Food and Farming in Prehistoric Britain Read online

  Fonthill Media Language Policy

  Fonthill Media publishes in the international English language market. One language edition is published worldwide. As there are minor differences in spelling and presentation, especially with regard to American English and British English, a policy is necessary to define which form of English to use. The Fonthill Policy is to use the form of English native to the author. Paul Elliott was born and educated in the UK and now lives in Yorkshire; therefore British English has been adopted in this publication.

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  First published in the United Kingdom and the United States of America 2016

  British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data:

  A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  Copyright © Paul Elliott 2016

  ISBN 978-1-78155-508-8

  The right of Paul Elliott to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission in writing from Fonthill Media Limited

  Typeset in 10pt on 13pt Sabon

  Printed and bound in England

  Contents

  Introduction

  Picture Section

  1 British Prehistory

  2 Survival in the Mesolithic

  3 Farming the Land

  4 The Celtic Year

  5 Tools

  6 The Roundhouse

  7 Open-Fire Cooking

  8 Dairy Foods

  9 Baking Bread

  10 The Clay Pot

  11 Using Hot Stones

  12 Feasting and Drinking

  Epilogue: The Roman Invasion

  Appendix I: Native Plant Species

  Appendix II: Experimental Data

  Bibliography

  Introduction

  Food is a great link to the past. While written records, surviving artefacts, and the remains of buildings give us a sense of what life must have been like for people at a particular point in history, tasting a dish from that time provides us with unrivalled immediacy. Tastes and smells bring part of daily routine vividly to life in a way that the empty halls of a medieval castle or roofless Roman barrack block cannot.

  For anyone interested in British prehistory, some of the buildings and artefacts that do remain can be enigmatic and difficult to interpret. Maiden Castle, the huge hill fort of the Iron Age Durotriges tribe, is 19 hectares of sinuous bank and ditch defence with no Iron Age building remains visible at all. What was once a thriving social and political centre and home to hundreds of people, is now a bare, grassy hill, home only to a herd of sheep. Neither the flat central area, where the houses and huts of the inhabitants once stood, nor the visually striking and steeply cut chalk ramparts remotely resemble their appearance during the hill fort’s heyday. Lesser sites may not even be recognizable as manmade objects, and a great many prehistoric remains survive as nothing more than seasonal crop marks, stains in the soil, or readings on geophysical surveys.

  What does remain, however, is the detritus of life: broken pottery, post holes, quern stones used for grinding the daily bread, fire-blackened stones that once surrounded a hearth, and tools—either of flint or iron, depending on the period. Life around the family hearth, daily life that probably continued unaltered for millennia, can be studied and recreated; all the evidence is there. In a way this enduring institution, the prehistoric household, transcended the changes in religious practice, barrow building, tribal politics, or metallurgy. The same local sources of food were gathered, stored, prepared, and cooked throughout the centuries. Food and Farming in Prehistoric Britain will explore the range of foods that were available to the prehistoric family and suggest a number of prehistoric recipes. Without a Roman gourmet writer like Apicius to guide us, we must instead look at traditional methods of preparing these foods. How were they cooked? What tools were used? How were they served, and most importantly of all, what did they taste like? This is not just a prehistoric cookbook, though. The story of how families survived is a fascinating one, from the techniques used to hunt deer and wild boar during the Mesolithic, to the way in which crops were grown, processed, and stored. The roundhouse was fundamentally a farmhouse, both a dwelling and a work space, with a division of labour between men and women and between adults and children.

  Chapter 1 provides a brief account of British prehistory from the end of the last ice age, when humans recolonized the landscape, through to the henge builders of the Neolithic and the barrow builders of the Bronze Age. The narrative ends with the climax of the British Iron Age and the defeat of the tribes by Roman invaders. British prehistory has for some time been divided up into several major periods, with approximate dates attributed to them. Those of interest to us, and provided here for reference, are:

  Mesolithic Age

  9000 BC to 4200 BC

  Neolithic Age

  4200 to c. 2200 BC

  Early Bronze Age

  2500 BC to 1500 BC

  Middle Bronze Age

  1500 BC to 1000 BC

  Late Bronze Age

  1000 BC to 700 BC

  Iron Age

  700 BC to the Roman invasion of AD 43

  These are extremely broad divisions, used throughout the book to provide a reference point for readers; however, some of the great changes in prehistoric land use and construction overlap these rather neat categories.

  The term ‘Celtic’ is often used in popular literature to describe the Iron Age period across Britain and the rest of Western Europe, and it serves as a useful label. At one time it was associated with a distinct people who were thought to have invaded Britain en masse and elsewhere, displacing the local Bronze Age population. It was thought the Celtic invaders brought their language and culture with them at the start of the Iron Age.

  The Celtic language was certainly adopted by the Britons, suggesting a large influx of Celtic speakers at some point. Pots and swords, distinctive of a particular people, might be traded from one tribe to another and then adopted by them, without any invasion at all. But language is different and nearly always points to immigration or invasion. Tacitus tells us that there was little difference in language between British tribes living on the south coast and tribes living in Gaul. However, archaeologists find no evidence for large scale immigration or invasion at the start of the Iron Age and instead look further back, to periods of upheaval or transformation in British prehistory. Celtic migration might have occurred at the start of the early Bronze Age when a radical new style of pottery, new burial rites, and, of course, a new metal were all introduced simultaneously. However, it is more likely that Celtic peoples arrived in Britain much later, around 1500 BC. This was a revolutionary period in British prehistory, and the society that developed from it lasted until the late Iron Age and the coming of Rome. Some academics have suggested that the ‘grandfather language’ of all European tongues, known as Proto Indo-European, might well have arrived in Britain centuries earlier to usher in the B
ritish Bronze Age.

  As long as we remember that ‘Celtic speaker’ does not equate to ‘Celtic migrant’ we are on safe ground, just as when we talk about Roman towns or Roman food. The number of actual Romans in Gaul, Britain, Spain, and elsewhere was comparatively small. The local populations were still there and Roman ways, from fashion to food, culture to beliefs, were adopted by those living under Roman rule. In this context we use ‘Roman’ as a cultural label, rather than a racial one. So, although things in the British Isles were sometimes done a little differently (such as the construction of houses that were round, not rectangular), the culture was Celtic—in fashion, in religion, in language, in art, and material culture. As new styles of art spread through the Celtic world from its heartland in the foothills of the Alps, they crossed the Channel and were, in turn, adopted by the British tribes.

  Food and Farming in Prehistoric Britain neatly divides into two halves with the first exploring the world of prehistoric farming and the second half focusing on recipes and cooking techniques used within prehistoric households. Of course, in an age without writing, there are no surviving cookbooks from this era. Instead I have brought together available ingredients from British prehistory in ways that make sense, and, in many cases, that have persisted as traditional recipes throughout northern Europe. You will not find the recipes in this book adapted to the modern-day kitchen, the methods used come directly from the roundhouse and fire-pit and are offered in that spirit. As a concession, metric values are provided, but while cooking most of these dishes I simply approximated the ingredients that I needed. This, I feel, is the roundhouse way.

  A quick glance at the appendix will illustrate the crippling restrictions that a modern cook will find placed upon himself. Nearly all of the vegetables, herbs, and fruits that we take for granted in our kitchens today were later imports, brought to our shores either by the Roman trade network, the Anglo-Saxons, or by later Tudor explorers. Food that one associates with traditional British cookery—the cabbage, potato, leek, and sprout, for example, were unknown to our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestors. Recipes included in this book have to be mindful of the available ingredients, they also have to respect the cooking techniques used in the prehistoric roundhouse—oven-baking is out. The roaring fire and glowing embers of the hearth are the tools upon which we must depend in order to cook the majority of our foods.

  A good deal of the advice gathered together within these pages has been learned first-hand through experimentation and experience. This journey of exploration would have been a lonely one had it not been for the good friends who have accompanied me. Meeting many years ago as Roman re-enactors, we all yearned to ‘get back to basics’ and to enjoy the simple pleasures of family life around a roundhouse fire. Together, the research, hard work, and desire for an authentic hot meal drove us on.

  I would like to thank Lee and Sarah Steele who provided valuable advice on pot cookery; a number of my cook pots were made by Lee. I also owe a debt of gratitude to Alex and Gary Shaw, John Brayshaw, Jamie Mclean, Christine Elliott, and John Elliott for their advice and assistance, and for their feedback. Without diners waiting to taste the finished dish, the cook is merely going through the motions. Has it worked? Does it taste good? What should we try next? How did you get it to taste like that? Working simultaneously on different cookery projects, we were able to explore a huge number of recipes and cooking techniques from the prehistoric past through to the end of the Roman occupation. Alex’s recipe for lamb stew, Gary’s version of bean fritters, and Jamie’s delicious beef and beer stew, all appear in this book. Finally I must also mention Roman cookery expert Sally Grainger, with whom I discussed ancient cooking methods, the late Paul Atkin, who made my wooden bowls, and the staff and volunteers of Ryedale Folk Museum at Hutton-le-Hole in North Yorkshire.

  Paul Elliott

  Picture Section

  Early Bronze Age Beaker kit, including ash bow, wrist bracer, copper dagger, bone belt buckle, and a red deer quiver, based on the example found with Ötzi, the Ice Man. Clothing is based on remains found in Danish burials.

  Golden neck torcs, arm rings, and pendants from the Late Bronze Age, found in Wiltshire, England. These items of gold jewellery were worn to denote status within the tribe and, like bronze, gold was acquired through complex trade networks, which made it accessible only to the British chiefs and their families.

  Iron Age farmers owed allegiance to a chief, and were called to war by him. Tunics and cloaks are made of wool and the shield motifs are taken from coins of the period

  A Star Carr supper. Mesolithic hunter-gatherers had a wide array of food choices available to them. Here we have venison, beef (from wild cattle), mussels, oysters and razor shells, dandelion, hazelnuts, rose-hip berries, and beech nuts.

  Reconstructed roundhouses based on Bronze Age ground plans. These turf-covered houses were built at the Flag Fen museum, near Peterborough.

  Haystack at Pokhara, Nepal. These haystacks are built around a central pole and are typically raised above the ground on low timber platforms. Evidence suggests that prehistoric haystacks were also built around a central supporting pole.

  The Soay is a tough, hardy sheep that resembles the wild ancestor of modern breeds. These Soay are kept at Flag Fen museum and represent the type of sheep kept by Bronze Age farmers.

  Attempts to recreate the breed of pig farmed by Iron Age communities involved the cross-breeding of wild boar with the modern Tamworth pig.

  Goats in Chitwan, southern Nepal. They are grazing on leafy twigs, hung up as fodder by the householder. Staff at Butser Ancient Farm likewise found that their goats were happy to graze on dried leaves.

  Harvest time in the Iron Age.

  Wearing Bronze Age clothing, the author repairs part of the roundhouse boundary—a wattle fence.

  A collection of beautifully knapped flint sickles from the Late Neolithic. These examples are in the Hull and East Riding Museum.

  Reproduction of the copper axe carried by Ötzi, the Ice Man.

  Replica prehistoric axes and blades. Across the top is a Ewart Park-style sword. Below, from left to right, are an (original) Neolithic stone axehead from Marton in East Yorkshire, a copper axehead, a copy of a bronze flat axe from Butterwick in North Yorkshire, a copper dagger from the Roundway G8 barrow in Wiltshire, and, on the right, an Areton Down-style dagger blade.

  Bronze Age belongings—2300 BC. A grooved ware cookpot sits behind one of the new Bell Beaker drinking cups. Other items include green malachite (copper ore), a birch bark container, gold basket earrings, a fish hook, arrowhead, and decorative sun disk. Amber sits next to a piece of pine resin that will be used to glue flint heads onto arrows. Tools include a flat axe, awl, pressure flaker, and two flint knives—one with wooden handle, the other mounted on a bone handle.

  The Iron Age roundhouse at Ryedale Folk Museum, in North Yorkshire. Built in 2006, it is based on a house plan excavated at a quarry in nearby Pickering.

  The Iron Age roundhouse at Ryedale Folk Museum, in North Yorkshire. Built in 2006, it is based on a house plan excavated at a quarry in nearby Pickering.

  Inside the roundhouse at midday in summer. Light streams in from the door, yet the interior is still quite dark. A water jug sits by the fire and two copper pans hang from the cross beam of the iron firedog.

  A cattle byre in central Nepal. Similar structures (although round in shape) are frequent finds near prehistoric roundhouses.

  John strips bark from willow branches ready to make cages in which we will roast our fish. We found that the porch of the roundhouse makes an ideal work area, providing shade from sun or wind and providing a wall to lean on.

  Duck roasts on the iron spit, while a lamb stew bubbles in the copper pan behind it. Shields and other accoutrements are leant against the back wall and you may notice that the wall itself does not quite meet the thatched roof, allowing light to enter.

 
Mackerel cook over the fire. Simple interwoven cages were fashioned from fresh willow branches and then leant against the iron firedog that sat across the hearth.

  Ash cake, a simple bread made of flour and water baked in the ashes of the hearth. Although the crust is burnt, the interior is well-baked and edible.

  Stuffed lambs hearts. Once stuffed with mushroom, chives, breadcrumbs, and ground hazelnuts, these hearts were then coated in clay and cooked in the embers of the hearth.

  Piles of carbonised chestnut shells are common finds on prehistoric sites, from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. We roasted the nuts by putting them in a shallow pit, over which we lit a fire.

  Using an Iron Age rotary quern, Jamie rocks the top stone through 90 degrees in order to grind wheat grains. A saddle quern, used during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, sits just behind him.

  Prehistoric flatbreads, from left to right: malted wheat bread, spelt bread, and flax bread.

  Bronze Age pottery including a collared urn (left), Bell Beaker (centre) and food vessel (right).

  A colourful springtime soup that boasts all of the colour and flavour of early spring blooms. Ingredients can vary; this soup contains dandelion, chives, ground ivy, red deadnettle, gorse flowers, hawthorn leaves, and a little Jack-in-the-Hedge, all cooked in butter.

  Smoky stew, a dish of smoked fish, smoked bacon, chives, and gorse flowers fried in butter and then cooked in milk.