CHAPTER VIII
Neolithic Trade and Industries
Attractions of Ancient Britain—Romans search for Gold, Silver, Pearls, &c.—The Lure of Precious Stones and Metals—Distribution of Ancient British Population—Neolithic Settlements in Flint-yielding Areas—Trade in Flint—Settlements on Lias Formation—Implements from Basic Rocks—Trade in Body-painting Materials—Search for Pearls—Gold in Britain and Ireland—Agriculture—The Story of Barley—Neolithic Settlers in Ireland—Scottish Neolithic Traders—Neolithic Peoples not Wanderers—Trained Neolithic Craftsmen.
The "drift" of peoples into Britain which began in Aurignacian times continued until the Roman period. There were definite reasons for early intrusions as there were for the Roman invasion. "Britain contains to reward the conqueror", Tacitus wrote,56 "mines of gold and silver and other metals. The sea produces pearls." According to Suetonius, who at the end of the first century of our era wrote the Lives of the Cæsars, Julius Cæsar invaded Britain with the desire to enrich himself with the pearls found on different parts of the coast. On his return to Rome he presented a corselet of British pearls to the goddess Venus. He was in need of money to further his political ambitions. He found what he required elsewhere, however. After the death of Queen Cleopatra sufficient gold and silver flowed to Rome from Egypt to reduce the loan rate of interest from 12 to 4 per cent. Spain likewise contributed its share to enrich the great predatory state of Rome.57
Long ages before the Roman period the early peoples entered Britain in search of pearls, precious stones, and precious metals because these had a religious value. The Celts of Gaul offered great quantities of gold to their deities, depositing the precious metals in their temples and in their sacred lakes. Poseidonius of Apamea tells that after conquering Gaul "the Romans put up these sacred lakes to public sale, and many of the purchasers found quantities of solid silver in them". He also says that gold was similarly placed in these lakes.58 Apparently the Celts believed, as did the Aryo-Indians, that gold was "a form of the gods" and "fire, light, and immortality", and that it was a "life giver".59 Personal ornaments continued to have a religious value until Christian times.
FLINT LANCE-HEADS FROM IRELAND (British Museum)
Photo Oxford University Press
CHIPPED AND POLISHED ARTIFACTS FROM SOUTHERN ENGLAND (British Museum)
As we have seen when dealing with the "Red Man of Paviland", the earliest ornaments were shells, teeth of wild animals, coloured stones, ivory, &c. Shells were carried great distances. Then arose the habit of producing substitutes which were regarded as of great potency as the originals. The ancient Egyptians made use of gold to manufacture imitation shells, and before they worked copper they wore charms of malachite, which is an ore of copper. They probably used copper first for magical purposes just as they used gold. Pearls found in shells were regarded as depositories of supernatural influence, and so were coral and amber (see Chapter XIII). Like the Aryo-Indians, the Egyptians, Phœnicians, Greeks, and others connected precious metals, stones, pearls, &c., with their deities, and believed that these contained the influence of their deities, and were therefore "lucky". These and similar beliefs are of great antiquity in Europe and Asia and North Africa. It would be rash to assume that they were not known to the ancient mariners who reached our shores in vessels of Mediterranean type.
The colonists who were attracted to Britain at various periods settled in those districts most suitable for their modes of life. It was necessary that they should obtain an adequate supply of the materials from which their implements and weapons were manufactured. The distribution of the population must have been determined by the resources of the various districts.
At the present day the population of Britain is most dense in those areas in which coal and iron are found and where commerce is concentrated. In ancient times, before metals were used, it must have been densest in those areas where flint was found—that is, on the upper chalk formations. If worked flints are discovered in areas which do not have deposits of flint, the only conclusion that can be drawn is that the flint was obtained by means of trade, just as Mediterranean shells were in Aurignacian and Magdalenian times obtained by hunters who settled in Central Europe. In Devon and Cornwall, for instance, large numbers of flint implements have been found, yet in these counties suitable flint was exceedingly scarce in ancient times, except in East Devon, where, however, the surface flint is of inferior character. In Wilts and Dorset, however, the finest quality of flint was found, and it was no doubt from these areas that the early settlers in Cornwall and Devon received their chief supplies of the raw material, if not of the manufactured articles.
In England, as on the Continent, the most abundant finds of the earliest flint implements have been made in those areas where the early hunters and fishermen could obtain their raw materials. River drift implements are discovered in largest numbers on the chalk formations of south-eastern England between the Wash and the estuary of the Thames.
The Neolithic peoples, who made less use of horn and bone than did the Azilians and Maglemosians, had many village settlements on the upper chalk in Dorset and Wiltshire, and especially at Avebury where there were veritable flint factories, and near the famous flint mines at Grimes Graves in the vicinity of Weeting in Norfolk and at Cissbury Camp not far from Worthing in Sussex. Implements were likewise made of basic rocks, including quartzite, ironstone, green-stone, hornblende schist, granite, mica-schist, &c.; while ornaments were made of jet, a hydrocarbon compound allied to cannel coal, which takes on a fine polish, Kimeridge shale and ivory. Withal, like the Aurignacians and Magdalenians, the Neolithic-industry people used body paint, which was made with pigments of ochre, hæmatite, an ore of iron, and ruddle, an earthy variety of iron ore.
In those districts, where the raw materials for stone implements, ornaments, and body paint were found, traces survive of the activities of the Neolithic peoples. Their graves of long-barrow type are found not only in the chalk areas but on the margins of the lias formations. Hæmatite is found in large quantities in West Cumberland and north Lancashire and in south-western England, while the chief source of jet is Whitby in Yorkshire, where it occurs in large quantities in beds of the Upper Lias shale.
Mr. W. J. Perry, of Manchester University, who has devoted special attention to the study of the distribution of megalithic monuments, has been drawing attention to the interesting association of these monuments with geological formations.60 In the Avebury district stone circles, dolmens, chambered barrows, long barrows, and Neolithic settlements are numerous; another group of megalithic monuments occurs in Oxford on the margin of the lias formation, and at the south-end of the great iron field extending as far as the Clevelands. According to the memoir of the geological survey, there are traces of ancient surface iron-workings in the Middle Lias formation of Oxfordshire, where red and brown hæmatite were found. Mr. Perry notes that there are megalithic monuments in the vicinity of all these surface workings, as at Fawler, Adderbury, Hook Norton, Woodstock, Steeple Aston, and Hanbury. Apparently the Neolithic peoples were attracted to the lias formation because it contains hæmatite, ochre, shale, &c. There are significant megaliths in the Whitby region where the jet is so plentiful. Amber was obtained from the east coast of England and from the Baltic.
The Neolithic peoples appear to have searched for pearls, which are found in a number of English, Welsh, Scottish, and Irish rivers, and in the vicinity of most, if not all, of these megaliths occur. Gold was the first metal worked by man, and it appears to have attracted some of the early peoples who settled in Britain. The ancient seafarers who found their way northward may have included searchers for gold and silver. The latter metal was at one time found in great abundance in Spain, while gold was at one time fairly plentiful in south-western England, in North Wales, in various parts of Scotland and especially in Lanarkshire, and in north-eastern, eastern, and western Ireland. That there was a "drift" of civilized peoples into Britain and Ireland during the period of the Neolithic industry is made evident by the fact that the agricultural mode of life was introduced. Barley does not grow wild in Europe. The nearest area in which it grew wild and was earliest cultivated was the delta area of Egypt, the region from which the earliest vessels set out to explore the shores of the Mediterranean. It may be that the barley seeds were carried to Britain not by the overland routes alone to Channel ports, but also by the seafarers whose boats, like the Glasgow one with the cork plug, coasted round by Spain and Brittany, and crossed the Channel to south-western England and thence went northward to Scotland. As Irish flints and ground axe-heads occur chiefly in Ulster, it may be that the drift of early Neolithic settlers into County Antrim, in which gold was also found, was from south-western Scotland. The Neolithic settlement at Whitepark Bay, five miles from the Giant's Causeway, was embedded at a considerable depth, showing that there has been a sinking of the land in this area since the Neolithic industry was introduced.
Neolithic remains are widely distributed over Scotland, but these have not received the intensive study devoted to similar relics in England. Mr. Ludovic Mann, the Glasgow archæologist, has, however, compiled interesting data regarding one of the local industries that bring out the resource and activities of early man. On the island of Arran is a workable variety of the natural volcanic glass, called pitch-stone, that of other parts of Scotland and of Ireland being "too much cracked into small pieces to be of use". It was used by the Neolithic settlers in Arran for manufacturing arrowheads, and as it was imported into Bute, Ayrshire, and Wigtownshire, a trade in this material must have existed. "If", writes Mr. Mann, "the stone was not locally worked up into implements in Bute, it was so manipulated on the mainland, where workshops of the Neolithic period and the immediately succeeding overlap period yielded long fine flakes, testifying to greater expertness in manufacturing there than is shown by the remains in the domestic sites yet awaiting adequate exploration in Arran. The explanation may be that the Wigtownshire flint knappers, accustomed to handle an abundance of flint, were more proficient than in most other places, and that the pitch-stone was brought to them as experts, because the material required even more skilful handling than flint".61 In like manner obsidian, as has been noted, was imported into Crete from the island of Melos by seafarers, long before the introduction of metal working.62
It will be seen that the Neolithic peoples were no mere wandering hunters, as some have represented them to have been, but they had their social organization, their industries, and their system of trading by land and sea. They settled not only in those areas where they could procure a regular food supply, but those also in which they obtained the raw materials for implements, weapons, and the colouring material which they used for religious purposes. They made pottery for grave offerings and domestic use, and wooden implements regarding which, however, little is known. Withal, they had their spinners and weavers. The conditions prevailing in Neolithic settlements must have been similar to those of later times. There must have been systems of laws to make trade and peaceful social intercourse possible, and no doubt these had, as elsewhere, a religious basis. Burial customs indicate a uniformity of beliefs over wide areas. The skill displayed in working stone was so great that it cannot now be emulated. Ripple-flaking has long been a lost art. Craftsmen must have undergone a prolonged period of training which was intelligently controlled under settled conditions of life. It is possible that the so-called Neolithic folk were chiefly foreigners who exploited the riches of the country. The evidence in this connection will be found in the next chapter.
CHAPTER IX
Metal Workers and Megalithic Monuments
"Broad-heads" of Bronze Age—The Irish Evidence—Bronze Introduced by Traders—How Metals were Traced—A Metal Working Tribe—Damnonii in England, Scotland, and Ireland—Miners as Slaves—The Lot of Women Workers—Megalithic Monuments in English Metal-yielding Areas—Stone Circles in Barren Localities—Early Colonies of Easterners in Spain—Egyptian and Babylonian Relics associated with British Jet and Baltic Amber—A New Flint Industry of Eastern Origin—British Bronze identical with Continental—Ancient Furnaces of Common Origin—"Stones of Worship" adorned with Metals—The "Maggot God" of Stone Circles—Ancient Egyptian Beads at Stonehenge—Earliest Authentic Date in British History—The Aim of Conquests.
It used to be thought that the introduction of metal working into Britain was the result of an invasion of alien peoples, who partly exterminated and partly enslaved the long-headed Neolithic inhabitants. This view was based on the evidence afforded by a new type of grave known as the "Round Barrow". In graves of this class have been found Bronze Age relics, a distinctive kind of pottery, and skulls of broad-heads. The invasion of broad-heads undoubtedly took place, and their burial customs suggest that their religious beliefs were not identical with those of the long-heads. But it remains to be proved that they were the actual introducers of the bronze industry. They do not appear to have reached Ireland, where bronze relics are associated with a long-headed people of comparatively low stature.
The early Irish bronze forms were obviously obtained from Spain, while early English bronze forms resemble those of France and Italy. Cutting implements were the first to be introduced. This fact does not suggest that a conquest took place. The implements may have been obtained by traders. Britain apparently had in those ancient times its trading colonies, and was visited by active and enterprising seafarers.
Long-head (Dolichocephalic) Skull
Broad-head (Brachycephalic) Skull
Both these specimens were found in "Round" Barrows in the East Riding of Yorkshire
The discovery of metals in Britain and Ireland was, no doubt, first made by prospectors who had obtained experience in working them elsewhere. They may have simply come to exploit the country. How these men conducted their investigations is indicated by the report found in a British Museum manuscript, dating from about 1603, in which the prospector gives his reason for believing that gold was to be found on Crawford Moor in Lanarkshire. He tells that he saw among the rocks what Scottish miners call "mothers" and English miners "leaders" or "metalline fumes". It was believed that the "fumes" arose from veins of metal and coloured the rocks as smoke passing upward through a tunnel blackens it, and leaves traces on the outside. He professed to be able to distinguish between the colours left by "fumes" of iron, lead, tin, copper, or silver. On Crawford Moor he found "sparr, keel, and brimstone" between rocks, and regarded this discovery as a sure indication that gold was in situ. The "mothers" or "leaders" were more pronounced than any he had ever seen in Cornwall, Somersetshire, about Keswick, or "any other mineral parts wheresoever I have travelled".63 Gold was found in this area of Lanarkshire in considerable quantities, and was no doubt worked in ancient times. Of special interest in this connection is the fact that it was part of the territory occupied by Damnonians,64 who appear to have been a metal-working people. Besides occupying the richest metal-yielding area in Scotland, the Damnonians were located in Devon and Cornwall, and in the east-midland and western parts of Ireland, in which gold, copper, and tin-stone were found as in south-western England. The Welsh Dyfneint (Devon) is supposed by some to be connected with a form of this tribal name. Another form in a Yarrow inscription is Dumnogeni. In Ireland Inber Domnann is the old name of Malahide Bay north of Dublin. Domnu, the genitive of which is Domnann, was the name of an ancient goddess. In the Irish manuscripts these people are referred to as Fir-domnann,65 and associated with the Fir-bolg (the men with sacks). A sack-carrying people are represented in Spanish rock paintings that date from the Azilian till early "Bronze Age" times. In an Irish manuscript which praises the fair and tall people, the Fir-bolg and Fir-domnann are included among the black-eyed and black-haired people, the descendants of slaves and churls, and "the promoters of discord among the people".
The reference to "slaves" is of special interest because the lot of the working miners was in ancient days an extremely arduous one. In one of his collected records which describes the method "of the greatest antiquity" Diodorus Siculus (a.d. first century) tells how gold-miners, with lights bound on their foreheads, drove galleries into the rocks, the fragments of which were carried out by frail old men and boys. These were broken small by men in the prime of life. The pounded stone was then ground in handmills by women: three women to a mill and "to each of those who bear this lot, death is better than life". Afterwards the milled quartz was spread out on an inclined table. Men threw water on it, work it through their fingers, and dabbed it with sponges until the lighter matter was removed and the gold was left behind. The precious metal was placed in a clay crucible, which was kept heated for five days and five nights. It may be that the Scandinavian references to the nine maidens who turn the handle of the "world mill" which grinds out metal and soil, and the Celtic references to the nine maidens who are associated with the Celtic cauldron, survive from beliefs that reflected the habits and methods of the ancient metal workers.
It is difficult now to trace the various areas in which gold was anciently found in our islands. But this is not to be wondered at. In Egypt there were once rich goldfields, especially in the Eastern Desert, where about 100 square miles were so thoroughly worked in ancient times that "only the merest traces of gold remain".66 Gold, as has been stated, was formerly found in south-western England, North Wales, and, as historical records, archæological data, and place names indicate, in various parts of Scotland and Ireland. During the period of the "Great Thaw" a great deal of alluvial gold must have distributed throughout the country. Silver was found in various parts. In Sutherland it is mixed with gold as it is elsewhere with lead. Copper was worked in a number of districts where the veins cannot in modern times be economically worked, and tin was found in Ireland and Scotland as well as in south-western England, where mining operations do not seem to have been begun, as Principal Sir John Rhys has shown,67 until after the supplies of surface tin were exhausted. Of special interest in connection with this problem is the association of megalithic monuments with ancient mine workings. An interesting fact to be borne in mind in connection with these relics of the activities and beliefs of the early peoples is that they represent a distinct culture of complex character. Mr. T. Eric Peet68 shows that the megalithic buildings "occupy a very remarkable position along a vast seaboard which includes the Mediterranean coast of Africa and the Atlantic coast of Europe. In other words, they lie entirely along a natural sea route." He gives forcible reasons for arriving at the conclusion that "it is impossible to consider megalithic building as a mere phase through which many nations passed, and it must therefore have been a system originating with one race, and spreading far and wide, owing either to trade influence or migration". He adds:
"Great movements of races by sea were not by any means unusual in primitive days. In fact, the sea has always been less of an obstacle to early man than the land with its deserts, mountains, and unfordable rivers. There is nothing inherently impossible or even improbable in the suggestion that a great immigration brought the megalithic monuments from Sweden to India or vice versa. History is full of instances of such migrations."
But there must have been a definite reason for these race movements. It cannot be that in all cases they were forced merely by natural causes, such as changes of climate, invasions of the sea, and the drying up of once fertile districts, or by the propelling influences of stronger races in every country from the British Isles to Japan—that is, in all countries in which megalithic monuments of similar type are found. The fact that the megalithic monuments are distributed along "a vast seaboard" suggests that they were the work of people who had acquired a culture of common origin, and were attracted to different countries for the same reason. What that attraction was is indicated by studying the elements of the megalithic culture. In a lecture delivered before the British Association in Manchester in 1915, Mr. W. J. Perry threw much light on the problem by showing that the carriers of the culture practised weaving linen, and in some cases the use of Tyrian purple, pearls, precious stones, metals, and conch-shell trumpets, as well as curious beliefs and superstitions attached to the latter, while they "adopted certain definite metallurgical methods, as well as mining". Mr. Perry's paper was subsequently published by the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society. It shows that in Western Europe the megalithic monuments are distributed in those areas in which ancient pre-Roman and pre-Greek mine workings and metal washings have been traced. "The same correspondence", he writes, "seems to hold in the case of England and Wales. In the latter country the counties where megalithic structures abound are precisely those where mineral deposits and ancient mine-workings occur. In England the grouping in Cumberland, Westmorland, Northumberland, Durham, and Derbyshire is precisely that of old mines; in Cornwall the megalithic structures are mainly grouped west of Falmouth, precisely in that district where mining has always been most active."
Pearls, amber, coral, jet, &c., were searched for as well as metals. The megalithic monuments near pearling rivers, in the vicinity of Whitby, the main source of jet, and in Denmark and the Baltic area where amber was found were, in all likelihood, erected by people who had come under the spell of the same ancient culture.
When, therefore, we come to deal with groups of monuments in areas which were unsuitable for agriculture and unable to sustain large populations, a reasonable conclusion to draw is that precious metals, precious stones, or pearls were once found near them. The pearling beds may have been destroyed or greatly reduced in value,69 or the metals may have been worked out, leaving but slight if any indication that they were ever in situ. Reference has been made to the traces left by ancient miners in Egypt where no gold is now found. In our own day rich gold fields in Australia and North America have been exhausted. It would be unreasonable for us to suppose that the same thing did not happen in our country, even although but slight traces of the precious metal can now be obtained in areas which were thoroughly explored by ancient miners.
When early man reached Scotland in search of suitable districts in which to settle, he was not likely to be attracted by the barren or semi-barren areas in which nature grudged soil for cultivation, where pasture lands were poor and the coasts were lashed by great billows for the greater part of the year, and the tempests of winter and spring were particularly severe. Yet in such places as Carloway, fronting the Atlantic on the west coast of Lewis, and at Stennis in Orkney, across the dangerous Pentland Firth, are found the most imposing stone circles north of Stonehenge and Avebury. Traces of tin have been found in Lewis, and Orkney has yielded traces of lead, including silver-lead, copper and zinc, and has flint in glacial drift. Traces of tin have likewise been found on the mainlands of Ross-shire and Argyllshire, in various islands of the Hebrides and in Stirlingshire. The great Stonehenge circle is like the Callernish and Stennis circles situated in a semi-barren area, but it is an area where surface tin and gold were anciently obtained. One cannot help concluding that the early people, who populated the wastes of ancient Britain and erected megalithic monuments, were attracted by something more tangible than the charms of solitude and wild scenery. They searched for and found the things they required. If they found gold, it must be recognized that there was a psychological motive for the search for this precious metal. They valued gold, or whatever other metal they worked in bleak and isolated places, because they had learned to value it elsewhere.
Who were the people that first searched for, found, and used metals in Western Europe? Some have assumed that the natives themselves did so "as a matter of course". Such a theory is, however, difficult to maintain. Gold is a useless metal for all practical purposes. It is too soft for implements. Besides, it cannot be found or worked except by those who have acquired a great deal of knowledge and skill. The men who first "washed" it from the soil in Britain must have obtained the necessary knowledge and skill in a country where it was more plentiful and much easier to work, and where—and this point is a most important one—the magical and religious beliefs connected with gold have a very definite history. Copper, tin, and silver were even more difficult to find and work in Britain. The ancient people who reached Britain and first worked metals or collected ores were not the people who were accustomed to use implements of bone, horn, and flint, and had been attracted to its shores merely because fish, fowl, deer, and cows, were numerous. The searchers for metals must have come from centres of Eastern civilization, or from colonies of highly skilled peoples that had been established in Western Europe. They did not necessarily come to settle permanently in Britain, but rather to exploit its natural riches.
This conclusion is no mere hypothesis. Siret,70 the Belgian archæologist, has discovered in southern Spain and Portugal traces of numerous settlements of Easterners who searched for minerals, &c., long before the introduction of bronze working in Western Europe. They came during the archæological "Stone Age"; they even introduced some of the flint implements classed as Neolithic by the archæologists of a past generation.
These Eastern colonists do not appear to have been an organized people. Siret considers that they were merely groups of people from Asia—probably the Syrian coast—who were in contact with Egypt. During the Empire period of Egypt, the Egyptian sphere of influence extended to the borders of Asia Minor. At an earlier period Babylonian influence permeated the Syrian coast and part of Asia Minor. The religious beliefs of seafarers from Syria were likely therefore to bear traces of the Egyptian and Babylonian religious systems. Evidence that this was the case has been forthcoming in Spain.
These Eastern colonists not only operated in Spain and Portugal, but established contact with Northern Europe. They exported what they had searched for and found to their Eastern markets. No doubt, they employed native labour, but they do not appear to have instructed the natives how to make use of the ores they themselves valued so highly. In time they were expelled from Spain and Portugal by the people or mixed peoples who introduced the working of bronze and made use of bronze weapons. These bronze carriers and workers came from Central Europe, where colonies of peoples skilled in the arts of mining and metal working had been established. In the Central European colonies Ægean and Danubian influences have been detected.
Valentine
THE RING OF STENNIS, ORKNEY (see page 94)
Among the archæological finds, which prove that the Easterners settled in Iberia before bronze working was introduced among the natives, are idol-like objects made of hippopotamus ivory from Egypt, a shell (Dentalium elephantum) from the Red Sea, objects made from ostrich eggs which must have been carried to Spain from Africa, alabaster perfume flasks, cups of marble and alabaster of Egyptian character which had been shaped with copper implements, Oriental painted vases with decorations in red, black, blue, and green,71 mural paintings on layers of plaster, feminine statuettes in alabaster which Siret considers to be of Babylonian type, for they differ from Ægean and Egyptian statuettes, a cult object (found in graves) resembling the Egyptian ded amulet, &c. The Iberian burial places of these Eastern colonists have arched cupolas and entrance corridors of Egyptian-Mycenæan character.
Of special interest are the beautifully worked flints associated with these Eastern remains in Spain and Portugal. Siret draws attention to the fact that no trace has been found of "flint factories". This particular flint industry was an entirely new one. It was not a development of earlier flint-working in Iberia. Apparently the new industry, which suddenly appears in full perfection, was introduced by the Eastern colonists. It afterwards spread over the whole maritime west, including Scandinavia where the metal implements of more advanced countries were imitated in flint. This important fact emphasizes the need for caution in making use of such a term as "Neolithic Age". Siret's view in this connection is that the Easterners, who established trading colonies in Spain and elsewhere, prevented the local use of metals which they had come to search for and export. It was part of their policy to keep the natives in ignorance of the uses to which metals could be put.