The Isles' First Gold Rush

By J.S. Dunn

What was daily life like in prehistoric Prydain (Britain) or Eriu (Ireland)? Now that the Isles' academics are busily digging in their own back garden, rather than the Mideast or Greece per the 19th century, exciting local discoveries seem to pop up every week. A drastically revised picture of the ancient Isles emerges, and with it a new paradigm for the Isles that contrasts with the old construct for 'Celts' and the origin of Gaelic language and culture.  In order to write convincingly of that ancient setting, one should have an overview of the years 3000 BCE forward, well before the Iron Age or any Roman influence. The Isles' tribes were hardly the backward brutes depicted by Roman authors as of the late Iron Age. The neolithic era rocked! By around 3000 BCE, little Orkney held sway as a north Atlantic power center, at its massive temple complex of expertly fitted stone. Excavation at Orkney continues; exciting finds include painted walls and a humanistic figure (both firsts in Isles prehistory).

In fact, the Isles had sophisticated marine trade networks with the Continent as early as the neolithic. Jadeite stone axes from the Alps have been found in the UK and Ireland.  A cultural influence from Iberia was the megalith.  Megaliths played a focal role and dramatically changed the landscape. The passage mounds range from Iberia, to the Morbihan, and Bru na Boinne/Newgrange, and up to Maes Howe at Orkney. Megaliths erected during the neolithic reveal a culture of astronomy lovers. The intricately carved boulders and inner orthostats are acknowledged to be engineered observatories for movements of sun, moon, and constellations.

Image - public domain via Wikipedia

Most still accurately track celestial events of solstice, equinox, lunar phases, and other phenomena. The great passage inside Newgrange, the central mound at Bru na Boinne, runs over nineteen meters (60 feet) in length, and still welcomes the rays of winter solstice sunrise after more than 5,200 years. Stone circles such as Stonehenge reflect a later tradition emphasizing solstice, a solar event. Further study at Orkney may indicate why the culture shifted from emphasizing passage mounds and use of interior sunlight, to stone circles where the megalith casts a shadow. Obviously, more of the people could attend and witness an outdoor ritual than inside a passage mound chamber. Stonehenge has evidence of large feasts. We might not understand what the ancients believed or worshiped, but we can count the bones they left behind after feasting!

Note that at this time, Troy did not exist or was a few rudimentary huts; certainly, Carthage and Rome did not exist. The rivals for astronomy, if any, would be in Egypt but the Giza pyramids had not been constructed. Feel that paradigm shifting?

Around 2400 BCE, showy gold neckpieces – GOLD!– called lunulae due to the wide crescent shape, spread from Eriu to Wales and Cornwall,  and to Brittany and the Continent. One such lunula is shown below. A gold rush began in the Isles.  During that time the massive stone-lined passage mounds from Orkney, Newgrange, Anglesey/Ynys Mon, the Morbihan, and down to the Tagus river in Iberia, fell into disuse. What happened to the neolithic starwatchers?

https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=15931350
Author - Johnbod

The answer appears to be: warriors. Metal daggers of copper made their first appearance in the Isles, again in Eriu then along Wales and Cornwall coasts.  The introduction of metal smelting brought great social changes. Genetically, the metal-using newcomers have been identified with archaeology's Beaker people. They used distinctive flat-bottomed pots and drinking cups, the latter being part of a warrior's equipment. These brave lads jumped onto little more than a bread board in northern Spain and set off for Eriu and the Isles to scout for gold and copper and tin. The warrior culture they brought with their long knives of copper and bronze remained with the Isles up to the Iron Age.

Try this: imagine you stand on Iberia's northwest corner ( on the costa verde) looking due north. Sailing north lands your vessel on the southwest corner of Ireland.  That is where northern Europe's earliest copper mine, circa 2500 BCE, has been excavated. Shortly after the copper find, a flood of gold was moving around the Isles; from Irish sources and later, gold also in Wales and Cornwall. It is possible the early mariners moved along the Bay of Biscay and up around Brittany (Ar Mor) and then to Ireland's southwest.  At any rate, a Beaker pot when analyzed showed chemical traces from Brittany; that pot was found at Lough Lein, Ireland.

Welsh and Irish mythology, the oldest in western Europe, contain embedded clues to cultural origins and dating. These heroes are not ethereal figures lolling on clouds and directing the fate of mortals below; these are sweating, swearing, fornicating, men and women who live to the fullest. There is rebellious Cliodhna, who left the 'copper coast' of Eriu in a boat with a lover only to be drowned; her myth says the boat had a copper stern.  And the myth of the smith Lein, who worked at the Lake Of Many Hammers.  When archaeologist William O'Brien dug in at Lough Lein (Ross Lake) in county Kerry,  he discovered the oldest copper mine in the Isles.  The myths' references to copper dates to the second millennium or very ancient folk memory in Cork and Kerry; after around 1600 BCE copper was no longer mined there! That date is well before the prior paradigm for when Gaelic was spoken in Eriu or Wales. So what language was being spoken, by the newcomers who mixed with the indigenous tribes?

Linguist John Koch asserts, with others, that Gaelic language and culture were incubating in the Isles, and carried from the Isles to the Continent by marine traders. Gaelic thus began on the coasts, that is to say in the west and in the Isles.  Protogaelic language and culture moved from west to east.  Trade moved on rivers like the Loire from west to east.  Also, Gaelic developed much earlier than had been imagined by 19th century theorists; Gaelic developed during the Bronze Age from the early second millennium forward, and not during the later Iron Age.  Research by Koch on inscriptions in southwest Iberia has shown that rudimentary Gaelic was in use well before the Romans came along and prior to any 'invasion' of Celts.

Finally, the genetic evidence shows no big wave of invaders swamping the natives at any time.  There is a substrate from the neolithic; a new blip occurs on the genetic radar with the Beaker people in the mid third millennium BCE, and then no new genetic infusion until the Vikings and Saxons. Many areas of Ireland, and west Scotland and Wales, have retained a strong neolithic genetic signature.  If your father's or brother's genetic Y haplotype is R1b1b2 (also termed M269), congratulations: you're stone age.  The old model of waves-of-invading-Celts just doesn't hold up in the Isles or in Iberia.

Chasing down the details of prehistory need not be dull and not all the research is serious; for example, on the subject of the fulacht fiadh (pronounced foolah fee). This item is a wooden trough sunk into the earth and usually associated with a nearby pile of cracked and burned rocks. For years, academics debated whether the trough was used for a) cooking a joint of beef by adding red hot stones to hot water, or b) having a bath either after or in lieu of the beef feast, or c) brewing beer.  Since these cooking pits are almost all found in Ireland, research eventually explored option c, the brewing, with happy results duly written up and reported in a professional journal.

That grinding hum in the background is the old paradigm shifting. 'Celtic' as a term may survive with reference to a swirling, organic style of surface decoration that was widespread during Europe's Iron Age, and for certain US sports teams. Sir Barry Cunliffe, emeritus head of European Archaeology, Oxford, advocated for Celtic-from-the-west as a new model beginning in his 2001 volume, Facing The Ocean: The Atlantic and Its Peoples 8000BC-AD 1500.  Cunliffe's monograph is hefty and costly, but totally worth the read if not indispensable.  Reading old material on 'Celts' or prehistory of the Isles that was published prior to this decade is risky. The new finds in field archaeology, the archaeolinguistics, and archaeogenetics, are just that stunning and deserve awareness if not understanding. Similarly, it pays to keep up with current archaeology noting that individual sites and finds should be put into the larger context as they arise.

The gold said to be hidden in the Isles' ancient mounds can be seen as renewable, for it is the inspiration from the starwatchers and the brave marine voyagers.


[image of knife and shield courtesy of Both images courtesy of Neil Burridge, Cornwall bronze craftsman.
See Burridge website at  http://www.bronze-age-swords.com/]

~~~~~~~~~~

J. S. Dunn resided in Ireland during the past decade, and from there pursued early Bronze Age culture along the Atlantic coasts of Spain, France, Wales, Cornwall where the author poured a bronze sword, Orkney, and Ireland. The author is a huge fan of RyanAir for jetting around to unusual places.
Numerous archaeologists and experts vetted the details of BENDING THE BOYNE. A second novel set at 1600 BCE, STEALING TARA, is forthcoming.
See updates at:  https://www.facebook.com/BendingTheBoyne 

Worked Willingly with Hands: The Prehistory of Flax and Linen

by Mark Patton

"Who can find a virtuous woman? For her price is far above rubies ... She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands." Proverbs 31, 10-31.

Linen has been prized as a fabric for thousands of years. It is made from the flax plant (Linum usitatisimum), first domesticated in the Middle East in around 7000 BC. The Egyptians used it for wrapping mummies and to make the clothing of their priests; its first appearance in Europe is in the lake villages of Switzerland and Germany around five thousand years ago; the Romans used it for the sails of their ships. It has often been assumed that it was they who introduced it to the British Isles, but a recent archaeological discovery in Cambridgeshire has changed all that.

Flowers of domesticated flax. Photo: D. Gordon E. Robertson (licensed under CCA).

Flax field in North-West Dakota. Photo: Bookworm 857158367 (licensed under CCA).

The site of Must Farm, dubbed "Britain's Pompeii" by some, is a three thousand year-old riverside settlement where waterlogged conditions have allowed for an almost unprecedented survival of organic materials, including wood and fabric. With its houses built on stilts over the river, the settlement is remarkably similar to the Alpine lake villages. Fourteen centuries earlier, people from central Europe (the descendants, perhaps, of Otzi the ice-man, who died in the Italian Alps in around 3,300 BC) may have been the first to bring the knowledge of metal-working to Britain. Now it seems that they, or their own descendants, may also have brought with them the knowledge of how to turn flax into linen.

The Late Bronze Age site of Must Farm, Cambridgeshire. Photo: Dr Colleen Morgan (licensed under CCA).

Reconstructed Bronze Age pile-dwellings at Lake Constance, Germany. Photo: Traveler100 (licensed under GNU).

In fact, the wild progenitor of domesticated flax, Linum bienne, had been growing in England all through the Stone Age, but, whereas it does not take much imagination to understand that the fur of a bear or beaver can be turned into warm clothing or even that the wool of sheep and goats might be spun and woven into cloth, the processing of flax into linen is a far more complicated business.

Linum bienne, the wild flax plant. Photo: Alvesgaspar (licensed under GNU).

Flax fibre is extracted from the "bast" that lies beneath the surface of the stem of the flax plant. Today, much of the processing is done mechanically, but, traditionally, the plants were uprooted, rather than cut, to maximise the length of the fibres. It must then be "retted," or left in contact with water, so that the cellular tissue and pectins that surround the fibres can rot away. The best quality linen is produced by "field-retting" (or "dew-retting") leaving the crop in the field and turning it periodically. This works well in Canada, China and Russia, where most commercial flax production takes place today, but is unsuited to less predictable climates, such as that of the British Isles, where too much or too little rainfall could easily spoil an entire crop.

Flax harvesting, by Emile Claus, 1904, Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Photo: Georges Jansoone (image is in the Public Domain).

British flax was, historically, either "stream-retted" (left weighted down in flowing water for a period of weeks - almost certainly the option used by the Late Bronze Age community at Must Farm) or (although this is considered to produce linen of inferior quality), "pond-retted" in still water. Seamus Heaney, in his poem, "Death of a Naturalist," describes how, in the Northern Ireland of his youth:

"All year the flax-dam festered in the heart
Of the townland; green and heavy headed
Flax had rotted there, weighed down by huge sods.
Daily it sweltered in the punishing sun.
Bubbles gargled delicately, bluebottles
Wove a strong gauze of sound around the smell."

These sights, sounds and smells must have been very familiar to people living at Must Farm.

The flax fibres must then be "broken" and "scutched," to remove the unusable material, and finally "heckled" with a comb, or a bed of nails, before it can be spun and woven into a cloth that may have been a significant export for the Bronze Age people of East Anglia, whose trade networks seem to have extended from Scandinavia to Italy's Po Valley.

Breaking flax: wooden tools for this task were found at Must Farm. Photo: Pymous (licensed under GNU).

Scutching flax. Photo: Pymous (licensed under GNU).

Heckling flax. Photo: Pymous (licensed under GNU).

Bronze heckle for flax-processing. Photo: Kozuch (licensed under CCA).

Flax fibres before and after processing. Photo: Aamiri77 (licensed under CCA).

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Mark Patton blogs regularly on aspects of history and historical fiction at http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk. His novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon. He is currently working on The Cheapside Tales, a London-based trilogy of historical novels.

The History of the Hand Axe

By E.S. Moxon

Acheulean hand axe [Africa], courtesy of lithiccastinglab.com

Since man first crafted a tool, a blade for stabbing or slicing was the most versatile. Through millennia, through Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages man has used knapped or smelted blades in everyday life. As precursors to the modern steel axe, they were for killing prey on the hunt, stripping meat from a carcass and for carving bone into tools or amulets. These were not merely tools, however. The skill of craftsmanship, often attributed to assistance from a divine source, gave these objects importance. Early man’s reliance on them for his life or food source meant they became revered not only for their functionality, but became worthy of decoration and admiration.

At the University of Southampton a postgraduate study identified tribal distinctions between the designs of two main Neanderthal cultures in Europe. A western tribe in what is now France, used symmetrical, triangular and heart-shaped hand axes. During the same period, an eastern tribe, in what is now Germany, created asymmetrical bifacial blades. More amazingly, groups of Neanderthals from both tribes living near the borders in modern day Belgium, created axes using combinations of both western and eastern designs. These designs, used over a long period, suggest the patterns were passed on from generation to generation. Like tribal markers or crests and the banners used by their forebears, the Neanderthals were defining weapons and territory through art. Even more interestingly, the Belgian group provides evidence that they were open to accepting influences from neighbouring civilisations, or that tribes intermarried and combined designs.

Bactrian ceremonial hand axe, British Museum

Practical tool, object of decoration and symbol of cultural identity: the enduring importance of the hand axe continued. The Bronze Age gives us a wealth of archaeology for yet another aspect of this weapon – as a ceremonial object. Found almost ‘as-new’, preserved in peat at the fen site of Shinewater near Eastbourne in East Sussex, is the socketed axe from north-west continental Europe (late Bronze Age). Then there is the beautiful bronze and silver Bactrian ceremonial hand axe from Pakistan. Residing at the British Museum, this piece dates from 2000BC and consists of a boar’s back and a tiger clutching a goat. It is a perfect example of a ritualistic object, the intention that its great beauty proved the worth of the ceremony to receiving deities.

As man began to build enclosures and walls around his treasured livestock and land, the hand axe took on a more lethal role, in combat. Already familiar with its multiple uses, man adapted them for war and to maim. Across cultures and continents, the hafted (with handle) hand axe has many names: adze, francisca, halberd, hatchet, hurlbat, labrys, parashu, tomahawk. This is not an exhaustive list, but there are too many to mention here, suffice to say man and axe are synonymous with one another. Specifically, the francisca is a small throwing axe about the length of the forearm. The haft, or handle, is often made of hickory or ash woods and the blade, of steel. Being inexpensive to make, it was available to men of all ranks throughout the Germanic kingdoms of Europe. When writing ‘Wulfsuna’, this was the axe I had to familiarise myself with and not simply from reading books!

From king to commoner, the francisca was a useful instrument. Unlike a sword or Seax, it did not depict wealth or require costly sums to obtain. However, the materials used could still set them apart, as is evident from the royal grave goods at Sutton Hoo for example. High quality woods, ornate carvings and specialised blades could define the status of its owner. We can gain further understanding of how this weapon was embraced across social divides by looking at the names given to its pertinent parts:-

Head, Eye, Cheek, Beard, Throat, Shoulder, Belly, Heel, Toe...

Naming the familiar sections of the axe with human body parts likens it to a living being and, in my mind, bestows upon it a high regard. For those who owned them, in battle the francisca became a living, breathing extension of the warrior who wielded it. Honoured gods such as the Saxon ‘Thunor’ or Norse ‘Thor’ and ‘Tiw’ prove how symbiotic the relationship was between man and his weapon. So, I donned a helm, grabbed a shield and axe and fought out my research with a willing tutor and opponent!

'Hooking' my opponent's shield!

From the first clash of shields, Germanic warfare was at close-quarters. Comparatively light to other weapons, the hand axe could be used with one hand, allowing the bearer to also hold a shield for defence. Easy to wield effectively in tight spaces they were the favoured Saxon weapon, whereas swords were expensive and required elbow-room to draw them from their scabbards. The hand axe was extremely versatile. Held at the ‘throat’ (bottom of the handle) and used in wide swings blade or ‘butt’ (flat head at back of the blade) could connect with your opponent with devastating results. Bringing the grip up to the ‘shoulder’ underneath the ‘beard’ the end of the handle, or ‘knob’ was effective to stab the enemy in the windpipe – much like the pommel was implemented on the end of a sword hilt (from where we get the word ‘pummelled’, or rather ‘pommelled’).

Being one of the lighter-weight axes, it could also be thrown at speed. From this grip the blade could also be a hefty knuckle-duster, capable of punching faceplates on helmets and slicing flesh at close-range. Held at the ‘belly’ (half way down the handle) it could strike a nasty dent or break through an iron helmet, allowing the owner to hook the ‘beard’ or ‘heel’ of the blade onto the top of an enemy shield. Hooking could reveal vulnerable faces/upper bodies for a lethal strike. It could also be used on helmet ornamentation, so as to yank an opponent’s head forwards or backwards.

From my first-hand experience, albeit slow and safe, it revealed the hand axe to be a wholly versatile piece of warrior equipment. It is easy to see how it remained a popular weapon for thousands of years.

~ ~ ~

Blood, betrayal and brotherhood.

An ancient saga is weaving their destiny.

A treacherous rival threatens their fate.

A Seer's magic may be all that can save them.

WULFSUNA

Elaine writes historical fiction as ‘E S Moxon’. Her debut Wulfsuna was published January 21^st, 2015 and is the first in her 'Wolf Spear Saga' series of Saxon adventures, where a Seer and one named ‘Wolf Spear’ are destined to meet. She is currently writing her second novel, set once again in the Dark Ages of 5^th Century Britain. You can find out more about Book 2 from Elaine’s website where she has a video diary charting her writing progress. She also runs a blog. Elaine lives in the Midlands with her family and their chocolate Labrador.

Dawn of a Heroic Age- Adornment in the British Bronze Age

by J.P. Reedman

The British bronze and Neolithic ages are much neglected eras where fiction is concerned. A few novels have been written about the building of Stonehenge, with varying degrees of success, but not many in comparison to, say, the later Iron Age. I believe this may in part be due to many writers (and readers) being unable to visualise what these people were like. We are used to Victorian and B-movie depictions of ‘Celts’ wearing blue woad and little else, and druids in pilfered bed sheets, but what about the people who preceded them by a millennium or two? Many people still seem to envision ‘cavemen,’ Bronze Age Fred Flintstones dragging megaliths. Over the years I have even seen archaeology books with drawings of ancient folk clad in jaunty ‘off the shoulder’ skins or, worse, building Stonehenge in the nude! (Ooh…painful!)

It couldn’t be further from the truth. By the early Bronze Age many tribes in Britain, especially around the Wessex area, had grown rather wealthy through trade and, perhaps, through the fame of their monuments. And they liked to show their wealth off, both to each other and to outsiders…

The earliest metalwork arrived in Britain around 2400-2300 B.C., brought by the ‘Beaker folk.’ For many years these people were thought to be violent ‘invaders’ due to their martial appearance—they had copper daggers, wore stern-looking stone archer’s wrist-guards, and shot lethal barbed arrows from composite bows—then it became fashionable to see their culture as spreading via trade rather than forcible imposition. Recent strontium isotope testing on Beaker skeletons has proved, however, that there was indeed a reasonable amount of migration from the continent. How these folk related to others already living in Briton is debatable; certainly most evidence for open warfare actually comes from a much earlier period of the Neolithic.

The most famous Beaker burial is the Amesbury Archer who was discovered about 3 miles from Stonehenge. A wealthy middle-aged man who had travelled from the Alps, he was probably a metal-worker—his whetstone had flecks of gold on its surface. In his grave, as part of a huge assemblage of prestige items including unprecedented amounts of archery equipment and two wrist-guards, were a pair of fine gold objects thought to be ‘hair tresses,’ denoting a high status. Another pair was discovered with a secondary burial that might have been his son or younger brother. Years before, in 1986, an almost identical burial had been found about 15 miles away near Andover, containing two more pairs of hair tresses of roughly the same date. In total about 8 pairs have been found across Britain, along with several single tresses. These hair-ornaments presumably had some special significance beyond mere ornamentation as they are all similar in design if not in size.

Replica of the Archer's hair tresses

Weaving was known by the later Neolithic—a spindle whorl has turned up at Durrington walls—so rather than skins (which would mostly have been tanned rather than left furred, with exceptions being made for cloaks and bedding) people were beginning to wear woven clothes. Although very few textiles have survived from this era in Britain, the imprints of cloth, some patterned, has been discovered on bronze axes and other precious artifacts that had been wrapped before deposition in burial mounds. So garments doubtless had design, and probably were dyed with madder and other natural colourings.

Perhaps most extraordinary though is the jewellery and weaponry, showing long distance trade routes throughout Britain and beyond. By 1900 BC some form of ‘aristocracy’ was definitely appearing in southern England, though similar ‘Wessex style’ burials do appear in the east of England, Scotland, and Derbyshire’s Peak District (sometimes called an outpost of Wessex.) And they liked their ‘bling’!

Gold was common, imported from Wicklow, Ireland. The most famous find is the lozenge found in Bush Barrow, built within site of Stonehenge. It was found in the chest area of a 6 ft tall, strong, middle-aged man, who also had a small lozenge, a gold belt buckle, and a dagger imported from Brittany with a hilt studded with tiny gold pins, each as fine as a hair. He also had a ceremonial ‘mace’ with zigzag bone mounts and a polished head fashioned from a fossil.

Bush Barrow lozenge

He is not the only one to have such a kingly assemblage, although his hoard is the largest—Clandon barrow contained a similar lozenge only with a decagon pattern rather than a hexagon, and a mace-head made of shale fixed by large gold studs. A presumed female grave in Upton Lovell held a rectangular gold pectoral plate, gold-covered beads, conical gold buttons, and a crescent-shape necklace of hundreds of amber beads. Perhaps most stunning of all is the slightly later gold pectoral cape found in Mold, Wales; made to resemble draped cloth, it had loops at the bottom to attach a cloth gown. Other barrows had other rich goods—buttons etched with crosses and amber discs in decorated gold mounts, both probably representing the sun; other buttons were jet. There were necklaces of Dorset shale, Baltic amber, and Whitby jet. One burial had a rare, red glass bead—the only one ever found of its type. Occasionally there were copper or bronze bangles, engraved with patterns. Blue faience beads were produced, not Egyptian as once thought, but British-made…one very pretty piece was fashioned into a star. Belt rings of polished bone were worn, along with toggles for fastening clothes. Women’s pendants could resemble the ‘halberds’ or axes found in male graves, though at least one pendant is slightly macabre, perhaps an ancestral talisman…a shard of human skull covered by decorated gold.

Red glass bronze age bead

Weapons are common in male burials, as might be expected, although at least one grave opened by antiquarians was reported as being that of a ‘female hero’ (alas, we know little of the contents or what became of them) Daggers with riveted hilts of wood, horn or bone, flint knives, arrowheads and bronze axes were laid to rest with their owners; many showed signs of no use at all, so must have been prestige items for show rather than in daily use. A strange two-pronged metal implement was discovered in a mound not far from Stonehenge, perhaps some kind of ‘goad.’

Bronze age goad

A few barrows have unusual contents. One found at Upton Lovell covered the remains of a man known as ‘the shaman’. He had items in his tomb that could be termed archaic—the teeth of dogs and wolves which appear to have been sewn to his clothes, similar to items seen in the Mesolithic rather than the Bronze Age. Near him was placed a large ball of quartz which might have been a ‘seeing-stone.’ A similar designation of ‘magic man’ has been suggested for the very tall (over 6ft 3) man buried near the Torstone, Bulford. He possessed a strange quartz talisman shaped like a standing stone that may have been imported from outside Britain.

A recently discovered cist-burial of a young woman on Dartmoor is unique in that organics have in this instance survived, including parts of a possible shroud, a woven bag, a fringed nettle-fibre belt, and hand-turned wooden studs that were probably ear-plugs. Within her tomb was also a bracelet with a large tin bead and assorted studs, (the first tin ever found in British Bronze Age jewellery) and Baltic amber and shale.

So, clearly these prehistoric groups of Britain, trading within the Atlantic façade zone and elsewhere, were not backwards ‘poor cousins’ isolated at the edge of the known world by their island heritage. In the well-dressed, well-armed and well-decorated peoples of the British Bronze Age, we are seeing a heroic society forming that is the basis of the stories in the Welsh Mabinogion and the Irish Mythic Cycles.

Biobliography:

Britain Begins by Barry Cunliffe, OUP Oxford

Britain B.C. by Francis Prior, Harper Perennial

Celtic from the West, volumes 1 and 2, edited by Koch and Cunliffe, Oxbow Books

The Round Barrow in England by Paul Ashbee


*Most finds described above may be viewed at the Heritage Museum in Devizes, Wiltshire or at Salisbury Museum.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

J.P. Reedman is the author of two novels set at the time of Stonehenge, Stone Lord and Moon Lord. In these books, the roots of the Arthurian legends are explored within a Bronze Age context. She lives in Amesbury, only a stone’s throw from the grave of the famous Amesbury Archer, and has a 30 year interest in Neolithic and Bronze Age cultures, specialising in burial and ritual.

Website
Stone Lord  Amazon UK
Moon Lord Amazon UK
Stone Lord Amazon US

Moon Lord Amazon US