A Research Framework for the Archaeology of Wales
Northwest Wales – Later Prehistoric
22/12/2003
The conventional and convenient divisions of the past, based on a broad
technological model and the principal raw material in use for tools and
weapons, do not always correspond to social changes. At a time when bronze
metal technology reached new heights of proficiency and output, other factors
were at work, which provided a catalyst for far-reaching transformations. These
were to characterise the next thousand
years of prehistory. A serious
downturn in the climate may have provoked a retreat from marginal areas, which
henceforth ceased to be viable for arable cultivation. Pressure on communities
competing for the same space is likely to have increased and such pressure may
have contributed to the appearance of early fortifications in the landscape.
Elsewhere, similar climatic problems, accompanied by crop failures, are thought
to have initiated disturbances and population movements, which sent shock waves
across Europe. The last ripples of these washed against British shores. It is
particularly significant that among the indicators of this phase are the first
true swords and other items of serious weaponry. The adoption of iron working
appears to have spread through Britain relatively rapidly, bringing with it
social, industrial and economic repercussions.
The evidence for, and emphasis on, formal ritual and elaborate burial,
so characteristic of the Earlier Bronze Age, falls away during the Later Bronze
Age and becomes almost invisible during the Iron Age. Climate may, again, have contributed to the decline in
popularity of the upland locations, which had previously been favoured for
burial and ritual. In contrast, the evidence for settlement increases during this period.
From the Later Bronze Age, hillforts begin to dominate the landscape.
Undefended settlement is also well represented, as are field systems and other
components of potentially contemporary landscapes. The quality of the field
evidence in certain areas of Gwynedd is very high. The identifiable hierarchy
of settlement reflects a perceived increase in the stratification of society
dominated by a warrior aristocracy. It is now academically unfashionable to
describe society as Celtic, even in a generic sense. Nevertheless, what we know
of Late Prehistoric society in this area conforms to Professor Binchy’s
archetype – ‘tribal, rural, hierarchical and familial.’ On the eve of the Roman
conquest, most of Britain can be seen to be speaking a language ancestral to
modern
Welsh.
Hillforts and related fortifications are the dominant feature, occupying
naturally defensible positions from isolated and craggy hilltops to the
promontories of the seacoast. Their functions are likely to have been diverse
and to have included economic exploitation and interchange, defence and political control. Larger sites may have been
tribal capitals with multiple functions; long-lived sites may have changed the
emphasis of their use; small sites may have been little more than the defended
homesteads and the power base of local lords.
Around 130 hillforts are known in the area west of the Conwy and north
of the Dyfi. The areas enclosed range from less than 0.1 ha at small but
defensible sites such as Bryn Y Castell and Pen Y Gaer, Aberglaslyn to around
11.0 ha at Garn Boduan and Carn Fadrun on the Llyn peninsula. The majority of
forts (60%) are sited below the 200 m contour although a significant number
(15%) can be found at altitudes between 300 and 400 m. The summits of Braich y
Dinas (RCHAMW 1956, 85-6), now destroyed, and Tre’r Ceiri (RCAHMW 1960, 101- 3)
were fortified at altitudes above 470 m OD. Enclosed, but less strongly
defended, farms and other rural settlements occur and numerically must always
have represented the majority. Such sites include isolated round huts,
concentric enclosures, palisades, weak earthworks and the precursors of the
stone walled hut groups, which constitute a major component of the
Romano-British rural landscape. Some 1000 roundhouse settlements have been
recorded within the region. A large number of these are single roundhouses or
scattered groups of unenclosed huts, most of which (69%) occur above the 200 m
contour. The largest single class of roundhouse settlement, however, and the
most coherent in its classification, is the enclosed/nucleated group. With 373
examples recorded, this settlement type accounts for 41% of all roundhouse
settlements in north-west Wales. The class is particularly strongly represented
on Anglesey and on the adjacent mainland of Arfon. Most (60%) of these occur at
altitudes lower than 200 m. This apparent differentiation on the basis of
altitude between enclosed/nucleated settlements and single and scattered
roundhouses suggests an economic, social or functional distinction rather than
one of chronology. On the other hand there is a close correlation between the
altitude distribution of enclosed settlements and hillforts in the region.
The available dating evidence, for the enclosed/nucleated group,
principally diagnostic artefacts such as Roman
pottery and coins as casual finds and from early excavations, has weighted the
chronological balance towards the Romano-British centuries. However, more
recent excavation and re-examination of earlier discoveries has shown that some
at least of these settlements had their origin in late prehistory (Lynch 1991,
370,376; Kelly 1990). In north-west Wales, therefore, the landscape of the
later Iron Age might be seen to comprise a hierarchy of habitation which
included fortified sites within the upper stratum and undefended roundhouse
settlements which one might be permitted to infer to be the houses of client
farmers in a dependent relationship to the nobility (Cunliffe 1991, 260;
Cunliffe 1993, 110-111; Champion 1995, 92; Kelly 1998, 29). It might be further
suggested that enclosed/nucleated groups or their precursors constituted the
basic farming unit and single and dispersed groups of roundhouses, generally at
higher altitudes, represented a functionally complementary component of the
economic regime, perhaps on the high summer pastures. The average
enclosed/nucleated roundhouse settlement occupies an area of around 0.1 ha. The
surviving walls of this group, generally representing the latest phase of use,
are predominantly of stone. The enclosures are mostly sub-circular but the
largest and most visually impressive are rectilinear or polygonal and likely to
date to the Roman centuries. On Anglesey an additional class of settlement can
be identified in a small group of morphologically similar earthworks for which
Bryn Eryr is the exemplar. All are rectilinear earthworks enclosing areas in
excess of the average enclosed settlement, of broadly comparable ground plan,
occupying generally low-lying locations. It might be argued that Bryn Eryr
represents a class of settlement occupying the middle ground in a hierarchy of
size and status. Such sites are a product of the agricultural potential of the
region and are not found in less rich areas. Recent excavations at, for
example, Bryn Eryr and Bush Farm have shown chronological and structural
development on the same site, continuing occupation from the Iron Age into the
Romano-British centuries. Equally, the field systems that survive in
association with farms have the potential to illustrate economic and land
management changes through time. Excavations at Moel y Gerddi, Sarn Meyllteyrn,
Bryn Eryr and Bush Farm have demonstrated the constructional changes and size
variations in the development of house building during late prehistory. This is
an area where chronology and detail could be refined.
Evidence for formal burial during later prehistory is generally rare
over much of Britain during this period. In north-west Wales it is very rare.
At the beginning of the first millennium BC the common burial rite throughout
Britain was cremation, either within an urn or in a pit. If a mound were
present, then the new mounds of the later Bronze Age were consistently smaller
than those of the Earlier Bronze Age, although earlier barrows could become the
focus for Later Bronze Age cemeteries. Inhumation is rare and the more distinctive
examples would seem to display continental affinities. Consideration should
also be given, in this period, to the possibility that the remains of the dead,
cremated or otherwise, were committed to the waters of rivers, lakes and
marshes accompanied by the large quantity of high-status metalwork that has
been dredged from, for example, the major river systems of southern Britain.
On mainland Britain inhumation burial makes an appearance in a number of
areas during the 5th and 4th centuries BC. Among the most significant, numerous
and regionally distinctive, are the ‘Arras culture’ barrow burials of
Yorkshire. Elsewhere there are a few indications of inhumations with cart
burials, as widely spaced as Suffolk, Dorset and southern Scotland. A particularly
distinctive feature of the ‘Arras’ barrows is the circular, or more commonly,
square ditch that encloses them. Relatively small square-ditch mortuary
enclosures occur in continental later Iron Age contexts and recur in the
suburban inhumation cemeteries of late Roman Britain and the rural cemeteries
of western and northern Britain during the Early Middle Ages. They also occur
infrequently in the burial grounds of Anglo-Saxon England. Inhumations in stone
cists are known from Devon and Cornwall, Scotland and, perhaps, from north
Wales, at Cerrig y Drudion. Some of these could be described as cemeteries with
graves arranged in rows. Nevertheless, despite the clear presence of formal
cemetery burial in certain regions – in Yorkshire and Kent during the Middle
Iron Age, in Dorset during the Later Iron Age, for example - apart from
individual high-status graves, it would appear that most of the population were
committed to the afterlife either with little ceremony or accompanied by rites
which evade the archaeological record. Articulated bodies have been recovered
from disused storage pits on settlement sites and, frequently, part-bodies have
been found. One possible explanation is that the initial rite may have involved
exposure and excarnation.
In north Britain a few instances of formal interment are recorded, most
of which are late in the Iron Age. These include crouched inhumation in short
cists. Extended inhumation is seen in the north, too, in the early centuries
AD. At Broxmouth, East Lothian, where crouched inhumations represent the Iron
Age rite, an extended inhumation in a dug grave is dated by radiocarbon
determination to the 2nd to 4th century AD. Ceremonial and ritual monuments in
our area are represented only by the complex of natural lakes and pools at Llyn
Cerrig Bach and the anecdotal evidence of Tacitus, describing the Roman
campaign on Anglesey in the summer of AD60. At Llyn Cerrig Bach, quantities of
metalwork, with many exotic pieces, are thought to have been ritually consigned
to the waters at the end of the Iron Age. The analogy is with documented
continental southern Gaulish practice and with the recovery of rich artefacts from pools and rivers in other areas of the
‘Celtic’ world. Natural features of the landscape such as groves, springs and
rivers may have provided the focus for religious expression. Nevertheless, this
should not preclude the possible existence of associated structural evidence or
their adjuncts. It is in this context that the decorated stones from Trefollwyn
and, perhaps, the stone head from Hendy should be seen and just, possibly, the
small rectangular structure within its low circular bank at Capel Eithin.
External contacts had, throughout the Bronze Age, played an important
role in influencing the course of British metallurgy. In the earliest phase of
the Bronze Age, Irish contacts had been important in the West. Towards the end
of the second millennium, cross-channel connexions had effectively
created an industrial zone, which extended from north-western France across
south-eastern England. These developments made their presence felt in Wales. A
new and significant development, however, concerns the appearance of novel
items of weaponry and horse gear of central European ‘Urnfield’’, and
ultimately Mediterranean derivation, and of technically proficient, thinly cast
and beaten bronze artefacts. Particularly
important is the introduction of the first true swords to Britain. During the
Great Orme phase of the Earlier Bronze Age, north-Welsh ores were a component
of most of the metal in circulation in Wales. Production in the north-west was
also high, to judge by the surviving evidence. Towards the end of the Earlier
Bronze Age, however, the focus of ore extraction may have shifted south to
Aberystwyth and mid-Wales. While it is possible that the Great Orme mines
continued in production during the Later Bronze Age, their significance appears
to have waned considerably.
The products of the earlier part of the Later Bronze Age, the Penard
phase, and its successor, the Wilburton phase, are very poorly represented in
the north-west. The Penard phase has been described as a crisis period. There
is significantly more bronze in circulation during the 9th - and 8th -centuries
or, at least, a greater survival of the products, and a reliance on recycled
scrap for raw material. In some areas, notably South Wales, a high proportion
of lead was added to the alloy. A certain amount of lead facilitates the
casting of the thin walled and complex
artefacts in use during this period but very high concentrations suggest a
shortage of other components.
During this period north-west-Wales still maintained contact with
Ireland as evidenced by the considerably greater number of gold artefacts of
the Irish Dowris phase than in any other region in Wales (for example, Pigeon's
Cave, Great Orme). The earliest iron artefacts appear in Wales (at Llyn Fawr,
Glamorgan; and in Denbighshire) at a time when the latest full bronze
industries are still in production, during the 8th -century BC. The objects, a
socketed axe, sickle and a spearhead are essentially bronze forms recreated in
the new metal. We must assume that iron became the metal for all major tools
and weapons quite rapidly. Nevertheless, with the exception of a single iron
ring-headed pin from the hillfort of Din Silwy, Llanfihangel, Anglesey, there
is a complete dearth of evidence for both bronze and iron artefacts in
north-west-Wales during the earlier part of the conventional Iron Age. It is
unclear in the present state of knowledge how real this apparent situation is.
Considerably more material is known from the Later Iron Age, in its Bryn
Eryr - Bryn y Castell phase, between the 3 rd-century BC and the 1st-century
AD. Even then the greater part of our evidence derives from a handful of key
sites, in particular, the votive deposit at Llyn Cerrig Bach (48 bronze and 63
iron artefacts) and the major iron smelting and smithing workshops at Crawcwellt (an estimated 23 smelting furnaces producing
about 0.5 tonne of fully refined bar iron),
and Bryn y Castell. Iron is generally reserved for tools, weapons and robust
items. Bronze is the metal of choice for fasteners and fittings where intricacy
of form, detail and decoration were more important than strength.
Field systems survive as above ground features in areas that are now
outside the zone of intensive agriculture. Particularly good examples occur on
marginal land in Arfon and Ardudwy. Some occur in clear association with
settlement and provide evidence for droveways, tracks, paddocks and, possibly,
where there is lynchet formation, for arable cultivation. Reuse, overlay and
replacement of boundaries can also be seen, however, and the relative
chronology of the association of multiphase boundaries to multiphase
settlements is generally unclear, as is indeed, the absolute chronology of
these features. Saddle querns and mortars are indicative of the processing of
grain and other foodstuffs and cereals are a component of the environmental
evidence at the very limited number of sites where such evidence has been
recorded. The evidence of animal bone is even less well represented. At Bryn
Eryr, both cattle and sheep were present. At Segontium, during the Roman
period, cattle were an important component of the food resource, drawn
presumably from pastures within the region. Cattle, particularly grazing the
upland pastures of the major river valleys, continued to represent a very important
economic resource during the earlier Middle Ages. This aspect of the
agricultural regime is perhaps under-represented or not fully recognised in the evidence for later prehistory.
Axes are one of the diagnostic indicators of regional metalworking
traditions during the Later Bronze Age. Later Bronze Age metallurgy in
north-west-Wales would appear to have been conservative, retaining a preference
for the traditional palstave, albeit in a distinctive late form, rather than
developing a local socketed type. Nevertheless, imported or intrusive socketed
forms characteristic of other regions, occur, and it is particularly
significant that north-west-Wales has more Irish gold than any other region of
Wales, indicating a contact across the Irish Sea which is a recurring theme
through later prehistory and early history. The different permutations of
metalwork assemblages across Wales have been seen by some to identify a
regional distinctiveness, which presages the tribal divisions of the Late Iron
Age. There is, on present evidence, no iron of the very earliest Iron Age in
north-west-Wales to compare with the admittedly limited evidence elsewhere.
There is, however, an iron axe from the Berwyns (Denbs.). There is also an
important group of bronze buckles, rings, pendants and attachments from Parc Y
Meirch, St. George, close to the hillfort at Dinorben, Denbighshire. These are
of continental north-European derivation and are indicative of the more general
appearance in Britain, circa 10th-9th century BC of bits, bridles, horse
brasses and the fixtures and fittings of wheeled vehicles. Concentrically
ridged and looped buttons, and also rings, from Llangwyllog and Ty Mawr,
Anglesey may be from functionally related equipment. There is also a beaten
bronze ‘bucket’ from Arthog, Merioneth, which displays a north- European
continental origin. The bronze knobbed and hinged collar from Clynnog is a
continental piece of, perhaps, 4th-3rd century BC date. Certain
settlements, for example, Bryn Eryr, were in receipt of salt from the northern
Welsh Marches during the later Iron Age, evidenced by the distinctive ceramic
containers (VCP) that brought the commodity. Tacitus (Annals XIV, 29) states
that the island of Anglesey had provided a refuge for fugitives, presumably
from the Roman advance. There may have been similar instances, at other times,
resulting from undocumented conflicts. Some material in the Llyn Cerrig Bach
(Anglesey) hoard, on typological and metallurgical grounds might be suggested
to derive from an original context in the late Iron Age of southern Britain and
there is a smattering of other items. The inhumation burial from Gelliniog is
another example of ‘external contact’, in this case in the individual’s person,
rather than by proxy. Two groups of bronze bowls from the coast near Barmouth,
found in the mid-19th century and recorded separately, may be from the same or
similar hoards. The collection includes ornamented handled cooking pans and
thin bowls. They appear to be pre-Roman Italian imports. Two Roman Republican
coins from Anglesey (Tal Gwynedd and Croes Allgo) may have entered circulation
in the region at this time as old issues included in the large injection of
cash, which financed the military push northward in the Flavian period. A
Flavian hoard of 39 coins from Llanfaethlu, Anglesey, contained 20 Republican
issues.
The strength of the current situation is that there is a framework in
place for the compilation of a comprehensive data set and for this data to
become freely available through the Regional Sites and Monuments Record. The
weakness of the current situation is that the resources now being applied are
not adequate to the task of maintaining and enhancing this record. It is a strength
that a pan-Wales programme of thematic assessment (of, for example, hut circle
settlement) grant-aided by Cadw: Welsh Historic Monuments, allows, in addition
to threat related and management considerations, a revision of aspects of the
data set. It is a potential weakness that research considerations are
incidental to, rather than determining factors in, the selection of such
themes.
It is unlikely that all types of defended settlement are functionally
related or that they occupied the same contemporary landscape. An absolute
chronology across the range of defended settlement is urgently needed, as is an
assessment of the diversity of function. Some progress has been made in
establishing a chronological sequence for certain individual non-defended
settlement. More work is required here, as is an assessment of the relationship
between defended and contemporary non-defended settlement.
The evidence is largely absent. Where do we look for it? In later prehistoric
Ireland we might expect cremation within the circuit of a ring ditch perhaps
under mounds or in the ditch itself. Significantly, certain ritual monuments of
an earlier past are known to have provided a focus for such burials. Elsewhere
in Wales both cremation and inhumation are known, but not in great numbers. The
appropriation of, or focus on, earlier ritual monuments is also a feature of
Welsh later prehistoric burial at, for example, Stackpole, Pembrokeshire and
Plas Gogerddan, Ceredigion. This association of burial with earlier numinous
locations is an enduring theme, which continues into the Early Historic period
as a determining factor in the location of a significant number of
6th-9th-century AD extended inhumation cemeteries. The reconstruction of the
ritual and funerary landscape of Later Prehistoric Wales as a counterpoint to
the extensive evidence for settlement is as much a research priority as is an
understanding of the settlement base in Earlier Prehistory where most of our
knowledge derives from burial and ritual.
Establishment of the chronological and landscape association of field
systems to defended and undefended settlement is a research priority. The
gathering of plant macrofossil (from waterlogged contexts), pollen and animal
bone (from limestone areas?) evidence for the agricultural economic base and,
in particular, to identify topographic or chronological distinctions in the
agricultural regime is a very desirable objective.
Peter Crew’s groundbreaking work on the process and logistics of iron
production is an example of the persistence required to achieve meaningful
results. Extension of technological analysis of this kind in the elucidation of
the transition for conventional ‘Late Bronze Age to Iron Age’ is very much a
priority. Peter Northover’s work on the analysis of copper alloys, identifying
the chronology of the change in emphasis in the sources of raw material now
requires the identification of production sites on the ground, through
fieldwork.
Are we shy of acknowledging the contribution of direct external
influences in shaping the cultural landscape of Later Prehistoric Wales? It has
recently been suggested, as ‘a reasonable assumption’, that the population of
Iron Age Wales was ‘largely indigenous, subject to natural increase and not
augmentation by periodic immigration’ and that ‘the cultural base of Welsh
communities in the first millennium BC … has its origins in a protracted phase
of social and economic change and interaction affecting communities whose roots
lay firmly within the region’. No doubt, in large part - but at some stage in
the prehistory of the British Islands, this indigenous population learned a new
language, ancestral to modern Welsh, and they learnt it directly. If not during
later prehistory, then when? If so, can we detect the influence of inward
migration in the archaeological evidence? The evidence of succeeding periods
across Europe catalogues unremitting migrations, some so recent as to be
familiar to living memory. There will certainly have been gift exchange and
trade. What then are the mechanisms by which goods are traded? Historical
analogy would require there to be an invariable aristocratic control or
sanction. Gift exchange implies diplomacy, alliance and a social hierarchy.
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