Yes, this is indeed a rant, for which I make no apology whatsoever!
It was with great dismay that I read in the December issue of BBC History Magazine that 'some schools prevent pupils from studying history'. What on earth is going on?!?! It seems that the ongoing row over league tables, and the pressure to perform well or be dropped, is causing schools in England to bar students from studying history.
The Historical Association surveyed 450 schools in England, accounting for 15% of the total, and of these 39% turned away students or whole classes from the subject at GCSE level. What's more shocking, is that this figure has been rising since 2011 - when it was at 16% - and 2012, when it was at 31%. The Association believes this is due to schools using their students merely to tick the boxes and improve their standing in the league tables, and not reflecting the true purpose of schools, to cater to the 'educational and cultural needs of the pupils', which is shocking, to say the very least.
What is the point of knowing what happened hundreds of years ago? History is not just a mildly interesting story of what happened long ago. It provides us with a sense of cultural identity and a sense of location in space and time. The academic subject of history teaches people to think critically, to evaluate, and to argue effectively. To deny students the opportunity to develop these skills seems scandalous!
At least the article ends on a positive note, as we look forward to an overhaul of the league table system that, hopefully, will lead to a fairer system for all concerned. The idea of league tables - effectively, the principles of capitalism - being applied to the educational system is woefully misguided, in my view. History would teach you that.
Saturday, 21 December 2013
Tuesday, 17 December 2013
Happy Birthday, Prince Rupert!
Yes, it's the birthday of everybody's favourite cavalier, Prince Rupert of the Rhine! He'd have been 394 years old today, bless him. Famed for his swarthy looks (much like his cousin, Charles II), and for carrying his faithful dog, Boy, into battle with him, Prince Rupert was commander-in-chief of his Uncle Charles I's army from 1644.
Already a charismatic leader after leading the rout of the parliamentary army in the very first cavalry engagement of the English Civil War at Powick Bridge, Rupert became the stuff of Royalist legend very early on - and, perhaps consequently, the stuff of Parliamentary scorn and derision.
The most hilarious, to me, of this derision must be the Black Legend of Rupert and Boy. While it was generally remarked that his dark complexion made him look 'like a black man', the link was not far from being made with the devil himself. Accusations of shape-shifting and demon-summoning were rife. But the worst was saved for the poor hunting poodle, Boy. Said by some to be leonine in proportions, this tremendous war-beast was purported to save his master by catching bullets in his teeth, changing shape at will, etc etc.
Boy was killed at Marston Moor, perhaps having an off-day from his usual bullet-catching tricks, but Rupert made it through the war, having left England following the fall of Oxford in 1646. He continued his uncle's cause following a brief stint fighting for Louis XIV of France against Spain. Earning a reputation as a privateer, he worked across the Atlantic harrying English shipping to cripple Oliver Cromwell's economy. Following the Restoration in 1660, Rupert was made Duke of Cumberland, was effectively Lord High Admiral, developed a number of military innovations for gun locks and gunpowder, created a new form of brass that was subsequently used to imitate gold ('Prince's Brass'), funded an expedition to Canada (Rupert Land is named after him), and was the fourth-best tennis player in England, according to Pepys. He died in 1682.
Already a charismatic leader after leading the rout of the parliamentary army in the very first cavalry engagement of the English Civil War at Powick Bridge, Rupert became the stuff of Royalist legend very early on - and, perhaps consequently, the stuff of Parliamentary scorn and derision. The most hilarious, to me, of this derision must be the Black Legend of Rupert and Boy. While it was generally remarked that his dark complexion made him look 'like a black man', the link was not far from being made with the devil himself. Accusations of shape-shifting and demon-summoning were rife. But the worst was saved for the poor hunting poodle, Boy. Said by some to be leonine in proportions, this tremendous war-beast was purported to save his master by catching bullets in his teeth, changing shape at will, etc etc.
Boy was killed at Marston Moor, perhaps having an off-day from his usual bullet-catching tricks, but Rupert made it through the war, having left England following the fall of Oxford in 1646. He continued his uncle's cause following a brief stint fighting for Louis XIV of France against Spain. Earning a reputation as a privateer, he worked across the Atlantic harrying English shipping to cripple Oliver Cromwell's economy. Following the Restoration in 1660, Rupert was made Duke of Cumberland, was effectively Lord High Admiral, developed a number of military innovations for gun locks and gunpowder, created a new form of brass that was subsequently used to imitate gold ('Prince's Brass'), funded an expedition to Canada (Rupert Land is named after him), and was the fourth-best tennis player in England, according to Pepys. He died in 1682.
Saturday, 14 September 2013
The business of the pilgrimage
The medieval pilgrimage. Ah, wonderful! When the countryside of England and Wales must have been full of endless parades of folks moving about the country, happily moving from one shrine to the next. Indeed, the whole of Europe was in on this party, and a multi-national pilgrimage business grew up to facilitate to the thronging masses.
The idea of the pilgrimage being something akin to a bus tour today is probably the best analogy. Lots of people going to see something and having lots of fun along the way. At least, that's how Chaucer would have us see it. In the medieval world, pilgrimages were undertaken out of a deep spiritual zeal, but it is actually a lot more than that. This is because travel in medieval Europe was dangerous. First, the roads weren't always good. Sure, if you were going from London to Canterbury it would be fine, as there were many decent roads, but if you wanted to see the Shrine of St Cuthbert in Durham, even if you were going from York, it was actually an arduous trek - the wild places of the north never recovered from the Harrying of 1069-71. Secondly, there were no street signs, and maps were not exactly AA-standard. Instead of a map, though, pilgrims would travel with an itinerary, of places they had to pass through to get to their final destination. These places would be chosen for their safety, and a number of towns grew up on the pilgrim trails, replete with inns and the like, all ready to cater to the pilgrims. However, you didn't know who was about. Outlaws roamed the forests, and were ready to attack anyone who came close enough. To this extent, pilgrims would always go off in large bands. If ever a single person decided to go off on pilgrimage, to atone for a great sin perhaps, this was tantamount to suicide, hence what a huge gesture it would be.
When pilgrims finally got to their destinations, usually they were so excited that they had made it they could be quite raucous. There's a wonderful account of the Bishop of Durham employing guards for the cathedral, to eject anyone who wasn't being exactly pious. But this just goes to reinforce how dangerous the whole enterprise was. To have endured the hardships of the road and the ordeal of travel, an almost fanatical hysteria would break out. Pilgrims behaved a lot more like the modern tourist than would perhaps otherwise be thought. In addition to the feasting and the bawdy singing, lots of souvenir-hunting would take place, with the successful pilgrims buying themselves a Pilgrim Badge, often unique to a particular site (for instance, the hugely famous site Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the shrine to the Apostle St James, was represented by a shell). Some (un)lucky folks may even find themselves a 'true' relic that they could buy...
So let's have a look at some of the workings of the pilgrimage...
The business of pilgrimage was built on the cult of the saints. Christians worship God, of course, and Jesus Christ. Interwoven through this religion are a number of saints, who each had a specific attribute. For instance, St Christopher is widely known even today as the patron saint of travellers. Therefore, you would pray to St Christopher before going on a journey. They do get quite banal, such as St Apollonia is the patron saint of toothache; St Elizabeth of Portugal as the patron saint against adultery, or St Fiacre as the patron saint of haemorrhoid sufferers. I don't really want to get into this here, but I feel that the Christian Church appropriated the culture of saints as a tool to ease the conversion of pagans during its early years. There are a lot of these, anyway, and they still feature quite prominently in Catholic worship today. The idea, anyway, is to pray to a particular saint in order to invoke their intervention in a matter for you.
However, sometimes prayer wasn't enough. Sometimes you needed a part of that saint to help. This is where the pilgrimage came in. Say, for example, you were the victim of unwanted advances of some nature. Well, who better to pray to than St Winefride? But to really make an impact, why not go on pilgrimage to her shrine in Holywell? Why not, indeed.
St Winefride was beheaded after she spurned the advances of a local prince, and a well sprang up from the spot where her head fell. It didn't take long for the well to become associated with many miraculous cures for a whole host of ailments, and people would come from far and wide. Apparently, James II came with his wife, Mary of Modena, to help facilitate the conception of a male heir. Hardly the sort of act to be associated with a patron saint of unwanted attentions, I'm sure you'll agree. The point is, though, the shrine was a major attraction. To this end, it was 'beautified' as such. The current well-chapel was the work of Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, who gave money for the building in the fifteenth century. However, it can be assumed that there was a chapel on the site before that, as the well was 'controlled' from nearby Basingwerk Abbey from 1240.
^ Beautiful, I'm sure you'll agree!
Basingwerk Abbey is a curious beast, and provides an interesting paradox to the common conception of the medieval monastery as a place of ascetic contemplation "far from the concourse of man". The abbey was founded by Ranulf II, earl of Chester (remember him?) as a Savignac monastery, but it didn't take long for the abbey to be absorbed into the rapidly-expanding Cistercian network of monasteries. While the Cistercians usually preferred to be in the wilds away from the world, Basingwerk was founded close to the Norman castle at Hen Blas. This may have been due to the expediency of security, as this area of Flintshire was in fact part of the original border between Norman England and Wales, so some fortification would have been required. But despite this, Basingwerk soon thrived under Cistercian guidance, and developed into quite the power-house.
^ general view of the South Transept and Range.
The reason for this is almost entirely due to the business of pilgrimage. Basingwerk garnered a respectable amount of land as the thirteenth century wore on, until in 1240 Dafydd ap Llywelyn (the son of Llywelyn 'the Great', and the first Prince of Gwynedd to formally claim the title of Prince of Wales) gave the monks the Shrine of St Winefride. Possession of such an important pilgrimage site proved to be a huge boon to the abbey in due course. But the abbey was already located on one of the most important pilgrimage routes in Britain, the route to Holyhead and, ultimately, Ireland, and so as the centuries wore on, Basingwerk took advantage of this to improve the works of the monastery buildings.
^ The famous Chapter House.
It was around the turn of the sixteenth century that Basingwerk became the monastic powerhouse of North Wales, under the guidance of its abbot, Thomas Pennant. It was while Pennant was in charge that Basingwerk is noted to have had 'new houses for guests who are said to be so numerous they have to be accommodated for meals at two sittings'. While the guest-house is nothing strange in the standard Cistercian monastery - charity towards guests is one of the basic tenets of the Order - the fact that Basingwerk has set up something of a 'pilgrimage hotel' is interesting. We know that St Winefride's Well was a busy old place, so we can assume that the monks of Basingwerk, having control of the site, must have had quite the lucrative business on their hands.
^ The guest wing.
Because pilgrims didn't just go to these places to pray and then leave. Travel in medieval Europe was a dangerous business, after all, and you didn't undertake such a thing lightly. Pilgrims wandered the roads in bands, for the greater security against robbery etc. They would move about the countryside getting increasingly excited as their destination came within sight, and once there a somewhat carnival-atmosphere ensued. It was almost like a holiday, you could say. Undertaken out of religious devotion, it nevertheless held something of the secular as pilgrims would need to eat and drink (especially after a very long journey), and would like to buy souvenirs of the place they had been to. Yes, pilgrims were the medieval equivalent of tourists, with some roaming the country in pursuit of the collection of pilgrim 'badges' as much as of religious zeal.
Basingwerk and St Winefride's Well are interesting facets of the pilgrimage business in medieval Britain, but there is perhaps something bigger lurking beneath the surface here. St Winefride's Well is, after all, just a 'holy place'; aside from being the purported place where the decapitated saint's head fell to the ground, it doesn't really have any physical remains - these were removed to Shrewsbury Abbey, as you may remember. But this brings us on to the subject of relics, which is a hot topic where pilgrimages are concerned.
I've already said that pilgrimages were undertaken out of religious zeal, but another big cause for undertaking a pilgrimage was for health reasons. St Winefride's Well was well-known (pun not intended, sorry) for its curative power, and indeed continues to function in this way. Bathing in the waters of the well is the method by which the sick could be cured here. But at other shrines, where were housed relics of the saints themselves, this could be brought about by physical contact with (or, at the very least, physical proximity to) the relics on show. Medieval England's premier pilgrimage site is often said to be the Shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, which attracted vast numbers of pilgrims from the continent as well as domestically. Other massively popular places that stick out include Durham Cathedral (the Shrine of St Cuthbert, which used to be the preeminent English pilgrimage site until St Thomas' martyrdom), Glastonbury Abbey (the tomb of King Arthur), St Davids Cathedral (first church of St David) and Westminster Abbey (the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor). But these weren't the only religious houses getting in on the relic business. Almost every abbey that desired an income greater than that which could be provided by its flock of sheep had at least one relic to its name.
Relics are the remnants of saints' lives - the term 'relic' comes from 'reliquus', or 'that which remains'. They can be broadly categorized into two groups - body parts, and associated items. There is also a curious hierarchy among relics - body parts trump associated items; the more 'necessary' the body part, the more important it was, and the more 'holy' the saint, the more important the relic. Where relics are concerned, though, we enter a bizarre world of preserved bodily fluids and withered heads that would be vaguely disturbing at best, if it weren't for the religious overtones involved. Of course, the most important relics are those associated with Jesus himself, and his mother, Mary. Relics of Jesus abound from the famous Turin Shroud, or the Mandylion of Edessa, to fragments of the True Cross (there are a lot of these), phials of Holy Blood, even his milk-teeth and foreskin. In fact, the Holy Prepuce was quite startlingly claimed to be held by several monasteries across Europe, which led to a 'test' being devised whereby physicians would chew on the withered remains to see if it was in fact really human skin. Of course, Jesus' body itself disappeared as part of the Resurrection, so no other body parts could be claimed to exist in the world. His mother has a similar problem, so we have a lot of needlework associated with her, but it is just as weird as regards her 'personal' relics - we range from the afterbirth and umbilical cord to phials of her breast milk. Such phials were exceptionally popular, perhaps stemming from the legend of St Bernard of Clairvaux (the self-same St Bernard who founded the Cistercian Order) who, while praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary, is hit by a squirt from the lactating Madonna, in one version in the eye, which cures an eye infection he had. Perhaps this is why all Cistercian monasteries were dedicated to St Mary. At any rate, phials of the liquid swept Europe by storm, with one famously held at Walsingham Abbey in Norfolk, and also reliquaries that contained white powder that was claimed to be the dried milk of St Mary. The French religious reformer and iconoclast John Calvin later famously declared that 'had the Virgin been a cow her whole life, she could not have produced such a quantity'.
Hailes Abbey in Somerset is an example of how the possession of a holy relic could transform the life of an abbey. Founded in 1242, making it one of the latest Cistercian monasteries to be founded in England, it had a rough start until the abbey was presented with a phial of the Holy Blood of Christ in 1270. This presentation necessitated a rebuilding of the abbey church to form a suitable shrine for such a relic, which taxed the already-impoverished monks, but in the long run the abbey was able to recover into one of the major pilgrimage centres in the country.
^ a general view across the cloister.
The guidebook highlights an interesting point about relics. In it, we learn that the phial was bought by Edmund, a son of the abbey's initial benefactor, from the Count of Flanders three years before. Quite the innocuous sentence, hiding the massive trade in relics that boomed across the continent for the majority of the middle ages. Philip II of Spain is famous as being a tremendous relic-collector, building an extensive wing onto the Escurial Palace in which to house his collection. While there are stories such as St Helena, who went to the Holy Land in search of relics and managed to find many of them to bring back to Europe, or even the monks of Shrewsbury Abbey who 'discovered' the bones of St Winefride and brought them to their abbey, these seemingly benign adventures belie the often torrid and certainly sometimes bloody history of relic-hunting that took place from roughly the middle of the twelfth century. Relic merchants would often spring up at well-visited pilgrimage sites, offering to sell the pilgrims more "relics" that would often be nothing more than scraps of cloth they tore up that morning, or sometimes the bones of some poor forgotten corpse they had dug up the night before. Baldrick's charlatanesque behaviour in The Black Adder isn't all that far off the mark. The desire appears to have been to possess a part of a saint to take with you wherever you went, so that it would ward off evil and keep you healthy.
The abbey at Hailes was rebuilt with a grand chevet-style east-end, thought to have been modelled after Croxden Abbey in Staffordshire. Today, only the imprint remains, but it still looks very interesting, and must have been rather grand when it was finished:
The abbey went through as many ups and downs as any other monastery throughout the medieval period, all while a steady flow of pilgrims came to see the Holy Blood of Hailes. However, when the Dissolution came to this corner of Somerset, one of the main aims was the suppression of all reliquaries and shrines. Thus the Holy Blood was decreed to be fraudulent, the Bishop of Rochester proving it to be nothing more than 'honey clarified and coloured with saffron'.
We can't be sure just how much truth there lies in this, as the King's ministers were keen to debunk all such cults and superstitions. It would be easy to denounce the relics as fakes in order to justify their iconoclastic actions. But this brings up another subject - does it even matter?
While there is perhaps a moral debate to be had as to the authenticity of relics - and, indeed, of holy places as well - it can be strongly argued that it doesn't really matter. Religion, to a believer, does not need to be proven - faith is, after all, built on belief and not proof. To the faithful, all relics were believed to be real, and therefore worthy of the dangers and delights of the pilgrimage to see them. Relic-peddlers were out to capitalize on this belief, of course, which allows for a degree of cynicism to filter into the view of the medieval pilgrimage. However, the enormous extent to which pilgrimages took place throughout the medieval world is, ultimately, testament to the power of religious belief during this time, something that has largely been lost by today's much more secular society.
The idea of the pilgrimage being something akin to a bus tour today is probably the best analogy. Lots of people going to see something and having lots of fun along the way. At least, that's how Chaucer would have us see it. In the medieval world, pilgrimages were undertaken out of a deep spiritual zeal, but it is actually a lot more than that. This is because travel in medieval Europe was dangerous. First, the roads weren't always good. Sure, if you were going from London to Canterbury it would be fine, as there were many decent roads, but if you wanted to see the Shrine of St Cuthbert in Durham, even if you were going from York, it was actually an arduous trek - the wild places of the north never recovered from the Harrying of 1069-71. Secondly, there were no street signs, and maps were not exactly AA-standard. Instead of a map, though, pilgrims would travel with an itinerary, of places they had to pass through to get to their final destination. These places would be chosen for their safety, and a number of towns grew up on the pilgrim trails, replete with inns and the like, all ready to cater to the pilgrims. However, you didn't know who was about. Outlaws roamed the forests, and were ready to attack anyone who came close enough. To this extent, pilgrims would always go off in large bands. If ever a single person decided to go off on pilgrimage, to atone for a great sin perhaps, this was tantamount to suicide, hence what a huge gesture it would be.
When pilgrims finally got to their destinations, usually they were so excited that they had made it they could be quite raucous. There's a wonderful account of the Bishop of Durham employing guards for the cathedral, to eject anyone who wasn't being exactly pious. But this just goes to reinforce how dangerous the whole enterprise was. To have endured the hardships of the road and the ordeal of travel, an almost fanatical hysteria would break out. Pilgrims behaved a lot more like the modern tourist than would perhaps otherwise be thought. In addition to the feasting and the bawdy singing, lots of souvenir-hunting would take place, with the successful pilgrims buying themselves a Pilgrim Badge, often unique to a particular site (for instance, the hugely famous site Santiago de Compostela in Spain, the shrine to the Apostle St James, was represented by a shell). Some (un)lucky folks may even find themselves a 'true' relic that they could buy...
So let's have a look at some of the workings of the pilgrimage...
The business of pilgrimage was built on the cult of the saints. Christians worship God, of course, and Jesus Christ. Interwoven through this religion are a number of saints, who each had a specific attribute. For instance, St Christopher is widely known even today as the patron saint of travellers. Therefore, you would pray to St Christopher before going on a journey. They do get quite banal, such as St Apollonia is the patron saint of toothache; St Elizabeth of Portugal as the patron saint against adultery, or St Fiacre as the patron saint of haemorrhoid sufferers. I don't really want to get into this here, but I feel that the Christian Church appropriated the culture of saints as a tool to ease the conversion of pagans during its early years. There are a lot of these, anyway, and they still feature quite prominently in Catholic worship today. The idea, anyway, is to pray to a particular saint in order to invoke their intervention in a matter for you.
However, sometimes prayer wasn't enough. Sometimes you needed a part of that saint to help. This is where the pilgrimage came in. Say, for example, you were the victim of unwanted advances of some nature. Well, who better to pray to than St Winefride? But to really make an impact, why not go on pilgrimage to her shrine in Holywell? Why not, indeed.
St Winefride was beheaded after she spurned the advances of a local prince, and a well sprang up from the spot where her head fell. It didn't take long for the well to become associated with many miraculous cures for a whole host of ailments, and people would come from far and wide. Apparently, James II came with his wife, Mary of Modena, to help facilitate the conception of a male heir. Hardly the sort of act to be associated with a patron saint of unwanted attentions, I'm sure you'll agree. The point is, though, the shrine was a major attraction. To this end, it was 'beautified' as such. The current well-chapel was the work of Margaret Beaufort, the mother of Henry VII, who gave money for the building in the fifteenth century. However, it can be assumed that there was a chapel on the site before that, as the well was 'controlled' from nearby Basingwerk Abbey from 1240.
Basingwerk Abbey is a curious beast, and provides an interesting paradox to the common conception of the medieval monastery as a place of ascetic contemplation "far from the concourse of man". The abbey was founded by Ranulf II, earl of Chester (remember him?) as a Savignac monastery, but it didn't take long for the abbey to be absorbed into the rapidly-expanding Cistercian network of monasteries. While the Cistercians usually preferred to be in the wilds away from the world, Basingwerk was founded close to the Norman castle at Hen Blas. This may have been due to the expediency of security, as this area of Flintshire was in fact part of the original border between Norman England and Wales, so some fortification would have been required. But despite this, Basingwerk soon thrived under Cistercian guidance, and developed into quite the power-house.
The reason for this is almost entirely due to the business of pilgrimage. Basingwerk garnered a respectable amount of land as the thirteenth century wore on, until in 1240 Dafydd ap Llywelyn (the son of Llywelyn 'the Great', and the first Prince of Gwynedd to formally claim the title of Prince of Wales) gave the monks the Shrine of St Winefride. Possession of such an important pilgrimage site proved to be a huge boon to the abbey in due course. But the abbey was already located on one of the most important pilgrimage routes in Britain, the route to Holyhead and, ultimately, Ireland, and so as the centuries wore on, Basingwerk took advantage of this to improve the works of the monastery buildings.
It was around the turn of the sixteenth century that Basingwerk became the monastic powerhouse of North Wales, under the guidance of its abbot, Thomas Pennant. It was while Pennant was in charge that Basingwerk is noted to have had 'new houses for guests who are said to be so numerous they have to be accommodated for meals at two sittings'. While the guest-house is nothing strange in the standard Cistercian monastery - charity towards guests is one of the basic tenets of the Order - the fact that Basingwerk has set up something of a 'pilgrimage hotel' is interesting. We know that St Winefride's Well was a busy old place, so we can assume that the monks of Basingwerk, having control of the site, must have had quite the lucrative business on their hands.
Because pilgrims didn't just go to these places to pray and then leave. Travel in medieval Europe was a dangerous business, after all, and you didn't undertake such a thing lightly. Pilgrims wandered the roads in bands, for the greater security against robbery etc. They would move about the countryside getting increasingly excited as their destination came within sight, and once there a somewhat carnival-atmosphere ensued. It was almost like a holiday, you could say. Undertaken out of religious devotion, it nevertheless held something of the secular as pilgrims would need to eat and drink (especially after a very long journey), and would like to buy souvenirs of the place they had been to. Yes, pilgrims were the medieval equivalent of tourists, with some roaming the country in pursuit of the collection of pilgrim 'badges' as much as of religious zeal.
Basingwerk and St Winefride's Well are interesting facets of the pilgrimage business in medieval Britain, but there is perhaps something bigger lurking beneath the surface here. St Winefride's Well is, after all, just a 'holy place'; aside from being the purported place where the decapitated saint's head fell to the ground, it doesn't really have any physical remains - these were removed to Shrewsbury Abbey, as you may remember. But this brings us on to the subject of relics, which is a hot topic where pilgrimages are concerned.
I've already said that pilgrimages were undertaken out of religious zeal, but another big cause for undertaking a pilgrimage was for health reasons. St Winefride's Well was well-known (pun not intended, sorry) for its curative power, and indeed continues to function in this way. Bathing in the waters of the well is the method by which the sick could be cured here. But at other shrines, where were housed relics of the saints themselves, this could be brought about by physical contact with (or, at the very least, physical proximity to) the relics on show. Medieval England's premier pilgrimage site is often said to be the Shrine of St Thomas Becket at Canterbury Cathedral, which attracted vast numbers of pilgrims from the continent as well as domestically. Other massively popular places that stick out include Durham Cathedral (the Shrine of St Cuthbert, which used to be the preeminent English pilgrimage site until St Thomas' martyrdom), Glastonbury Abbey (the tomb of King Arthur), St Davids Cathedral (first church of St David) and Westminster Abbey (the Shrine of St Edward the Confessor). But these weren't the only religious houses getting in on the relic business. Almost every abbey that desired an income greater than that which could be provided by its flock of sheep had at least one relic to its name.
Relics are the remnants of saints' lives - the term 'relic' comes from 'reliquus', or 'that which remains'. They can be broadly categorized into two groups - body parts, and associated items. There is also a curious hierarchy among relics - body parts trump associated items; the more 'necessary' the body part, the more important it was, and the more 'holy' the saint, the more important the relic. Where relics are concerned, though, we enter a bizarre world of preserved bodily fluids and withered heads that would be vaguely disturbing at best, if it weren't for the religious overtones involved. Of course, the most important relics are those associated with Jesus himself, and his mother, Mary. Relics of Jesus abound from the famous Turin Shroud, or the Mandylion of Edessa, to fragments of the True Cross (there are a lot of these), phials of Holy Blood, even his milk-teeth and foreskin. In fact, the Holy Prepuce was quite startlingly claimed to be held by several monasteries across Europe, which led to a 'test' being devised whereby physicians would chew on the withered remains to see if it was in fact really human skin. Of course, Jesus' body itself disappeared as part of the Resurrection, so no other body parts could be claimed to exist in the world. His mother has a similar problem, so we have a lot of needlework associated with her, but it is just as weird as regards her 'personal' relics - we range from the afterbirth and umbilical cord to phials of her breast milk. Such phials were exceptionally popular, perhaps stemming from the legend of St Bernard of Clairvaux (the self-same St Bernard who founded the Cistercian Order) who, while praying to a statue of the Virgin Mary, is hit by a squirt from the lactating Madonna, in one version in the eye, which cures an eye infection he had. Perhaps this is why all Cistercian monasteries were dedicated to St Mary. At any rate, phials of the liquid swept Europe by storm, with one famously held at Walsingham Abbey in Norfolk, and also reliquaries that contained white powder that was claimed to be the dried milk of St Mary. The French religious reformer and iconoclast John Calvin later famously declared that 'had the Virgin been a cow her whole life, she could not have produced such a quantity'.
Hailes Abbey in Somerset is an example of how the possession of a holy relic could transform the life of an abbey. Founded in 1242, making it one of the latest Cistercian monasteries to be founded in England, it had a rough start until the abbey was presented with a phial of the Holy Blood of Christ in 1270. This presentation necessitated a rebuilding of the abbey church to form a suitable shrine for such a relic, which taxed the already-impoverished monks, but in the long run the abbey was able to recover into one of the major pilgrimage centres in the country.
The guidebook highlights an interesting point about relics. In it, we learn that the phial was bought by Edmund, a son of the abbey's initial benefactor, from the Count of Flanders three years before. Quite the innocuous sentence, hiding the massive trade in relics that boomed across the continent for the majority of the middle ages. Philip II of Spain is famous as being a tremendous relic-collector, building an extensive wing onto the Escurial Palace in which to house his collection. While there are stories such as St Helena, who went to the Holy Land in search of relics and managed to find many of them to bring back to Europe, or even the monks of Shrewsbury Abbey who 'discovered' the bones of St Winefride and brought them to their abbey, these seemingly benign adventures belie the often torrid and certainly sometimes bloody history of relic-hunting that took place from roughly the middle of the twelfth century. Relic merchants would often spring up at well-visited pilgrimage sites, offering to sell the pilgrims more "relics" that would often be nothing more than scraps of cloth they tore up that morning, or sometimes the bones of some poor forgotten corpse they had dug up the night before. Baldrick's charlatanesque behaviour in The Black Adder isn't all that far off the mark. The desire appears to have been to possess a part of a saint to take with you wherever you went, so that it would ward off evil and keep you healthy.
The abbey at Hailes was rebuilt with a grand chevet-style east-end, thought to have been modelled after Croxden Abbey in Staffordshire. Today, only the imprint remains, but it still looks very interesting, and must have been rather grand when it was finished:
The abbey went through as many ups and downs as any other monastery throughout the medieval period, all while a steady flow of pilgrims came to see the Holy Blood of Hailes. However, when the Dissolution came to this corner of Somerset, one of the main aims was the suppression of all reliquaries and shrines. Thus the Holy Blood was decreed to be fraudulent, the Bishop of Rochester proving it to be nothing more than 'honey clarified and coloured with saffron'.
We can't be sure just how much truth there lies in this, as the King's ministers were keen to debunk all such cults and superstitions. It would be easy to denounce the relics as fakes in order to justify their iconoclastic actions. But this brings up another subject - does it even matter?
While there is perhaps a moral debate to be had as to the authenticity of relics - and, indeed, of holy places as well - it can be strongly argued that it doesn't really matter. Religion, to a believer, does not need to be proven - faith is, after all, built on belief and not proof. To the faithful, all relics were believed to be real, and therefore worthy of the dangers and delights of the pilgrimage to see them. Relic-peddlers were out to capitalize on this belief, of course, which allows for a degree of cynicism to filter into the view of the medieval pilgrimage. However, the enormous extent to which pilgrimages took place throughout the medieval world is, ultimately, testament to the power of religious belief during this time, something that has largely been lost by today's much more secular society.
Sunday, 30 June 2013
Llyn Brenig
Llyn Brenig is the fourth largest lake in Wales. A reservoir constructed in the 1970s as a further part of the water supply for North West England (but also North East Wales), although no villages were drowned as part of its creation. There were, however, some Bronze Age remains that were submerged, a series of excavations revealed prior to the flooding. The whole valley here seems to have been something of a nexus for Bronze Age people, with many signs of activity here.
Most significant, as seems usual in Bronze Age sites, are the number of cairns that dot the hillsides. A cairn is the name for a stack of stones, and was predominantly used in the Bronze Age to mark a grave. Over the centuries, these have usually vanished, leaving only the revetting kerb of stones to mark its presence.
There is evidence of hunter-gatherer presence in the valley, dating to about 6500BC, where some remains of campfires and hearthstones have been discovered. This transient lifestyle left very little other marks on the landscape, however. It is Bronze Age sites, dating from around 2000-1500BC, that are most predominant here.
The Llyn Brenig Archaeological Trail takes in a lot of these sites, and is a handy introduction to the landscape! I'll begin with the burial mound known as 'boncyn arian', or 'silver mound', which overlooks the lake itself.
Originally covering a single cremation, the mound was constructed around the grave through a combination of posts and stone walling. Later, six further cremations were dug into the mound, two of which were in urns. These have been dated to 1620BC and 1570BC, and one of them is said to have contained the burnt earbones of an infant, which is thought to be a practice peculiar to North Wales.
Close to the burial mound is the ring cairn.
Thought to be a ceremonial site closely associated with the whole cemetery, at about 18m in diameter it certainly is an impressive structure. A circular stone wall, thought to be about half a metre high, was surrounded by a ring of 20 post-holes. The ring cairn has been reconstructed following the excavations to show how this important site would have looked.
I call it an important site because it seems to have been a focus for some sort of ceremony, which an intelligent guess will lead one to assume was closely associated with the whole necropolis. A number of pits were discovered that are "associated with charcoal deposition", which seems a bit odd, but also four cremation burials were found here. Two of these were in urns similar to those found at Boncyn Arian. The level of activity here seems to have been quite prodigious, radiocarbon dates show activity to be between 2179-1880BC, and 1318-1072BC. So, whatever it was for, it had a long life doing it.
The lake now covers what was possibly a focal point for the cemetery, a Bronze Age round barrow. There is, however, another striking ritual feature further up the hillside, the platform cairn.
This cairn is 23m in diamater, with an open centre that originally housed a massive wooden post. The excavations show it was built in two stages, beginning shortly after 2000BC. It's original shape would have possibly been similar to the ring cairn, minus the surrounding posts, and with the open centre made out of a circle of 26 upright stones surrounding the wood post. The outer stone wall covered the cremation burial of an adult and a child, who were placed in an urn on the south side with the bone handle of a dagger.
Later the open centre was filled with quartz to form a continuous platform, covering an urn filled with charcoal. At the same time, a small additional cairn was added, covering another charcoal-filled urn that also housed a burnt piece of flint.
What can be made of this? A lot of charcoal was buried here, which seems quite odd. Charcoal was used during the Stone Age to create some of the cave art that can be seen in France, for instance. It is also used in metallurgy, as it can burn to very high temperatures, though I have no idea if Bronze Age man knew this. But there is a strong tradition throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages of our ancestors purposefully 'throwing things away', as a sort of ritual offering, so if charcoal was a useful commodity at this time for the working of metal, maybe that was why they buried so much of it here.
In addition to these possible ritual centres, there are numerous cairns that have been disturbed prior to the excavations in 1973-5. I assume this was because burial mounds were readily presumed to contain more interesting finds. One such cairn is a short way down the slope from the platform, Waen Ddafad:
No cremations were found here, though a central pit was discovered, containing a whetstone. Further burial mounds can be seen on the opposite shore of the lake, with one on the island that has formed close to that bank.
The whole complex is quite intriguing, if only for the supposed ritual monuments, the ring cairn and platform cairn, that aren't usually found at barrow cemeteries. To what exact purpose they would have been used we will never be able to say, of course, though their presence here does begin to form a bigger picture of prehistoric society as one where the dead played a large part. There were less than a million people inhabiting the British Isles during the Bronze Age (compared with the roughly sixty-three million people here today), with still something of a transient lifestyle, the settlement here at Llyn Brenig being described as 'seasonal'. It is possible that the area only saw human habitation at certain times of the year because of the rituals that were performed here. Precisely what rituals these were, we will never know, but again, an intelligent guess-work based on archaeological evidence can provide a possible answer.
In the Cotswolds there are many examples of chambered tombs that feature a 'forecourt' between two 'horns', where evidence of fires being lit over a long period of time has been found. Burials in these tombs often take place over periods, rather than just once or twice, the tombs becoming something of a communal grave site. While we only have round barrows at Brenig, rather than Severn-Cotswold style chambered tombs, it is clear that certain rituals were performed at tombs, perhaps on the anniversary of a death, or as a sort of wake when a burial was interred. What is clear is that the Bronze-Age idea of what a grave is and our contemporary one are quite different. They aren't just leaving flowers in commemoration, we're talking about full-on feasts at some places. Bronze Age society was not hierarchical, from the evidence available, so those commemorated were just ordinary members of the family or community. Without knowing anything of prehistoric religion, it seems somewhat facile to attribute such grand resting-places to 'a wise man' or the like.
So we have to make the assumptions that the barrow cemetery here at Llyn Brenig was a place of special significance for the community here, who returned to the site at certain times of the year to take part in certain rituals among the graves of their ancestors. Sites like Seahenge, where the trunk of an oak tree was half-buried upside-down within a ring of posts, point to a religion where the earth has a special significance. The custom of dropping objects like daggers and spears into lakes and bogs can be seen as a ceremonial offering of precious and useful objects to the earth - which perhaps accounts for the buried charcoal here. If Bronze Age religion reveres the earth as something sacred, then returning people to the earth upon their death perhaps gives these ancestors some sort of sacred power, now that they are communing with the earth. As such, it would perhaps follow quite naturally that ceremonies would take place within such graveyards.
It's an intriguing thought, of course! But it is, after all, just a theory. We must be resigned to the fact that we'll never know what was going on here. But the mystery is part of the attraction for me as a prehistory enthusiast!
Most significant, as seems usual in Bronze Age sites, are the number of cairns that dot the hillsides. A cairn is the name for a stack of stones, and was predominantly used in the Bronze Age to mark a grave. Over the centuries, these have usually vanished, leaving only the revetting kerb of stones to mark its presence.
There is evidence of hunter-gatherer presence in the valley, dating to about 6500BC, where some remains of campfires and hearthstones have been discovered. This transient lifestyle left very little other marks on the landscape, however. It is Bronze Age sites, dating from around 2000-1500BC, that are most predominant here.
The Llyn Brenig Archaeological Trail takes in a lot of these sites, and is a handy introduction to the landscape! I'll begin with the burial mound known as 'boncyn arian', or 'silver mound', which overlooks the lake itself.
Originally covering a single cremation, the mound was constructed around the grave through a combination of posts and stone walling. Later, six further cremations were dug into the mound, two of which were in urns. These have been dated to 1620BC and 1570BC, and one of them is said to have contained the burnt earbones of an infant, which is thought to be a practice peculiar to North Wales.
Close to the burial mound is the ring cairn.
Thought to be a ceremonial site closely associated with the whole cemetery, at about 18m in diameter it certainly is an impressive structure. A circular stone wall, thought to be about half a metre high, was surrounded by a ring of 20 post-holes. The ring cairn has been reconstructed following the excavations to show how this important site would have looked.
I call it an important site because it seems to have been a focus for some sort of ceremony, which an intelligent guess will lead one to assume was closely associated with the whole necropolis. A number of pits were discovered that are "associated with charcoal deposition", which seems a bit odd, but also four cremation burials were found here. Two of these were in urns similar to those found at Boncyn Arian. The level of activity here seems to have been quite prodigious, radiocarbon dates show activity to be between 2179-1880BC, and 1318-1072BC. So, whatever it was for, it had a long life doing it.
The lake now covers what was possibly a focal point for the cemetery, a Bronze Age round barrow. There is, however, another striking ritual feature further up the hillside, the platform cairn.
This cairn is 23m in diamater, with an open centre that originally housed a massive wooden post. The excavations show it was built in two stages, beginning shortly after 2000BC. It's original shape would have possibly been similar to the ring cairn, minus the surrounding posts, and with the open centre made out of a circle of 26 upright stones surrounding the wood post. The outer stone wall covered the cremation burial of an adult and a child, who were placed in an urn on the south side with the bone handle of a dagger.
Later the open centre was filled with quartz to form a continuous platform, covering an urn filled with charcoal. At the same time, a small additional cairn was added, covering another charcoal-filled urn that also housed a burnt piece of flint.
What can be made of this? A lot of charcoal was buried here, which seems quite odd. Charcoal was used during the Stone Age to create some of the cave art that can be seen in France, for instance. It is also used in metallurgy, as it can burn to very high temperatures, though I have no idea if Bronze Age man knew this. But there is a strong tradition throughout the Bronze and Iron Ages of our ancestors purposefully 'throwing things away', as a sort of ritual offering, so if charcoal was a useful commodity at this time for the working of metal, maybe that was why they buried so much of it here.
In addition to these possible ritual centres, there are numerous cairns that have been disturbed prior to the excavations in 1973-5. I assume this was because burial mounds were readily presumed to contain more interesting finds. One such cairn is a short way down the slope from the platform, Waen Ddafad:
No cremations were found here, though a central pit was discovered, containing a whetstone. Further burial mounds can be seen on the opposite shore of the lake, with one on the island that has formed close to that bank.
The whole complex is quite intriguing, if only for the supposed ritual monuments, the ring cairn and platform cairn, that aren't usually found at barrow cemeteries. To what exact purpose they would have been used we will never be able to say, of course, though their presence here does begin to form a bigger picture of prehistoric society as one where the dead played a large part. There were less than a million people inhabiting the British Isles during the Bronze Age (compared with the roughly sixty-three million people here today), with still something of a transient lifestyle, the settlement here at Llyn Brenig being described as 'seasonal'. It is possible that the area only saw human habitation at certain times of the year because of the rituals that were performed here. Precisely what rituals these were, we will never know, but again, an intelligent guess-work based on archaeological evidence can provide a possible answer.
In the Cotswolds there are many examples of chambered tombs that feature a 'forecourt' between two 'horns', where evidence of fires being lit over a long period of time has been found. Burials in these tombs often take place over periods, rather than just once or twice, the tombs becoming something of a communal grave site. While we only have round barrows at Brenig, rather than Severn-Cotswold style chambered tombs, it is clear that certain rituals were performed at tombs, perhaps on the anniversary of a death, or as a sort of wake when a burial was interred. What is clear is that the Bronze-Age idea of what a grave is and our contemporary one are quite different. They aren't just leaving flowers in commemoration, we're talking about full-on feasts at some places. Bronze Age society was not hierarchical, from the evidence available, so those commemorated were just ordinary members of the family or community. Without knowing anything of prehistoric religion, it seems somewhat facile to attribute such grand resting-places to 'a wise man' or the like.
So we have to make the assumptions that the barrow cemetery here at Llyn Brenig was a place of special significance for the community here, who returned to the site at certain times of the year to take part in certain rituals among the graves of their ancestors. Sites like Seahenge, where the trunk of an oak tree was half-buried upside-down within a ring of posts, point to a religion where the earth has a special significance. The custom of dropping objects like daggers and spears into lakes and bogs can be seen as a ceremonial offering of precious and useful objects to the earth - which perhaps accounts for the buried charcoal here. If Bronze Age religion reveres the earth as something sacred, then returning people to the earth upon their death perhaps gives these ancestors some sort of sacred power, now that they are communing with the earth. As such, it would perhaps follow quite naturally that ceremonies would take place within such graveyards.
It's an intriguing thought, of course! But it is, after all, just a theory. We must be resigned to the fact that we'll never know what was going on here. But the mystery is part of the attraction for me as a prehistory enthusiast!
Saturday, 22 June 2013
Orkney!
I've been wanting to write about Prehistoric Britain for a long time now, but unfortunately have never found the time to do any justice to such an infinitely fascinating topic. While this blog won't even try to cover the major themes such a topic presents, I hope it will whet the appetite for things to come with this foray to Orkney!
^ Skaill Bay
The idea of 'prehistory' is, basically, anything that happened before the invention (or perhaps development would be more accurate) of writing. This is, of course, an incredibly facile way of putting it, but it is as convenient as the Three-Age system for explaining this period in a rudimentary way. But for the sake of convenience, let's call 'prehistoric' anything that came before the Romans (and feel free to lynch me later!). If you were taught anything about this topic in school at all, first of all you are very lucky, and secondly you were probably taught the Three-Age system of Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The brainwave of the Danish scholar Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, who from 1816 was curator of the Danish Royal Commission for the Collection and Preservation of Antiquities, this system was used from the 1820s to classify artefacts presented in the museum there. It is based on the principle of stratiography, which basically involves studying the layers of historical buildup. In this way, Thomsen was able to identify that layers containing iron implements occurred higher up than those containing bronze artifacts, which in turn was above a layer of stone objects. It was all very neat and highly effective, and has formed the backbone of historical approach for over a century since its inception. Thomsen's Stone Age was further subdivided in 1865 by the English historian John Lubbock into Paleolithic and Neolithic, or Old and New Stone Ages. Controversially, a Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) was added to the mix the following year. It was controversial because some scholars didn't see the need for it, but others did. Additions such as the Copper Age into the Bronze Age have met with similar scepticism. It all boils down to whether such an age 'happened' in a particular area, for example the use of copper was more pronounced around the Mediterranean and Africa, while Bronze flowed more organically into Iron in Britain. But I digress.
To talk briefly about dates, the Three-Age System is famous for being so terribly wrong about dating when it was first introduced. The Stone Age is the longest period, spreading from the end of the Ice Age to roughly 2500BC (the Neolithic, which is the important bit for this blog, stretches from 4000BC to 2500BC). The Bronze Age then lasts until about 800BC. The Iron Age then lasts until the Romanization of Britain, which was accomplished by about 100AD.
Prehistoric Britain exists all around us, with standing stones jutting out of the ground all over the countryside, and chambered tombs tucked into shady corners of modern housing estates. But there are several 'prehistoric landscapes' where great swathes of the country are kept as once they were, and it doesn't take much imagination to feel a tremendous resonance with the past. Remote in both time and space, places like Mitchell's Fold and Bryn Celli Ddu hold a special fascination for me. Larger landscapes, such as the justly-famous Stonehenge and Avebury sites in Wiltshire, even with the close proximity to the modern world, and the super-attraction tourist status they have, still have the power to evoke a certain something.
Orkney, however, is a particular favourite of mine. A collection of 90 islands off the north coast of Scotland, the islands are made of Old Red Sandstone, which is excellent for building with as it can be quarried into blocks with ease. Perhaps it was this very fact that led to prehistoric folks settling here all those years ago. From about 3500BC it is believed the islands were being settled, as the hunter-gatherer way of life settled down into farming. Evidence of this settled way of life is provided by one of Orkney's most famous monuments, Skara Brae:
A Neolithic village that owes its amazing preservation to a storm dumping sand over it sometime in the distant past, Skara Brae really does deserve all of the praise it gets. Dating from about 3100BC, there are some 10 houses on show today, though it is believed only 6-8 of these would have been occupied at any one time. They are all built to roughly the same plan, with a large dresser facing the door and beds off to either side of the central hearth. The houses are connected by a winding, covered passageway, which was accessed by a single point of entry into the village.
The most intriguing thing about the village, though, is that it is built into a midden, or rubbish heap, presumably for protection from the weather, insulation, or both. Coastal erosion probably means it was a lot further inland when first settled than it appears today, but those Orcadian winds no doubt still packed a punch for anything built free-standing on the islands. Using the midden heap, hollowing out the bits required for living, would therefore shield the houses from these winds.
I'm sorry, I've deceived you all slightly with these last few photos - you can't actually wander around Skara Brae in the sense that I might have suggested here. Instead, a viewing pathway is built around the site, where you look down on it from above. Historic Scotland, who care for the village, have kindly constructed a modern replica so that you can get the feel for the site. Which is rather marvellous, really!
As I said above, there are ten houses on show, each built along the same lines. Nine of them are roofless, with one that is too delicate to remain open to the elements so has been covered sympathetically with a turf roof. The dressers, beds, stone boxes and 'cells' in the walls are all fairly standard features that make this almost the Barratt Homes estate of the Neolithic. The 'cells' show another advantage of building into the midden, that you can scoop out segments almost at will to create additional storage space as required.
The site is really just fascinating, its appeal for me stemming from the fact that this is where our ancestors lived. Monuments like the aforementioned Stonehenge, or the burial chambers that pepper the Cotswolds and Anglesey, were built as monuments for posterity (for whatever reason), but these houses were built to be lived in, with all the intimacy that such a purpose entails.
The issue of roofing has caused some debate. Clearly the houses weren't roofed with stone, as there were no stone slabs found within the houses that would imply a collapse. Timber (or perhaps whalebone) struts have been postulated, perhaps forming a frame that would be covered with turf for further insulation. The 'streets' that link the houses were covered with stone slabs, as can still be seen in many parts of the village.
It is, without a doubt, the best-preserved settlement in Northern Europe. Occupied for about 600 years, it was abandoned for unknown reasons. The man in charge of the initial excavation, Professor Gordon Childe, suggested a massive sandstorm forced the people to leave - giving rise to Skara Brae being sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Pompeii". There is no evidence of any catastrophe here, in fact there is no evidence for why the people left at all. It did, at any rate, lie buried on the shore until a massive storm in 1850 uncovered the midden. Perhaps the dramatic way in which it was revealed had implied an equally dramatic end for the site all those centuries before.
Skara Brae isn't the only prehistoric settlement on Orkney's mainland, however. On the shores of Loch Harray lies the remains of Barnhouse settlement. Not as impressive as Skara Brae, of course, it is nonetheless an interesting site for revealing the domestic lives of prehistoric man.
Barnhouse was settled by about 3200BC, and is believed to have been in use for 400 years, with many of the houses undergoing modification during this time. The low foundation walls seen here are modern reconstructions based on the archaeological discoveries, but serve to illustrate how they were built along similar lines to those at Skara Brae. The most striking difference between the two sites, however, is the size of the houses. At Skara Brae the houses are modest, enough space for one family to live in relatively cosy comfort. Here at Barnhouse, however, the interior space is markedly larger. Whether this is the advantage of not building into a midden heap, or whether it reflects a social trend for desiring larger living space, who knows.
The house above has what appears to be an entrance porch before you arrive in the single room, again with a hearth in the centre, though there is no real evidence the house was ever occupied, though food preparation took place outside. This leads archaeologists to believe this was associated with rituals of some sort. At Barnhouse, though, can be seen a very interesting parallel with the nearby Stones of Stennes, a theory that has intrigued me since I heard it nearly five years ago.
^ Loch Harray
The Stones of Stennes form part of the vast ritual landscape that forms The Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. Barnhouse isn't included in the listing for some odd reason, but is very close to the Standing Stones. More odd is the fact that the houses at Barnhouse appear to provide a blueprint for the Standing Stones themselves - during excavations, a hearth was discovered within the ring. This is all very odd, and serves to highlight something that I think is very important to bear in mind when reading about Prehistoric monuments.
The hearth in the centre of the stones is incongruous, to say the least. Hearths are associated with domestic life, as it was quite literally the centre of the home, and Stone Circles are associated with ceremonies concerning the commemoration of the ancestors - that is, places of the dead. There is a theory that the Standing Stones monument was erected atop someone's house, perhaps a pillar of the community. The hearth in the centre is the hearth of the original house, and the standing stones form the original house's supports.
Is it plausible? Well, of course. But it is just a theory, and it serves to highlight the fact that we basically don't know enough about prehistoric life to know anything for sure. It's something I discussed a while ago in a blog about the same sort of topic. The hearth may have been there from a previous house, and the stones were assembled here long after the house was gone. Or it may have been purpose-installed within the finished ring of stones for specific rituals. It may be a Neolithic prank. Who knows? I live in a flat that, apparently, is built on the site of a chapel. In thousands of years' time, when I assume this flat will no longer be here, will the archaeologists of the future find remnants of both structures and think the British of the 21st century had a very close relationship with religion because we lived within the confines of our sacred spaces? Hm. Terry Gilliam's animation that opens the Monty Python sketch "Archaeology Today" leaps instantly to mind. I digress once again!
Barnhouse and the Standing Stones are very close, and were in use around the same period of time, which means it is plausible that the people of Barnhouse built and used the Standing Stones. To what purpose, of course, remains a mystery. Trying to explain Prehistoric religious practices is, in the words of Francis Pryor, like trying to explain the purpose of the cross without knowing the story of the crucifixion. Whether there is some element of veneration of ancestors, which seems to be the the accepted theory as put forward by Mike Parker Pearson, we could never categorically say. Such is the mystery of a civilisation predating the use of writing. What we do know, however, is that the monument would have been quite striking to look at when originally constructed - twelve stones set in marshy land, surrounded by a henge (an earth bank), with a causeway providing the only way to enter. In fact, the Standing Stones are believed to form the earliest henge monument in Britain.
Stennes is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney site, as mentioned, and forms roughly the centre of the site. To the east is the great chambered cairn of Maes Howe, and to the west, the Ring of Brodgar.
^ the Brodgar isthmus as seen from Barnhouse.
Described as "awesome" by Dr Pryor, Brodgar is massive, the third largest stone circle in the British Isles. The path from Stennes to Brodgar begins at the immense Watch Stone:
The 'processional way' continues on to the circle itself:
^ the stone to the left in the middle-ground is known as the Comet Stone.
Like many prehistoric landscapes, there is believed to have been an avenue that links the circle to the other sites. The above Comet Stone is possibly part of that, which would have been paired with another stone in a pattern that would have perhaps been repeated all the way to Maes Howe.
^ looking back towards Loch Harray and the Stennes stones/Maes Howe.
Brodgar is a little younger than Stennes, and is believed to have been associated with commemorating the dead. However, it hasn't really been properly excavated, and while nothing has been discovered so far, it is really unknown what purpose it had in the context of the other monuments here.
What is clear is that Brodgar is very obvious in the landscape, the stones stand out against the sky quite dramatically:
^ the Ring of Brodgar seen across Loch Stennes.
Proceeding back towards the Stennes monuments across the narrow isthmus of land, you also pass a very interesting monument that is still currently under excavation (excavations that began after my trip, so I have no pictures of them sorry!). The Ness of Brodgar excavations have revealed some massive structures that have been likened to a Neolithic Cathedral, vast open spaces much bigger than the houses at Skara Brae or Barnhouse. The idea that the Ring of Brodgar can be seen for miles around perhaps makes the structures discovered on the Ness a kind of Neolithic boarding house. If you have a structure that can be seen for miles, and attracts people from all over the island(s), then perhaps they used these structures as a base when taking part in ceremonies at the monuments here. Well, it's just a theory!
^ Salt Knowe mound, seen from the Ring. There are about a dozen mounds that surround the Ring.
Maes Howe is an immense chambered tomb that seems to form a focal point for the monuments here. Believed to be as much as 5000 years old, it is 7m high and 35m in diameter, and surrounded by an outer ditch.
^ Maes Howe with the Barnhouse Stone to the right, possibly the remnant of an avenue.
Excavations in 1990 discovered what has been called a 'drain' in front of the entry, which has fueled the idea of the monument being built atop an earlier house much like the Standing Stones. The opening, which can be seen in the above photo as a white speck, is famous for lining up perfectly with the setting sun around the Winter Solstice, which also aligns perfectly with Barnhouse Stone. Just how accurate such alignments are is always something I find myself feeling sceptical about, given how much the earth has been jolted around given the number of seismic events that have occurred in the thousands of years since these monuments were constructed. Because they line up with the sun now, doesn't necessarily mean they did then. Hm.
^ it isn't particularly clear here, but the curve of slightly darker grass in the foreground demarcates the bank of the outer ditch that encircles the tomb.
Maes Howe is also renowned today for a celebrated event in about 1150AD, when marauding Vikings broke into the tomb in an effort to find treasure. The event is partially recounted in Orkneyinga Saga, a cracking (if heavy-going) read about the adventures of the Vikings in this part of the world. On their way back from a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem (many Vikings by this time had adapted to Christianity, though not all of course), they broke in here initially to shelter from a snowstorm. Rumours of treasure hidden in the mound caused it to be broken into again over the years, as a lot of runic graffiti attests!
^ Maes Howe as seen across Loch Harray at Barnhouse.
The whole landscape here is associated with prehistoric ritual, which lends it an atmosphere that is somehow redolent of ancient ceremony. One imagines celebrants, possibly having journeyed from miles away, lodged at the Ness of Brodgar, taking part in mystical rites in the height of midwinter at the Ring of Brodgar. Proceeding with reverence down the avenue, they arrive first at the Stennes Standing Stones, before passing further to the ultimate goal of Maes Howe. More ceremonies would take place, perhaps in burial of an important member of the community, before returning to the Ness for feasting and commemoration. Then, the festivities over, the pilgrims disperse back to their homes, perhaps on the coast at Skara Brae, or more closer at Barnhouse, until the next important event in the annual cycle.
It is a very potent thought, but unfortunately it is really no more than an educated guess. The monuments we see today did all stand at the same time, and it is therefore feasible that they were used in some sort of inter-connected manner. But sometimes it seems that we perhaps project too much of our own expectations onto our forebears. Because we enjoy a good parade today, with a lot of pomp and a good pilgrimage thrown in, doesn't necessarily mean they did, too. The great stone monuments at Brodgar, like their Wiltshire counterparts, could just as easily be market squares. The archaeologist-trap of ascribing anything we can't explain to the category of 'ritual-funerary' could be at work at any number of sites.
When we think of the commemoration of the dead in the context of prehistoric monuments, we traditionally describe a processional route from east to west, mirroring the passage of the sun through the sky. Going 'into the west' has very strong connotations as a synonym for death. This is the route described at Stonehenge, where the procession travels west from Durrington Walls, along the River Avon, to Stonehenge itself. But at the Brodgar-Stennes landscape we have the opposite going on, where we have a commemoration of the dead where we travel into the east. Perhaps this means the landscape was associated more closely with rebirth, and so would be a big part of religious ceremony during the winter to ensure a plentiful harvest in the coming year. But this doesn't really feel right, either.
Prehistoric religious practices are as unknown to us as the strangest of any mysteries. But it is precisely because of this remoteness in both time and space that constitutes its enduring fascination for me.
I hope this has whetted the appetite for more prehistory among you all - coming soon will be a more exhaustive look (hopefully) at our ancient past!
The idea of 'prehistory' is, basically, anything that happened before the invention (or perhaps development would be more accurate) of writing. This is, of course, an incredibly facile way of putting it, but it is as convenient as the Three-Age system for explaining this period in a rudimentary way. But for the sake of convenience, let's call 'prehistoric' anything that came before the Romans (and feel free to lynch me later!). If you were taught anything about this topic in school at all, first of all you are very lucky, and secondly you were probably taught the Three-Age system of Stone, Bronze and Iron Ages. The brainwave of the Danish scholar Christian Jurgensen Thomsen, who from 1816 was curator of the Danish Royal Commission for the Collection and Preservation of Antiquities, this system was used from the 1820s to classify artefacts presented in the museum there. It is based on the principle of stratiography, which basically involves studying the layers of historical buildup. In this way, Thomsen was able to identify that layers containing iron implements occurred higher up than those containing bronze artifacts, which in turn was above a layer of stone objects. It was all very neat and highly effective, and has formed the backbone of historical approach for over a century since its inception. Thomsen's Stone Age was further subdivided in 1865 by the English historian John Lubbock into Paleolithic and Neolithic, or Old and New Stone Ages. Controversially, a Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) was added to the mix the following year. It was controversial because some scholars didn't see the need for it, but others did. Additions such as the Copper Age into the Bronze Age have met with similar scepticism. It all boils down to whether such an age 'happened' in a particular area, for example the use of copper was more pronounced around the Mediterranean and Africa, while Bronze flowed more organically into Iron in Britain. But I digress.
To talk briefly about dates, the Three-Age System is famous for being so terribly wrong about dating when it was first introduced. The Stone Age is the longest period, spreading from the end of the Ice Age to roughly 2500BC (the Neolithic, which is the important bit for this blog, stretches from 4000BC to 2500BC). The Bronze Age then lasts until about 800BC. The Iron Age then lasts until the Romanization of Britain, which was accomplished by about 100AD.
Prehistoric Britain exists all around us, with standing stones jutting out of the ground all over the countryside, and chambered tombs tucked into shady corners of modern housing estates. But there are several 'prehistoric landscapes' where great swathes of the country are kept as once they were, and it doesn't take much imagination to feel a tremendous resonance with the past. Remote in both time and space, places like Mitchell's Fold and Bryn Celli Ddu hold a special fascination for me. Larger landscapes, such as the justly-famous Stonehenge and Avebury sites in Wiltshire, even with the close proximity to the modern world, and the super-attraction tourist status they have, still have the power to evoke a certain something.
Orkney, however, is a particular favourite of mine. A collection of 90 islands off the north coast of Scotland, the islands are made of Old Red Sandstone, which is excellent for building with as it can be quarried into blocks with ease. Perhaps it was this very fact that led to prehistoric folks settling here all those years ago. From about 3500BC it is believed the islands were being settled, as the hunter-gatherer way of life settled down into farming. Evidence of this settled way of life is provided by one of Orkney's most famous monuments, Skara Brae:
A Neolithic village that owes its amazing preservation to a storm dumping sand over it sometime in the distant past, Skara Brae really does deserve all of the praise it gets. Dating from about 3100BC, there are some 10 houses on show today, though it is believed only 6-8 of these would have been occupied at any one time. They are all built to roughly the same plan, with a large dresser facing the door and beds off to either side of the central hearth. The houses are connected by a winding, covered passageway, which was accessed by a single point of entry into the village.
The most intriguing thing about the village, though, is that it is built into a midden, or rubbish heap, presumably for protection from the weather, insulation, or both. Coastal erosion probably means it was a lot further inland when first settled than it appears today, but those Orcadian winds no doubt still packed a punch for anything built free-standing on the islands. Using the midden heap, hollowing out the bits required for living, would therefore shield the houses from these winds.
I'm sorry, I've deceived you all slightly with these last few photos - you can't actually wander around Skara Brae in the sense that I might have suggested here. Instead, a viewing pathway is built around the site, where you look down on it from above. Historic Scotland, who care for the village, have kindly constructed a modern replica so that you can get the feel for the site. Which is rather marvellous, really!
As I said above, there are ten houses on show, each built along the same lines. Nine of them are roofless, with one that is too delicate to remain open to the elements so has been covered sympathetically with a turf roof. The dressers, beds, stone boxes and 'cells' in the walls are all fairly standard features that make this almost the Barratt Homes estate of the Neolithic. The 'cells' show another advantage of building into the midden, that you can scoop out segments almost at will to create additional storage space as required.
The site is really just fascinating, its appeal for me stemming from the fact that this is where our ancestors lived. Monuments like the aforementioned Stonehenge, or the burial chambers that pepper the Cotswolds and Anglesey, were built as monuments for posterity (for whatever reason), but these houses were built to be lived in, with all the intimacy that such a purpose entails.
The issue of roofing has caused some debate. Clearly the houses weren't roofed with stone, as there were no stone slabs found within the houses that would imply a collapse. Timber (or perhaps whalebone) struts have been postulated, perhaps forming a frame that would be covered with turf for further insulation. The 'streets' that link the houses were covered with stone slabs, as can still be seen in many parts of the village.
It is, without a doubt, the best-preserved settlement in Northern Europe. Occupied for about 600 years, it was abandoned for unknown reasons. The man in charge of the initial excavation, Professor Gordon Childe, suggested a massive sandstorm forced the people to leave - giving rise to Skara Brae being sometimes referred to as the "Scottish Pompeii". There is no evidence of any catastrophe here, in fact there is no evidence for why the people left at all. It did, at any rate, lie buried on the shore until a massive storm in 1850 uncovered the midden. Perhaps the dramatic way in which it was revealed had implied an equally dramatic end for the site all those centuries before.
Skara Brae isn't the only prehistoric settlement on Orkney's mainland, however. On the shores of Loch Harray lies the remains of Barnhouse settlement. Not as impressive as Skara Brae, of course, it is nonetheless an interesting site for revealing the domestic lives of prehistoric man.
Barnhouse was settled by about 3200BC, and is believed to have been in use for 400 years, with many of the houses undergoing modification during this time. The low foundation walls seen here are modern reconstructions based on the archaeological discoveries, but serve to illustrate how they were built along similar lines to those at Skara Brae. The most striking difference between the two sites, however, is the size of the houses. At Skara Brae the houses are modest, enough space for one family to live in relatively cosy comfort. Here at Barnhouse, however, the interior space is markedly larger. Whether this is the advantage of not building into a midden heap, or whether it reflects a social trend for desiring larger living space, who knows.
The house above has what appears to be an entrance porch before you arrive in the single room, again with a hearth in the centre, though there is no real evidence the house was ever occupied, though food preparation took place outside. This leads archaeologists to believe this was associated with rituals of some sort. At Barnhouse, though, can be seen a very interesting parallel with the nearby Stones of Stennes, a theory that has intrigued me since I heard it nearly five years ago.
The Stones of Stennes form part of the vast ritual landscape that forms The Heart of Neolithic Orkney World Heritage Site. Barnhouse isn't included in the listing for some odd reason, but is very close to the Standing Stones. More odd is the fact that the houses at Barnhouse appear to provide a blueprint for the Standing Stones themselves - during excavations, a hearth was discovered within the ring. This is all very odd, and serves to highlight something that I think is very important to bear in mind when reading about Prehistoric monuments.
The hearth in the centre of the stones is incongruous, to say the least. Hearths are associated with domestic life, as it was quite literally the centre of the home, and Stone Circles are associated with ceremonies concerning the commemoration of the ancestors - that is, places of the dead. There is a theory that the Standing Stones monument was erected atop someone's house, perhaps a pillar of the community. The hearth in the centre is the hearth of the original house, and the standing stones form the original house's supports.
Is it plausible? Well, of course. But it is just a theory, and it serves to highlight the fact that we basically don't know enough about prehistoric life to know anything for sure. It's something I discussed a while ago in a blog about the same sort of topic. The hearth may have been there from a previous house, and the stones were assembled here long after the house was gone. Or it may have been purpose-installed within the finished ring of stones for specific rituals. It may be a Neolithic prank. Who knows? I live in a flat that, apparently, is built on the site of a chapel. In thousands of years' time, when I assume this flat will no longer be here, will the archaeologists of the future find remnants of both structures and think the British of the 21st century had a very close relationship with religion because we lived within the confines of our sacred spaces? Hm. Terry Gilliam's animation that opens the Monty Python sketch "Archaeology Today" leaps instantly to mind. I digress once again!
Barnhouse and the Standing Stones are very close, and were in use around the same period of time, which means it is plausible that the people of Barnhouse built and used the Standing Stones. To what purpose, of course, remains a mystery. Trying to explain Prehistoric religious practices is, in the words of Francis Pryor, like trying to explain the purpose of the cross without knowing the story of the crucifixion. Whether there is some element of veneration of ancestors, which seems to be the the accepted theory as put forward by Mike Parker Pearson, we could never categorically say. Such is the mystery of a civilisation predating the use of writing. What we do know, however, is that the monument would have been quite striking to look at when originally constructed - twelve stones set in marshy land, surrounded by a henge (an earth bank), with a causeway providing the only way to enter. In fact, the Standing Stones are believed to form the earliest henge monument in Britain.
Stennes is part of the Heart of Neolithic Orkney site, as mentioned, and forms roughly the centre of the site. To the east is the great chambered cairn of Maes Howe, and to the west, the Ring of Brodgar.
Described as "awesome" by Dr Pryor, Brodgar is massive, the third largest stone circle in the British Isles. The path from Stennes to Brodgar begins at the immense Watch Stone:
The 'processional way' continues on to the circle itself:
Like many prehistoric landscapes, there is believed to have been an avenue that links the circle to the other sites. The above Comet Stone is possibly part of that, which would have been paired with another stone in a pattern that would have perhaps been repeated all the way to Maes Howe.
Brodgar is a little younger than Stennes, and is believed to have been associated with commemorating the dead. However, it hasn't really been properly excavated, and while nothing has been discovered so far, it is really unknown what purpose it had in the context of the other monuments here.
What is clear is that Brodgar is very obvious in the landscape, the stones stand out against the sky quite dramatically:
Proceeding back towards the Stennes monuments across the narrow isthmus of land, you also pass a very interesting monument that is still currently under excavation (excavations that began after my trip, so I have no pictures of them sorry!). The Ness of Brodgar excavations have revealed some massive structures that have been likened to a Neolithic Cathedral, vast open spaces much bigger than the houses at Skara Brae or Barnhouse. The idea that the Ring of Brodgar can be seen for miles around perhaps makes the structures discovered on the Ness a kind of Neolithic boarding house. If you have a structure that can be seen for miles, and attracts people from all over the island(s), then perhaps they used these structures as a base when taking part in ceremonies at the monuments here. Well, it's just a theory!
Maes Howe is an immense chambered tomb that seems to form a focal point for the monuments here. Believed to be as much as 5000 years old, it is 7m high and 35m in diameter, and surrounded by an outer ditch.
Excavations in 1990 discovered what has been called a 'drain' in front of the entry, which has fueled the idea of the monument being built atop an earlier house much like the Standing Stones. The opening, which can be seen in the above photo as a white speck, is famous for lining up perfectly with the setting sun around the Winter Solstice, which also aligns perfectly with Barnhouse Stone. Just how accurate such alignments are is always something I find myself feeling sceptical about, given how much the earth has been jolted around given the number of seismic events that have occurred in the thousands of years since these monuments were constructed. Because they line up with the sun now, doesn't necessarily mean they did then. Hm.
Maes Howe is also renowned today for a celebrated event in about 1150AD, when marauding Vikings broke into the tomb in an effort to find treasure. The event is partially recounted in Orkneyinga Saga, a cracking (if heavy-going) read about the adventures of the Vikings in this part of the world. On their way back from a pilgrimage to Rome and Jerusalem (many Vikings by this time had adapted to Christianity, though not all of course), they broke in here initially to shelter from a snowstorm. Rumours of treasure hidden in the mound caused it to be broken into again over the years, as a lot of runic graffiti attests!
The whole landscape here is associated with prehistoric ritual, which lends it an atmosphere that is somehow redolent of ancient ceremony. One imagines celebrants, possibly having journeyed from miles away, lodged at the Ness of Brodgar, taking part in mystical rites in the height of midwinter at the Ring of Brodgar. Proceeding with reverence down the avenue, they arrive first at the Stennes Standing Stones, before passing further to the ultimate goal of Maes Howe. More ceremonies would take place, perhaps in burial of an important member of the community, before returning to the Ness for feasting and commemoration. Then, the festivities over, the pilgrims disperse back to their homes, perhaps on the coast at Skara Brae, or more closer at Barnhouse, until the next important event in the annual cycle.
It is a very potent thought, but unfortunately it is really no more than an educated guess. The monuments we see today did all stand at the same time, and it is therefore feasible that they were used in some sort of inter-connected manner. But sometimes it seems that we perhaps project too much of our own expectations onto our forebears. Because we enjoy a good parade today, with a lot of pomp and a good pilgrimage thrown in, doesn't necessarily mean they did, too. The great stone monuments at Brodgar, like their Wiltshire counterparts, could just as easily be market squares. The archaeologist-trap of ascribing anything we can't explain to the category of 'ritual-funerary' could be at work at any number of sites.
When we think of the commemoration of the dead in the context of prehistoric monuments, we traditionally describe a processional route from east to west, mirroring the passage of the sun through the sky. Going 'into the west' has very strong connotations as a synonym for death. This is the route described at Stonehenge, where the procession travels west from Durrington Walls, along the River Avon, to Stonehenge itself. But at the Brodgar-Stennes landscape we have the opposite going on, where we have a commemoration of the dead where we travel into the east. Perhaps this means the landscape was associated more closely with rebirth, and so would be a big part of religious ceremony during the winter to ensure a plentiful harvest in the coming year. But this doesn't really feel right, either.
Prehistoric religious practices are as unknown to us as the strangest of any mysteries. But it is precisely because of this remoteness in both time and space that constitutes its enduring fascination for me.
I hope this has whetted the appetite for more prehistory among you all - coming soon will be a more exhaustive look (hopefully) at our ancient past!
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