Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar. T. Rice Holmes
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or the sole occupation of skilled members of the community.299
A lost art.
But there was one thing which the forerunner of neolithic man had done, and which he could not do. Among his relics we may look in vain for the carved dagger-handles, the engraved antlers, and the other works of art of the palaeolithic caves. Except in Grime’s Graves, not a single attempt to portray the human figure, or animal, or plant has ever been found among the deposits of the Neolithic Age. If the artists of Derbyshire and Aquitaine had left descendants, perhaps they were massacred or enslaved, perhaps their individuality withered under oppression: whatever may have been the cause, the old creative art was dead.300
Dwellings.
Provided with their tools, the neolithic herdsmen were able to construct dwellings which, humble as they were, must have been comfortable in comparison with the shelters that had satisfied the hunters of the older time. Unfortunately, however, the evidence relating to the domestic life of the neolithic people is far less complete than that which has been preserved in regard to their Swiss contemporaries. In that age and for many centuries after it had come to an end the inhabitants of northern and western Europe, like the ancient Romans whom Horace301 eulogized, were content to live in habitations which were small and mean, while, under the influence of superstitious terror as much as of reverence, they constructed the mansions of their dead chieftains on a magnificent scale. Thus, while neolithic sepulchres are still conspicuous upon the western hills, few buildings have left traces which can be referred with absolute certainty to the same period.302 Many of the ‘hut-circles’ and pit-dwellings which have been excavated contain no trace of metal; but it is generally impossible, in any given instance, to dismiss all doubts as to their antiquity when we find others, precisely similar, which were certainly occupied, if not built, by people who used implements of bronze. Still it is not credible that such dwellings were constructed for the first time after the introduction of metal working; and it is reasonable to believe that they were common before the earliest bronze implement was imported into Britain. Indeed a pit-dwelling has been found at the eastern end of a long barrow near the village of Hanging Grimston on the Yorkshire Wolds; and, as it was proved by excavation to be older than the barrow,303 it must have been dug in the Neolithic Age. There were of course villages of some sort at Cissbury and Grime’s Graves; and at Grovehurst, near Sittingbourne, are the remains of huts which were occupied by implement-makers.304 A group of pits on the sheltered southern slope of Croham Hurst, about a mile south of Croydon, the fields near which are thickly strewn with flint flakes, probably formed the winter abode of a small community:305 on Hayes Common a village has been explored, comprising about one hundred and sixty pits, the period of which was determined by the discovery of a neolithic workshop, on the floor of a pit of identical form, at Millfield in the immediate neighbourhood; and the neolithic age of a settlement at West Wickham was as clearly proved by the nature of the implements.306 At these places, at Weybourne in Norfolk, on the Hampshire Downs, and elsewhere, the sites of such dwellings are indicated by circular depressions, ranging in diameter from six to thirty feet and from two to six feet deep, which, though they generally occur in groups, are sometimes isolated. Each is surrounded by a bank, formed of the excavated earth, in which the entrance is marked by a gap. The bank was in certain cases prevented from falling in by a stone circle; and upon it was reared a hut, sometimes perhaps formed of stones, but more often of interlaced boughs, while the roof, in which a hole was left for the escape of smoke, was probably thatched with fern or heather or turf, and, if it happened to be large, supported by a pole or the trunk of a tree, the position of which seems to be indicated by a mound in the centre of the pit.307 A cluster of huts was apparently sometimes surrounded by an entrenchment, which protected the inhabitants and their cattle from night attacks.308 Rude as these structures were, they fulfilled their purpose. The soil on which they were built was generally dry: the pit not only ensured warmth but also enabled the roof to be carried to a sufficient height: the bank, by throwing off the rain, kept the interior dry; and while in certain cases the remains of a hearth made of flints are found in the centre, in others it would seem that cooking was performed outside. Thus one group of pits on Hayes Common, the dimensions of which are within the ordinary range, is associated with smaller depressions, which apparently contained cooking-hearths.309 A small fire might have been safely lighted inside the hut to warm the inmates; but a large one, such as would have been necessary for cooking a joint or an entire hare or sucking-pig, might have ignited the inflammable roof.310
A remarkable group of pits has recently been excavated in Wigtownshire.311 Piles had been driven into them to support a wooden floor, the object of which was doubtless to keep them dry; and the marks on the piles seemed to their discoverer to show that they had been cut with stone hatchets.312
Three entirely subterranean chambers, of a kind which has been met with nowhere else in the British Isles, have lately been discovered by navvies who were digging a sewer-trench at Waddon, near Croydon. They were about twelve feet in diameter and seven feet high; and although they contained fragments of Romano-British pottery, the flint flakes and blocks which lay upon the floors were assigned by the experienced antiquary who explored them313 to the Age of Stone. While he was impressed by their exact resemblance to certain Portuguese neolithic chambers which were used for burial,314 he suggested that they might also have served as shelters in times of excessive heat or cold.
Unlike their Swiss contemporaries, who built their huts on platforms, supported by piles driven into the beds of lakes, the neolithic Britons lived mainly if not exclusively on land. Lake-dwellings indeed abound in the British Isles; but exploration shows that almost all were erected in the Late Celtic Period; and the only one in Britain which can with any show of reason be referred to the Age of Stone is in Holderness, which, before it was drained, was covered with marshes and shallow meres. One of a group of five, called the West Furze dwelling, contained a large number of flint flakes: but a bronze spear-head was also found in it; and the evidence is not sufficient to show that it was built in a pre-metallic period.315
Food and cookery.
The food of the neolithic population has left more abundant traces than their homes. The bones which are strewed in their sepulchres and settlements show that they lived in great part on venison and the flesh of the wild boar;316 and the skull of an aurochs, which was found in the Fen country with a stone weapon sticking in it,317 proves that they also followed the largest game. Unlike the palaeolithic hunters, they used dogs in the chase; and it has been plausibly conjectured that these animals were the first to be domesticated. For man was a hunter before he was a herdsman; and the dog would soon begin to lick the hand that rewarded it with a share of the slaughtered boar or deer.318 It would seem, however, that when with advancing age dogs had become too slow for hunting, they were killed and eaten; for canine bones, apparently of old animals, were found at Grime’s Graves.319 Neolithic immigrants introduced sheep,320 goats, and pigs as well as horned cattle; and all the bones of the latter which have been collected from their refuse-heaps and graves were those of small oxen, the scientific name of which—Bos longifrons—is familiar to all students of antiquities, and which resembled their living descendants, the Kerry cattle of Ireland and the small black animals of the Welsh mountains. Some authorities believe that these and all our varieties of domestic oxen are descended from the aurochs, which, as we have seen, was living in this country in palaeolithic times, and suggest that its calves were trapped and tamed;321 while others maintain that Bos longifrons was introduced by neolithic immigrants. The extreme smallness of the prehistoric domestic oxen is as easily accounted for as that of the mountain cattle of the present day. The tribes who kept them had but limited pasturage: forage in winter was probably scanty; and the milk which was needed by their calves was largely consumed by their owners.322 The broken bones of cattle which were found at Grime’s Graves belonged to very young animals, which the implement-makers who bred them evidently could not afford to rear.323 The meat was boiled in rude hand-made vessels of earthenware heated by red-hot flints, or, as we may infer from the frequent occurrence in barrows of charred bones, roasted or broiled over the fire; and the remains of each meal were left to accumulate in the huts.324 It has been suggested by one of the most eminent of living anthropologists that the ornament, so often observed on prehistoric earthenware, which was produced by impressing a cord upon the clay while it was soft, may be traceable to an earlier time when the art of the potter had not been evolved, and vessels were made of plaited cords