Cartimandua: A lost British Queen

I wrote about the Brigantes in my blog-post of 7th November last year, but said little specifically about their Queen, Cartimandua. She is one of only a dozen or so native Britons, alive at the time of the Roman conquest, whose name we know, and one of only two women (the other being "Boudicca," which may well be a title rather than a name).

Cartimandua ruled over a territory which included most of modern Yorkshire and Lancashire, as well as parts of the midlands. The triumphal arch of the Emperor Claudius, in Rome, records that he took the surrender of eleven native rulers in 43 AD, but does not name them. It seems likely, however, that Cartimandua, or her father, was among them.

Inscription from the Arch of Claudius in the Capitoline Museum, Rome. Photo: Jenni Ahonen, licensed under GNU.

Tacitus, in his Histories, tells us that she was "ruler of the Brigantes, having the influence that belongs to high birth," and that she "came to despise her husband, Venutius, and took, as her consort, his squire, Vellocatus, whom she admitted to share the throne with her."

Tacitus was probably playing to a trope, popular in Rome since the time of Cleopatra's dangerous liaisons with Julius Caesar and Mark Antony, of an exotic and sexually lascivious queen, but his wording is significant in that it implies (as does Tacitus's use of the word Regina, which he does not use in relation to Boudicca) that Cartimandua was probably, in our terms, a "Queen Regnant," with Venutius merely a consort.

"Her house was at once shaken by this scandalous act," Tacitus continues. "Her husband was favoured by the sentiments of all the citizens; the adulterer was supported by the queen's passion for him, and by her savage spirit. So Venutius, calling in aid from outside and, at the same time, assisted by a revolt of the Brigantes themselves, put Cartimandua into an extremely dangerous position."

A situation that is portrayed as beginning with a marital infidelity seems to have developed into a full-scale civil war within Brigantian territory. Vellocatus is mentioned only once, so the likelihood is that he was killed in the course of the war. The conflict was probably more political than personal from the outset. Reading between the lines, it is clear that Cartimandua favoured cooperation with the Romans, whilst Venutius argued for violent resistance. The "aid" that he "called in" from outside is probably a reference to the Catuvellaunian prince, Caratacos, who had been leading a guerrilla campaign against the Romans based in Wales. According to Tacitus, Caractacos "sought refuge" with Cartimandua, who treacherously handed him over to the Romans. The reality may well be that Venutius drew Caratacos into a failed coup attempt.

This conflict, in 51 AD, may have opened the rift between Cartimandua and Venutius, but she clearly had enough support among the Brigantes to remain in power. Venutius mounted another attack in 57 AD but was, once again, repelled, only seizing power in 69 AD when, amid the chaos of the "Year of Four Emperors," Cartimandua's Roman allies could muster only a force large enough to evacuate her. "The throne was left to Venutius," Tacitus states, "the war to us." At that point, Cartimandua disappears from history.

When, in 1951, the eminent archaeologist, Sir Mortimer Wheeler, was given a free hand to excavate a site of his choice to celebrate the Festival of Britain, he surprised many people by choosing the Iron Age earthworks at Stanwick, near Darlington in Yorkshire. The BBC recently published archive footage of Wheeler discussing these excavations with a young Magnus Magnusson, and these can be seen here and here.

The earthworks of Stanwick. Photo: Graham Scarborough, licensed under CCA.

The site is located deep within what would have been Brigantian territory, and Wheeler found evidence for several phases of fortification during the 1st Century AD. He concluded that it was probably the stronghold of Venutius. A more recent survey, however, by Percival Turnbull and Professor Colin Haselgrove, concluded that it was more likely to have been Cartimandua's base.

Among Wheeler's most spectacular discoveries was the skull of a man who had been brutally executed with at least three sword-blows. Despite the circumstances of his death, however, his head seems to have been buried with respect, alongside an elaborate sword and scabbard. Had the head somehow been recovered by his own people and given a decent burial, like that of Sir Thomas More many centuries later? Could this, for example, be the skull of Vellocatus? Archaeologists and historians do not permit themselves such questions as this, but novelists cannot resist them!

The Stanwick skull. Photo: Natural History Museum (image is in the Public Domain).

The Stanwick scabbard. Photo: British Museum (image is in the public domain).

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores and An Accidental King, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon UK and Amazon USA.

The Springs of Sulis: Bath before and after the baths

That the Somerset spa town of Bath has its origins in Roman times has long been known, but the circumstances of its ancient foundation are shrouded in mystery. The Roman baths were attached to a temple complex, one of the earliest such temples in Roman Britain, but also one of the finest. As a destination, Roman Bath may have been as much a centre of pilgrimage as it was a place for recreation and healing, for the waters were sacred to the Goddess Sulis-Minerva.

The Roman baths, as restored in the Georgian period (everything above the level of the column bases is reconstructed). Photo: Andrew Dunn, licensed under CCA.

It was, without doubt, the waters that first attracted people here. On a terrace 20 metres above the valley of the River Avon, a natural hot spring burst through the ground, delivering mineral-rich water at a rate of 0.25 million gallons per day. The site was probably sacred to the local Dobunni tribe before the Romans arrived. All traces of their shrine seem to have been removed by the Roman builders, but its focus is likely to have been the pool around the spring itself. Wooden statuettes of the gods may have been placed around it, and offerings thrown into the pool.

The spring at Bath. Photo: Andrew Dunn, licensed under CCA.

A wooden idol of the 5th Century AD from Altfriesach, Germany. Photo: Bullenwachter, licensed under CCA.

The Roman temple and baths were built during the second half of the 1st Century AD, either during the reign of Nero, or that of Vespasian. It may be significant that they were constructed in the aftermath of the Boudiccan Revolt. The revolt, centred on Norfolk, Essex and Hertfordshire, seems not to have spread this far west, and the complex may have been built by the Romans as a reward for the loyalty of the local population. It has been suggested that both the British client king, Cogidubnus, and the Roman Procurator (finance minister) of Britain, Julius Alpinus Classicianus, may have had a role in its construction. One of the mosaics at Bath has a sea-horse or "hippocampus" motif, similar to one found at the Fishbourne Palace, and the temple itself has architectural similarities with temples in and around Classicianus's home-town of Trier.

Hippocampus mosaic from Bath. Photo: Andrew Dunn, licensed under CCA.

Hippocampus mosaic from Fishbourne. Photo: Mattsuch, licensed under CCA.

The temple was dedicated to Sulis-Minerva, a deity unique to Bath, with a dual British and Roman personality. The pediment, however, bears the image of a male deity, perhaps the Roman God, Oceanus (Cogidubnus dedicated a temple to Neptune and Minerva at Chichester), but with the hair of a gorgon. Like Sulis-Minerva, the Roman god may be associated with a local one, such as Nodens, Belenos or Grannos.

Bronze head of Minerva from the temple at Bath. Photo: Bernard Gagnon, licensed under GNU.

The pediment of the temple at Bath. Photo: Bernard Gagnon, licensed under GNU.

It was on the basis of this evidence that I made Bath (or rather the Springs of Sulis, before "Bath" or its baths and temple were built) the backdrop for a crucial scene in Chapter 12 of my novel, An Accidental King.

The temple and baths remained in use throughout the Roman period, and vessels of pewter, copper and silver were deposited in the pool as offerings. They fell into disuse when the infrastructure of Roman Britain collapsed in the 4th and 5th Centuries AD. This, however, was not the end of the story. The ruins of the temple and baths are thought to have inspired the 8th Century Anglo-Saxon poem, The Ruin, which can be read here (in Anglo-Saxon and English translation): the poem is also recited on a video-link here.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

A Glimpse at What I'm Working On ...

My thanks to Alison Morton for inviting me to be part of the "My Writing Process" blog tour. Like me, Alison has published two novels, Inceptio and Perfiditas, and will soon publish a third, Successio.

So, I have to answer three questions:

What am I working on?

The final edits of my third novel, Omphalos. It is a multi-period historical novel with six inter-related stories, set in different time periods. Although the characters don't travel in time, my aim is that the reader should come away with a sense of having done so. The individual stories are arranged one inside the other, like a Russian doll:

• Touching Souls - A couple from New York travel to Europe in search of a lost, and surprising, chapter in their family history
• The Spirit of the Times - As the Second World War moves towards its end, a young German officer gradually comes to terms with the realities of what he has been fighting for
• The Infinite Labyrinth - A young woman escapes from the turmoil of Revolutionary France, and is drawn into a network of espionage and intrigue
• Jerusalem - An eccentric Catholic priest and his secretary make the pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1517, but the priest's world, and everything he believes in, are about to fall apart
• The Path of Stars - A 12th Century knight makes his way to Santiago de Compostela, accompanied by his confessor, but his mind is haunted by a dark secret in his own past
• The Song of Strangers - In 4000 BC, a sorceress is cast out from her community. She finds comfort in the arms of an adventurer from a distant land, but does not know whether she can trust him, or where their relationship will take her.

The stories are connected by a physical place, by suggested genealogical links, and by objects from one period which turn up in another.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

Each book is different, but I'm not afraid to work within a tradition. My first novel, Undreamed Shores, was inspired by Homer's Odyssey, and by William Golding's The Inheritors; my second, An Accidental King, by the biographical novels of Robert Graves, Marguerite Yourcenar and Hilary Mantel. Omphalos is inspired by multiple-narrative novels such as Italo Calvino's If, on a Winter's Night, a Traveller ... ; David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas; and Sebastian Faulks's A Possible Life. All draw on my own fascination with history, and explore aspects of the relationship between the present and the past. I aim to give readers a thoroughly immersive experience of the past, leading them through worlds that are, at the same time, strikingly familiar and disturbingly alien. There are subtle threads that connect all of my published work, non-fiction as well as fiction.

Why do I write what I do?

I write what I'm passionate about. I think it's the only way. I make no attempt to "write for a market." The market is fickle and, even if I were to identify a trend, and try to write something on the basis of it, the trend would have dissipated long before the book ever came to print. The idea for a book or story can come from anywhere: a film; a photograph; a place I've visited; a throw-away comment in a historical source; but, once I have an idea, I will run with it, and won't stop until the book is published.

Le Boulevard du Temple, by Louis Daguerre, one of the first ever photographs, which inspired one of my short stories. Photo: The Louvre (image is in the Public Domain).

How does my writing process work?

It starts, of course, with an idea, and that, as I say, may come from anywhere. The idea generally comes with one or two characters (historical or fictional) already attached. Then there is the research, and research really matters to me. A sense of place is important, too, so I try to visit the places I'm writing about, coming back with reams of notes. I spend a great deal of time in archives, at the British Library, for example, or the London Metropolitan Archives. My research for Omphalos had me trawling through the records of British camps for German prisoners in the aftermath of World War II; secret intelligence reports of the 18th Century; and the 12th Century Latin manuscript of the Liber Sancti Jacobi. I do most of my research up-front, but almost always find myself returning to my sources to check details. When it comes to the writing itself, I generally take the text through 12-15 drafts. One piece of advice I'd give to writers starting out is to join a critique group; I greatly value the feedback I receive from other writers.

German prisoners of war in an English Camp. Photo: Imperial War Museum (IWM non-commercial license).

A page from the Liber Sancti Jacobi. Photo: Anouris (image is in the Public Domain).

Now I'll pass the pen on to two other writers who'll be answering these questions on their own blogs on 17th February.

Nancy Jardine is a former primary school teacher, who lives in the fabulous castle country of Aberdeenshire, Scotland. A lover of history, it sneaks into most of her writing, along with many of the fantastic world locations she has been fortunate to visit. Her published work to date has been two non-fiction, history-related projects, and five novels. Three of the novels are contemporary mysteries; two are Celtic/Roman Britain historical romantic adventures - the third in the Celtic Fervour series is due in spring 2014.

Maggie Secara loves to explore the heroic ideal, to find the mythic in the everyday, and discover the places where the realms of faerie intersect the mundane in time and space. A writer from a very early age, Maggie's poetry has appeared in a variety of magazines on- and off-line. Her first novel, Molly September, is a rollicking pirate adventure. In April this year, The Mermaid Stair (Crooked Cat Publications) continues the Harper Errant fantasy series that started with The Dragon Ring and The King's Raven. Maggie and her very understanding husband live with their cats, hats and remote control cars in Los Angeles, California, while they try to figure out a way of moving to England.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores and An Accidental King, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon UK and Amazon USA

The Colossus of Chichester

More than two centuries ago, the head of a massive statue came to light at Bosham, on the shores of Chichester Harbour. Its features were badly degraded: some suggested that it was a statue of the Norse God, Thor; others that it was a Roman Emperor, perhaps Nero or Vespasian. It was kept, for many years, in the garden of the Bishop's Palace in Chichester, and was later moved to the Chichester Museum, and then to Fishbourne Roman Palace. It can now be seen at The Novium, Chichester's new city-centre museum.

The "Bosham Head," (Image: Chichester District Council).

At around the same time as the "Bosham head" was being unearthed in Sussex, a more complete statue was discovered at Ostia, the port of Rome itself. Although broken (and subsequently lost), this statue was in better condition. Twice life-size, at 5.57 metres in height, this was unmistakably a statue of the Emperor Trajan (reigned 98-117 AD). Evidence suggests that it was erected as a tribute by Trajan's successor, Hadrian.

I first saw the "Bosham head" many years ago, and looked at it again when I was carrying out the research for my novel, An Accidental King. I was tempted to include the statue in the book, either as Nero (perhaps erected in the aftermath of the Boudican Revolt) or as Vespasian (erected by the client King, Cogidubnus, shortly after the death of his Imperial patron). I had nagging doubts, however, and eventually left it out, a decision that I now have good cause not to regret.

Dr Miles Russell of Bournemouth University has recently re-examined the head, using the most up-to-date laser technology to compare the features of the hair and face with other known Roman statues. His conclusion is a surprising one: the Bosham Statue was almost certainly of Trajan and, carved from Italian marble, was probably a copy of the one erected by Hadrian at Ostia. Both are likely to have been versions of a military statue of the emperor found throughout the Roman world.

Military statue of Trajan from Xanten, Germany. Photo: Lutz Langer (licensed under GNU).

Such a statue, of course, can have nothing whatever to do with Cogidubnus, who was probably dead by the time of Trajan's accession, and must certainly have been so at the time of Hadrian's. These findings suggest a direct link between the 2nd Century harbours of Chichester and Ostia.

Chichester Harbour. Photo: John Armagh (licensed under CCA).

The harbour of Portus, Ostia, including the hexagonal basin created by Trajan, on the side of which his statue was located. Photo: Google Maps.

The "round temple" of Ostia, in front of which Trajan's statue stood. Photo: Marie-Lan Nguyen (licensed under CCA).

Russell has suggested that the Bosham Statue, which would have dominated Chichester Harbour as its twin dominated Ostia, was probably erected to commemorate Hadrian's visit to Britain in 121-2 AD. If so, we have to wonder whether Hadrian arrived at, or departed from, Chichester. We have no indications as to who owned the palace at Fishbourne at this point in time, but it seems overwhelmingly likely that the emperor was entertained there.

I have previously discussed the importance of Chichester as a Roman port of the 1st Century AD, in my blog-posts of 12th April and 5th August, 2013, but the new evidence suggests its continued importance as a harbour into the 2nd Century, long after the establishment of London as a key port and the capital of the Roman Province of Britannia.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

Encounters with a Lower Power: The Prehistoric Flint Mines of Norfolk

Close to Thetford, in Norfolk, is a heathland surrounded by pine woods. From a distance, the heath seems un-remarkable: it is covered, depending on the season, with buttercups and daisies, or with clumps of purple heather, and, in the summer, skylarks are to be heard singing above it. Drawing closer, however, it becomes apparent that the heath is pock-marked with craters, like the surface of the moon.

Grime's Graves, Norfolk. Photo: Ron Strutt (Licensed under CCA).

These craters represent the in-filled shafts of more than forty mines, dug more than five thousand years ago with picks made from deer-antler and shovels from the shoulder-bones of pigs. Our Neolithic ancestors were mining here, not for coal, or for gold, or for copper, but for flint. The vertical shafts, some of them twelve metres in depth, give access to cramped horizontal galleries that form a honey-comb deep beneath the heath.

Grimes Graves, the base of one of the excavated shafts. Photo: Ashley Dace (licensed under CCA).

The flint-seam at Grime's Graves. Photo: Robert Walden (Licensed under GNU).

I first visited the flint-mines of Grime's Graves as a Cambridge undergraduate, more than a quarter of a century ago, and returned, almost incidentally, many years later, when researching my novel, An Accidental King. The novel is set, not in the Neolithic, but in the early years of Roman rule in Britain, but something drew me back to a place that had impressed me so many years before. I learned something new: that some, at least, of the ancient mine-shafts had been re-opened and explored in the 1st Century AD, and it was this that led me to use Grime's Graves as the setting for the drama that unfolds in Chapter 19 of An Accidental King.

The tonnes of flint that were extracted from the mines by Neolithic people were used, principally, for the manufacture of polished axes. These had a practical purpose (clearing land for cultivation, cutting down trees to build houses and boats), but also a symbolic value (they are often found buried in tombs, or on ceremonial sites). Axes from Grime's Graves found their way, through trade and exchange, to all parts of the British Isles, as did stone axes from other "factory" sites in Cornwall, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland. There are even axes in Britain made of jadeite from the Italian Alps. In Chapter 3 of my earlier novel, Undreamed Shores, my protagonist, Amzai, is given a flint axe which might well have come from Grime's Graves: this axe appears again in Chapter 17 of An Accidental King (a Neolithic flint axe really was found beneath the Roman temple on Hayling Island, where this scene is set).

Polished axes of jadeite from Benon in Brittany. Photo: Pline (Licensed under GNU).

Whilst my tutors in the early 1980s emphasised the economic significance of the flint mines, and the trade in stone axes, more recent research has stressed the symbolic and even religious dimensions. My own research in the Channel Islands, together with work in the Lake District by Professor Richard Bradley and Dr Mark Edmonds, has shown that the places where the axes were made were very often in remote, inaccessible and spectacular locations, places that may well have had a spiritual importance in the lives of the people who made and used the tools.

Le Pinacle, Jersey. Axes of dolerite from a seam at the base of the rock have been found on Guernsey, Sark and Alderney, as well as on Jersey. Photo: Man Vyi (image is in the Public Domain).

Great Langdale, Cumbria. Bradley and Edmonds were able to show that the stone quarried to make stone axes was taken from some of the most inaccessible ledges high on the mountain. Photo: Mark S. Jobling (image is in the Public Domain).

Eleanor Catton, in her novel of the New Zealand gold-rush, The Luminaries, contrasts the "value" of gold to the European settlers with the "worth" of green-stone (pounami) extracted by Maoris from the same mountains.

The Maori made a distinctive type of weapon, the mere, from this green-stone, and individual meres had names reflecting their "worth," depending on the places where they had been made, the people who had owned them and the deeds to which they had been witness.

A Maori mere, a weapon used for striking the head of an enemy, but also a symbol of chieftainship. Photo: Sladew (licensed under CCA).

A Maori chief holding a mere. Photo: Musee de l'Homme, Paris (image is in the Public Domain).

It may have been precisely this sort of "worth" that was attached to Neolithic axes, and which explains both their circulation over great distances, and their persistence as heirlooms over long periods of time. The stories told about such objects are typically more important than any functional purpose they may serve. In the case of Grime's Graves, the act of digging into the ground, of entering a dangerous and unfamiliar space, of making contact with the spirits of the underworld, that gave worth to them, inscribing upon them the first chapter in a heroic story that accompanied them as they passed from one hand to another.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores and An Accidental King, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon UK or Amazon USA.

Jews and Christians in 1st Century Rome

By the middle of the 1st Century AD, Rome was at the centre of an empire that encompassed the whole of the Mediterranean world, extending northwards as far as Britain, and southwards along the valley of the Nile into the interior of Africa. Rome itself was a cosmopolitan city, in which Britons, Gauls and Germans jostled with Carthaginians, Greeks and Judeans, all bringing with them their own languages, traditions and gods. A city of many gods and many temples could easily accommodate new religions, so long as they did not interfere with one another, or with the management of the state.

The presence of a Jewish community in Rome itself is attested from the 3rd Century BC, and thirteen synagogues are mentioned in inscriptions, some of which enjoyed the patronage of senior Roman figures such as Augustus and Marcus Agrippa. Only one such synagogue has actually survived in the archaeological record, in the port community of Ostia, an establishment that seems to have continued in existence over several centuries.

The synagogue at Ostia. Photo: Makaristos (licensed under CCA).

Relief from the synagogue at Ostia. Photo: Setreset (licensed under CCA).

The relationships between the Jewish community and the Roman authorities were not always harmonious. Jewish religion, with its monotheistic claims, sat uneasily alongside Roman polytheism, and was singled out for suspicion whenever trouble was brewing in the province of Judea. In 19AD, the Emperor Tiberius expelled both Jews and worshippers of Isis from Rome, perhaps because they were seeking and gaining converts among slaves and freedmen. The "expulsion" seems not to have been wholly successful, because further action was taken some three decades later by the Emperor Claudius, against Jews who had (according to Suetonius) been "causing disturbances at the instigation of Chrestus" (impulsore Chresto). Is this, as many have supposed, a reference to Christ (occurring after the crucifixion), or is this "Chrestus" another figure, about whom nothing else is known? If it does refer to Christianity, the implication is that the Romans made no clear distinction between Christians and Jews, and may have assumed "Christ" to have been a living agitator rather than a martyred founder.

It is unclear at what stage the Christian community became an identifiable minority in Rome. Most of the contributors to one of the key academic texts, edited by Karl Donfried and Peter Richardson, consider that this happened, at the latest, in the Principiate of Claudius (41-54 AD), but a mocking graffito showing a man worshiping a crucified donkey, and the Greek inscription, "Alexamenos worships his god," could date anywhere between the 1st and the 3rd Century AD.

The Alexamenos Graffito. Photo: Bbltype (image is in the Public Domain).

A more certain reference is to be found in Tacitus's Annals, in relation to the great fire that destroyed Rome in 64 AD, during the Principiate of Nero. Nero identified the Christians as arsonists, and instigated persecutions against them (almost certainly the persecutions that claimed the lives of Saints Peter and Paul). Tacitus is clear about the fact that "Christus," who gave the sect its name, had lived in Judea, and had been executed during the Principiate of Tiberius, on the orders of the Procurator, Pontius Pilate.

We know the names, even if we know little else, of some of Rome's earliest Christians. St Paul's Epistle to the Romans, which most scholars date between 55 and 58 AD, mentions a Jewish couple, Priscilla and Aquila, tent-makers who had settled in Rome and were subsequently expelled by Claudius.

A manuscript copy of St Paul's Epistle to the Romans. This is an ancient copy, the original does not survive.

They are mentioned, also, in Acts 18 and Corinthians 16, and make a brief appearance as minor characters in my novel, An Accidental King. Tacitus, in his Annals, also mentions Pomponia Graecina, the wife of Britain's first Roman governor, Aulus Plautius, who was accused of adherence to a "foreign superstition" (which could be either Judaism or Christianity or, conceivably, the cult of Isis) and tried and acquitted by her husband. According to some interpretations, she is the Christian Saint Lucina (possibly her baptismal name), who endowed Rome's Christian community with one of its earliest catacombs for the burial of the dead.

The Catacomb of Callistus, possibly established by Saint Lucina. Photo: GerardM (licensed under GNU).

The Jewish historian, Josephus, suggests that Christianity had a particular following among slaves and freedmen, and the sacking of Jerusalem by Vespasian and Titus in 68 AD, graphically portrayed on reliefs on the Arch of Titus, almost certainly brought large numbers of Jewish people to Rome as slaves. Over the decades that followed, some of these people probably remained true to the faith of their forbears, whilst others converted to Christianity and others still became assimilated to the Roman population, but their descendants may have changed Rome in ways that neither they nor their captors could have predicted.

The Triumph of Vespasian and Titus, as depicted on the Arch of Titus. Photo: Gunnar Bach Pedersen (image is in the Public Domain).

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.

The "First Age of Sail" Revisited - Long Distance Sea Voyaging in European Prehistory

In September last year (http://mark-patton.blogspot.co.uk/2013/09/the-first-age-of-sail.html), I considered the evidence for long-distance sea-voyaging in the European Bronze Age (c2400-700 BC). Although the earliest definitive evidence we have for sail-driven sea-craft is a gold model of a boat with a mast found in Ireland and dating to around 50 BC, it seemed to me that the circumstantial evidence for long-distance maritime contacts at a much earlier stage (probably from c1500 BC) was overwhelming. It is clear that voyages across the English Channel, the Pentland Firth and the Irish Sea were made, at least occasionally, at a much earlier stage even than this (probably as early as 4500 BC), but how regular were these contacts, how were they undertaken, and what was there significance? These questions have remained unanswered.

These questions have drawn me into a debate with my fellow historical novelist, J.S. Dunn, who, in a response to my review of her Bending the Boyne (www.goodreads.com/book/show/10534367-bending-the-boyne#other_reviews), has insisted that long-distance sea voyages must have taken place on a fairly regular basis going back to the 3rd or 4th Millennium BC. Cross-channel voyages do feature in my own Undreamed Shores, but as rare, occasional and sometime accidental events, in vessels without sails. Dunn, on the other hand, features planned and regular voyages over much longer distances, as, for example, between southern Ireland and western France.

The circumstantial evidence, also summarised in a recent book by Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe, is certainly compelling.

"The evidence," he writes, "while comparatively slight, is sufficient to suggest that, by the 5th Millennium BC, maritime networks may have linked the communities together along the length of the Atlantic façade."

This evidence includes the existence in Britain and Ireland of 130 jadeite axes, whose ultimate origin lies in the Italian Alps. It includes the pottery from a megalithic site at Achnacreebeag in Scotland, which has been compared to pottery found in Normandy and Brittany, and on some of the sites that I have excavated in the Channel Islands.

Jadeite axe, National Museum of Scorland. Photo: Johnbod (licensed under CCA).

The megalithic site of Achnacreebeag. Photo: Robert Gladstone.

Neolithic pottery: 1-3 from Achnacreebeag; 4 from Castellic, Brittany; 5 from Vierville, Normandy; 6 from Er Grah, Brittany. Illustration: J.A. Sheridan.

It includes genetic, as well as archaeological evidence: the Orkney vole (Microtus arvalis orcadensis), present in the islands since Neolithic times, which has a genetic make-up suggesting movement from western France or Iberia in just one step; and Ireland's pygmy shrew (Sorex minutus), belonging to a genetic strain otherwise found only in the Pyrenees.

                                The Orkney vole. Photo: BBC.

"As to the vessels and sailing capabilities of the travellers," Cunliffe adds, "we can only guess." One possibility is that sailing vessels have a much older pedigree in Europe than is directly apparent in the archaeological record. I am not, however, inclined to believe this. To stretch the origins of sail back from 50 BC to 1500 BC, without any direct archaeological evidence, requires an imaginative leap. To take it back a further three or four thousand years seems unwarranted, especially when there is a marked increase in contacts from around 1500 BC that must be explained somehow.

There is, however, another possibility, which is that people were capable of much longer voyages in vessels without sails than has hitherto been assumed. This requires an imaginative leap of a different sort, an imaginative leap that is, perhaps, properly the domain of the novelist rather than that of the archaeologist or the historian, since it requires us to pose a fundamental question, the answer to which can probably never be provided by material evidence. How was risk understood and appraised by the prehistoric mind? To cast off from a promontory in Southern Ireland, and to head south in the hope of reaching a land that might have been known of only in legends, would, by today's standards, be an act of folly, but is this how it would have appeared to someone standing on that shore five or six thousand years ago? Generations of people have been inspired by faith, and we might well ask whether faith in an unseen land is really so very different from faith in an unseen god?

The 18th and 19th Century pilot gigs of Cornwall and the Scilly Islands (www.pilotmag.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2008/07/pilotmag-291-final.pdf) may give us some ideas as to the sort of vessels in which prehistoric mariners might have travelled. They were six-oared open wooden boats (their prehistoric equivalents might as easily have been skin-covered) used to carry pilots out into the western reaches of the channel at a time when pilots had to compete with one another for the attentions of merchant captains. They were, however, used for other purposes, prominent amongst which was smuggling, and in which capacity they are known to have crossed directly from Cornwall to Brittany. One Scillonian pilot, John Nance, is known to have made twenty-five round trips to Roscoff and, on one occasion, rode out a storm for 30 hours by keeping the gig's head to wind.

The Cornish gig, Penarrow, used today for racing. Photo: John Clandillon-Baker.

Men like John Nance almost certainly had compasses to guide them, and are likely to have made the journey previously in larger sailing vessels navigated using charts. Like us, they may even have held the map of Europe in their minds in a way that no prehistoric navigator is likely to have done. The prehistoric navigator would therefore have needed greater courage and faith, and for every one who arrived safely at his or her destination, there may have been any number of others who simply disappeared without trace.  That such voyaging can hardly have been commonplace is not to say that it did not happen, and there is an increasing weight of circumstantial evidence to suggest that it did.

Mark Patton's novels, Undreamed Shores, An Accidental King, and Omphalos, are published by Crooked Cat Publications, and can be purchased from Amazon.