Maritime Archaeology on Dry Land: Special Sites along the Coasts of Britain and Ireland from the First Farmers to the Atlantic Bronze Age

PART ONE

The sea, the sea

1. Fluid dynamics: a brief introduction

What did ancient people think of the sea? Were they fearful of its power, or confident of the wealth it could provide? Was the ocean an obstacle to movement from one region to another, or was it an open highway compared with travel overland? Its presence was an inescapable fact, but there was more than one way of understanding its significance, and conceptions could have changed over the course of time. Past interpretations might have been as fluid as the element itself (Farr 2006; Clark 2017).

The questions multiply. How was the shoreline understood in the past? Was it always a special place? It must have played a vital role, yet in Britain and Ireland, which are studied in detail in this account, its archaeology raises problems. Some are theoretical and others are far more practical. Many of them are considered here.

This chapter begins with attitudes to the sea and distinguishes between several possibilities in the past. It focuses on the settlement of both islands and the relationship between indigenous communities and the first farmers here and on the Continent. It places a special emphasis on the archaeology of the water’s edge. Part One shows why this is important and how it can be investigated.

A fact and a state of mind

The most important factors were not necessarily physical. The presence of the sea may have been a fact, but its significance might have been interpreted in different ways by different communities, and those who lived in landlocked areas may not have had the same perspective as dwellers on the coast. This is shown by Classical and medieval beliefs which shared a similar perception of geography. In each case people thought that the world extended from a powerful centre to a dangerous perimeter (Rainbird 2007, 4–6). For Hecataeus of Miletus the land was a circular disc, one enormous island with the Mediterranean in its centre and a great sea, Oceanus, around its outer limit (Thomson 1948; Cunliffe 2001a, 3). Beyond that boundary there were only the dead. It meant that places on the Atlantic seaboard were considered both threatening and remote; among them were Britain and Ireland. In the same way, medieval cosmology treated Jerusalem as the centre of the land. It was where the sun rose every morning and where three continents converged (Edson 1997). Again the entire world was a single landmass, Orbis Terrarum, which was completely enclosed by water. The sea was the home of a beast destined to destroy humankind. That is why offshore islands along the coast of Western Europe were settled by hermits and monks. Early monasteries were established there because the ocean was ‘the battleground between Christianity and its demons’ (Mack 2011, 90).

The land ends (Fig. 1)

Place names expressed a similar idea: important parts of the seaboard were on the farthest edges of the world. They were where it was bounded by a seemingly limitless expanse of water (Bradley 2014). The same conception was expressed at four points along the Atlantic coast, two of which share almost the same name: Cabo Fisterra in north-west Spain (Galicia) and Finistère in Brittany. Both can be translated as ‘Land’s End’, and the same description applies to the farthest tip of Cornwall. A fourth example is in Scotland where the Mull of Kintyre is a narrow peninsula, 75 km long, between the west coast and the north of Ireland. Its Gaelic name has the same connotation. Again it reflects the attitude of people who travelled there overland.

Cabo Fisterra was especially significant in this respect since it was an important outpost of Christian Europe at a time when other parts of Iberia were occupied by followers of Islam. It was the final destination of the Camino, one of the main pilgrimage routes of the Middle Ages. It acquired this role because it was where the relics of St James had been washed ashore. His presence on the coast of Spain was celebrated by building a great cathedral at Santiago de Compostela. From there the pilgrims made their way another 100 km to the sea where his remains had been discovered. Then they showed that their journey was over by setting fire to their boots (Brierly 2003).

Such place names record the perception of communities who lived far away, for these locations were not as isolated as their approach would suggest. Parts of the littoral were linked with other regions during the early medieval period. They saw the movement of luxury goods in the first millennium AD (Campbell 2007; Duggan 2018), yet archaeologists have found surprisingly little physical evidence of other connections. Historical sources are more informative. Christian churches on either side of the Channel were dedicated to the same saints (Bowen 1972), and early accounts tell how people settled Galicia from Cornwall and moved between south-west England and Brittany (Fleuriot 1980; Cunliffe 2017, fig. 10.12). Some connections extended even further. An Irish origin myth featured Mil, a soldier who travelled there from Spain (Ní Lionáin 2012). According to John Waddell (2005, 21), he was ‘the ancestral figure of Gaelic Ireland’. Linguistic evidence is informative, too. Breton and Cornish share many features in common, and the same language family includes Welsh, and the Scottish and Irish varieties of Gaelic. But even these connections have their limits, for the national language of Galicia (Galego) is similar to Portuguese, although Celtic place names have been identified in the Iberian Peninsula.

More tangible connections are documented by the distributions of earlier prehistoric artefacts. Two well-known examples illustrate this point. In one case they were associated with the first farmers, and in the other with metalwork. They included some of the places that later generations would call ‘land’s end’ but provide evidence of connections that reached along the entire coastline of Western Europe.

The evidence of jadeite axes and variscite beads

Important issues are raised by two distinctive materials that circulated in the Neolithic period. From 5500 BC jadeite was obtained on Monte Viso and Monte Beigua in the Alps: it was more widely distributed from 4700 BC and the main period of use lasted until about 4000 BC (Pétrequin et al. 2012). The principal products were axeheads, some of which were deposited in rock fissures, rivers, lakes and bogs. Others were set upright in the ground, or placed beside conspicuous outcrops, springs, waterfalls and standing stones. These artefacts travelled over an enormous area, extending as far as the island of Britain. One of the greatest concentrations was in the Morbihan in north-west France where some of these axes were reworked. Few have been found along the coast further to the south, but the characteristic forms of Breton axeheads might have been copied in Iberia. Otherwise the distribution of Alpine products linked three of the areas considered earlier: Brittany, south-west England and the Atlantic coast of Scotland. It also reached far inland (Fig. 2).

Fig. 1 Places along the Atlantic coastline called Land’s End or the equivalent. Information from Bradley (2014).

In contrast to jadeite, variscite originated from mines in the Iberian Peninsula. Its chronology was different as it remained important for a longer period, but again extraction began in the fifth millennium BC (Herbaud & Quarré 2004). It was used to make beads and pendants that were imported to north-west France at the time when the earliest farmers were settling there; other artefacts were distributed along the Mediterranean coast. Both materials illustrate the extent of contacts between areas whose traditional names emphasised their isolation. Finds of jadeite connected north-west France, England and Scotland, and those of variscite linked Brittany with Portugal and Spain.

The evidence of ‘Maritime’ Beakers

The same issues arise in later periods when the movement of raw materials was even more important. Three kinds of metal could be obtained not far from the Atlantic. Copper was extracted in Britain, south-west Ireland, and north-west Iberia; tin was obtained in Galicia, Brittany and Cornwall; and the main sources of gold were in Ireland and northern Spain. The copper could be alloyed with tin, yet their natural distributions were not the same, so it was necessary to take the ores between different places. It is obvious that new relationships were established during the Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age periods.

Fig. 2 The distribution of Alpine jadeite axes and the routes by which they were carried. The source area is indicated by a star, and the thickness of the lines connecting different regions reflects the intensity of movement between them. Information from Cassen et al. (2020).

Again the distribution of a diagnostic artefact connects areas that must have seemed remote from other parts of Europe. This was a fine ceramic vessel, the Maritime Beaker, whose distribution included several foci along the shores of the Atlantic and the Mediterranean (Harrison 1980, 17–23; Salanova 2002; 2016). Its prototypes were probably made in Portugal, but further to the north the same kind of pottery is recorded in three of the regions mentioned before: Galicia, southern Brittany and the west coast of Scotland. Of course its distribution extends across a far wider area, but, as the name suggests, its presence connected significant places on the coast.

A comment

The extent of such networks is not compatible with notions of marginality. The distribution of jadeite axes followed the Atlantic coast for 1000 km. Variscite beads circulated up to 1200 km from where they were made, and the distribution of Maritime Beakers extended from south to north for 2000 km. The world was a larger place than people might have thought.

Isolation and identity

Although there were contacts between prehistoric communities along the coast, there is no reason to suppose that they shared the same attitudes to the sea. Perhaps they were aware of their geographical remoteness and chose to form connections with a wider world. They did so by exchanging distinctive artefacts with other groups, and in some cases they might have adopted the same practices as their partners in these transactions. That would explain why people who lived so far from one another built the same kinds of monuments. Again the Neolithic period supplies the best examples. While certain styles of architecture had extensive distributions – especially chambered tombs – others linked regions that were a long way apart. It was true of the corbelled passage graves of western Iberia and examples of the same date in Ireland (Schulz Paulsson 2017). It also applies to the striking similarities between open air rock art in north-west Iberia, Ireland and northern Britain (Valdez Tullett 2019). The important point is that similar features have seldom been identified in between those areas. Connections by sea were important, but such links could also be rejected, and that was equally significant.

It is clear that different groups had different attitudes to the sea. For people who occupied inland regions it defined the limit of the world. For others, it was a specialised environment, linked to similar places by the use of boats. There were important distinctions between those who travelled overland, and those whose closest connections were by water. And there were other possibilities. Communities living near the coast might have felt at ease with their surroundings because marine resources were essential to their way of life. Others took a very different view. A good example is Dumnorix, the leader of the Aedui, whom Caesar brought with him to Britain. He was a reluctant traveller. ‘He pleaded all kinds of reasons why he should be left behind in Gaul. For one thing, he claimed, he knew nothing of sailing and was afraid of the sea’ (De Bello Gallico 5.6). That response would be understandable when migrants first encountered an element that was dangerous but also a wonder.

Even when sailors took to the water they would have had more than one option. They could travel along the coast, but others must have chosen to stay out of sight of land (Anderson-Whymark & Garrow 2015). Both choices would be available when conditions at sea allowed, but there was always a third possibility. Perhaps some voyages were undertaken simply because they posed a challenge. Reputations might depend on confronting dangers. It is unlikely that there was ever a single course of action and it could be a mistake to reconstruct every ancient voyage according to a risk assessment.

Between east and west

In practice, the main distinction was between communities along the west coast of Europe and those who lived further to the east. It was already present during the Mesolithic period, but it took on a new significance when the Continent was colonised by farmers (Rowley-Conwy 2004; 2011). For a long time two different strands have been recognised in the archaeological record and now their significance is confirmed by ancient DNA (Cassidy et al. 2016; Brace et al. 2019). At its simplest the contrast is between immigrants whose ancestors came from Central and South-east Europe, and a second group with stronger links to the Mediterranean and Atlantic shorelines. One tradition was associated with a population who could have had little or no experience of the sea. They included people of the Linearbandkeramik (LBK) Culture and its successors. Their western counterparts were those who used Cardial Ware and its equivalents. They were familiar with the coast. The contrast between them extended to their relationships with local hunter gatherers (Fig. 3).

Northern Europe

The information is puzzling and complex (Sørensen & Karg 2014). The LBK expansion was rapid and sustained, and groups of massive longhouses were eventually established across the loess of North-west Europe. They took a similar form over an increasingly large area, but the LBK expansion was checked towards the northern limits of the most fertile land. At first the settlers had only limited contacts with natives in the same parts of Europe. On the other hand, items like the stone adzes associated with early farmers were obtained by foragers in Scandinavia. These imports were deposited in bogs according to a long-established custom. The crucial difference is that the people who lived outside the agricultural frontier were familiar with the sea, but it did not apply to their neighbours. The expansion of agriculture was held in check, while contacts between both populations continued for a long time.

Why was this the case? The usual explanation is that productive land was now in short supply. There was little prospect of growing cereals further to the north and west since the climate was unsuitable. The expansion of agriculture could only resume if local conditions improved (Bonsall et al. 2002; Betti et al. 2020). But another feature might have been equally important. Is it possible that the first farmers were wary of settling the coast or crossing open water? There was every reason why the sea could be treated as a threat. Its level had been rising throughout the postglacial period and significant amounts of productive land had already been submerged (Gaffney et al. 2007). Such changes would have been inexplicable. The ocean might have been interpreted as a living creature, for this was a widely shared belief in the ancient world. Settlers from the south would have known of the problems through their contacts with indigenous communities. Did they share the attitude of Dumnorix who was frightened of the sea? It was only as the population increased and a shortage of good land led to conflict that they overcame their inhibitions. By that stage they must have become familiar with watercraft through their neighbours in Northern Europe. Around 4000 BC the climate did change significantly and new areas could be cultivated for the first time. It was then that Britain and parts of south Scandinavia were first occupied by farmers (Sørensen & Karg 2014).

Fig. 3 Regions with late hunter gatherers and early farmers in Northern Europe and North-west Europe. Information from Sørensen (2014) and Scarre (2011) respectively.

North-west France

The western axis was quite different. It followed the Atlantic northwards from the Iberian Peninsula. Here coastal hunter gatherers played a more significant role. Although the earliest farmers may not have occupied the same areas – a pattern that is most clearly evidenced in Portugal (Cunliffe 2017, fig. 3.28) – in north-west France the relationship between indigenous communities and newcomers seems to have been more complex, and here the native population may have been responsible for erecting the first stone monuments (Scarre 2011). A further complication is that the same region was where the two main currents in the settlement of Europe converged. Just as it marked the northernmost limit of the Cardial tradition, the same region was occupied by farmers with their origins in the LBK. It is not surprising that the situation was volatile and a source of tension. In this case people were already familiar with the sea, but the coastline itself was changing and valuable resources were lost to the rising water. As had happened in Northern Europe, it encouraged them to look for new land (Sheridan 2010). In this case journeys by sea would have created fewer anxieties.

Although these sequences differ in many respects, they share a distinctive feature. Fish were intensively exploited by the natives of south Scandinavia and western France, but marine resources were scarcely used from the start of the Neolithic period (Schulting et al. 2004; Cramp et al. 2014). It is hard to account for the neglect of an abundant food supply unless it resulted from some kind of taboo: a fear of the open water or the forms of life it sustained. Perhaps people were reluctant to travel out of sight of land and some of them turned their backs on their own histories. However it is understood, the process affected both Britain and Ireland.

Britain and Ireland

Their archaeology illustrates the same division between east and west, but with some added complications. Not only did prehistoric societies change their ways of life, the very land they inhabited changed its character over time. Ireland may, or may not, have been isolated by sea since the last Ice Age – the question is controversial – but that would have happened long before it was settled during the Mesolithic period (Tune 2020). The area occupied by Britain was much less stable. At first it was just a promontory of the European landmass. It was cut off by rising water and eventually became an island around 7000 BC (Gaffney et al. 2007; Sturt et al. 2013; Sturt 2015). That was three millennia before the first farmers arrived. The perspectives of the inhabitants must have been affected as drastically as those of people on the Continent. But how much did they really know about the worlds in which they were living? Would the first Irish fishers and foragers have recognised that they were settling an island? Would Neolithic immigrants have been any better informed? And did the situation change significantly when the coastline became more stable during later phases?

Forming or severing connections

What choices were available to those who lived by the sea? There were four possibilities, all of which are illustrated by the archaeologies of these islands. They will be considered in more detail in later chapters.

The simplest option was to accept, and even celebrate, isolation. That can be seen in several ways. The Mesolithic settlement of Ireland is particularly informative as so much activity focused on the shoreline (Woodman 2015). The country had to be settled by sea and at first the material culture of the inhabitants was similar to that of their neighbours in Britain. This is not surprising as the island was by no means remote and could be seen from the Scottish coast. At this stage the main contrast was between the resources available on either side of the water. Because Ireland was cut off at such an early date it supported a smaller range of plants and animals. There were 30% fewer plant species than in Britain. The equivalent figure for mammals was 57% (Mitchell & Ryan 1998, table 4).

Because Ireland did not have the same resources the pattern of settlement was different, but that does not explain why the material equipment of the Mesolithic phase became so idiosyncratic. Although the earliest artefacts resembled those in Britain, in time they assumed a more local character which they shared with the Isle of Man. There is little evidence that Irish artefacts or raw materials reached the west coast of Britain; the exceptions may be ground stone axes. The local inhabitants must have cut themselves off from wider contacts.

To some extent the same happened in Britain, but here it did so for a different reason. Again Mesolithic material culture shared features with a wider area, but for a while those links were less direct because the land was gradually separated from the Continent. At one time it seemed that later Mesolithic artefacts were quite different from those in other parts of Europe (Ballin 2016), but the evidence is changing and new work in the south of England has recognised some connections with those found across the Channel during the sixth and fifth millennia BC (Lawrence et al. 2020; Conneller 2022, 356). In other respects Mesolithic Britain did assume a more regional character. The situation changed once early farmers arrived there.

During the Neolithic period relations between these islands and Continental Europe illustrate another option. Those who lived on facing shores could have developed close relationships across the water. For a short time that applied to the first farmers in Britain and the communities they had left on the mainland, but after the initial period of settlement there is little evidence that artefacts were exchanged between them. Instead the strongest connections were between traditions of monumental architecture – long barrows and causewayed enclosures. Although such links were important, their forms and chronologies gradually diverged. In contrast to the Mesolithic evidence, some of the most obvious affinities were across the Irish Sea, while initial contacts along the Atlantic assumed a more specialised character (Sheridan 2010). Although there is evidence of regional variation, the water between Britain and Ireland was no longer treated as a barrier.

If there were important relationships between people living across the water from one another, connections might have been equally important between communities along the seaboard (Rogers 2016). They could have followed the shoreline or a chain of islands. Again the Early Neolithic period provides an obvious example. This was the one time when stone artefacts from mainland Europe were widely distributed in Britain. Jadeite axes could be deposited in specialised contexts, as they were on the Continent, and they extended from southern England to the north of Scotland; in Wales and Ireland they were absent or rare. Nearly half the provenanced examples – 46% of the total – have been discovered on or near the coast, from south-west England to the Moray Firth. Equally elaborate axeheads, this time made of flint, are found along the North Sea and probably date from the same period (Walker 2018, chapters 4 & 6). The distributions of both kinds of artefacts resemble that of Early Neolithic pottery.

There was yet another possibility. This chapter has commented on the distribution of Maritime Beakers on the Continent. Apart from its sheer extent,