icenian coinage. Current Archaeology Issue 341. August 2018. p32. "Aside from Boudica and her ill-fated rebellion of AD 60/61, the Iceni of northern East Anglia are particularly well known for their gold and silver work (see CA 217). In fact, this industry provides one of the main archaeological indications of their existence. This is particularly true in terms of their coinage, which most likely started around 50 BC and continued until the Boudican Revolt. Likely the Iceni themselves, it was tightly focused around Norfolk, north Suffolk, and the Cambridgeshire fens.
It is often suggested that Iron Age coinage is not money in the modern sense of the word, being rather more analogous to prestige objects - used by socieies in various forms of gift exchange - but there was little evidence known to support this theory. To address this question and hopefully learn more about the Iceni in the process, over the course of ten years I studied dies relating to over 10,000 coins.".
p33. "Over the course of the project it became clear that the coinage did in fact have a monetary role similar to contemporary ones, but with more intrinsic value.".
p35. "What is also clear from the die-study is that there was no coinage production after the Boudican Revolt, and there are no reliable finds which link Icenian coinage to Roman coinage thereafter. While the evidence is not definitive, this study strongly suggests that while the Iceni were allowed by Rome to continue minting coinage after their conquest and up until the Boudican Revolt, afterwards it was halted and circulation ceased. This may be tied to the Icenian fate in general, which seems to have led to the loss of their autonomy and full incorporation into Roman authority.".
p35. "Generally heads are shown in profile, stylised, and do not seem to depict any specific individual. They are not abstracted as they are on the gold coinage from this period, and most show no facial hair, although there are some exceptions. Emphasising the importance of the head to the Iceni, you can see many hidden faces on the coins - just one of the ways in which the coinage links to other Iron Age art.".
p38. "The Iceni were not a barbaric tribe, as the Romans would have us believe, but were instead a sophisticated and advanced society with a seemingly thriving economy.".
Davidski published a spreadsheet of his K7 Basal-rich ancient admixture calculator results. I've harvested some of those test results to compare to my own.
Sorted to three admixtures.
1. Villabruna (component of Western Hunter-Gatherer) sorted:
2. Basal-rich (component of Early Neolithic Farmer) sorted:
3. Ancient North Eurasian (component of Copper Age Steppe) sorted:
Discussion.
1. Villabruna.
I was surprised just how much Villabruna I had in my results, but clearly, this component is found not only in Villabruna, but also in Iceman / Sardinia (Neolithic Farmer) at 53-55%, and in Steppe Yamna (Bronze Age Steppe) at 34%. Therefore I have inherited substantial Villabruna not perhaps directly, but from early admixtures via Neolithic and Bronze Age settlement of Western Europe.
On Villabruna sorted, my closest neighbours are indeed other British - English, Scottish, and also Dutch and Anglo-Saxon ancient. I'm correctly positioned.
2. Basal-rich.
This one is an enigma, but it repeats in other calculators. I receive more Southern European / Neolithic than do most British or indeed North West Europeans. I do have one Swiss 3 x great grandparent, but otherwise, all of my recorded genealogy is South East English. I have more Basal-rich than do other "British" results in the spreadsheet. Why is that? Could have the randomness of genetic recombination given me just a little more of that Swiss line than I should normally expect, or do I have another ancestor from the South within the past several generations, that I'm not yet aware of? Living DNA suggests Tuscan in their test.
My neighbours in Basal-rich are East French, Dutch, and Swiss.
3. Ancient north Eurasian.
This trades with my Basal-rich results. I usually have less Steppe than I would normally expect as a Brit or as a North West European. More Neolithic, less Bronze Age Steppe. It does suggest some unknown Southern European ancestry.
My ANE neighbours are East French, Swiss, and North Italian. One ancient British result not too far away is Romano-British 6DT18. He was a young male (aged 16 to 18 years at death), in a multiple grave with three other men, at Driffield Terrace, York. He carried Y haplogroup R1b1a2a1a.
In summary, for a Brit, even for an Englishman, I have just about expected percentages of Villabruna and Western Hunter-Gatherer ancestry. However, something is atypical in the other two founder mixes. I look more like French or Swiss, with more Basal-rich (Neolithic) and less ANE (Steppe) than the average British or even English.
