Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar. T. Rice Holmes
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places of refuge but permanent abodes. Those that were situated on heights extremely difficult of access or remote from water were of course very sparsely inhabited in time of peace; but others were analogous to the Gallic fortresses which Caesar called oppida, and which were evidently distinct from the refuges, such as Aduatuca, which he designated as castella.1070 Pottery, it is true, would have been indispensable even during a few days’ siege; and the stone lamp, resembling that of Grimes’s Graves,1071 and blackened by use, which was recovered from Castle Law in Perthshire,1072 might well have been needed at such a time. But when we find bill-hooks, ploughshares, bridle-bits, and fragments of querns among the objects that had been left in the forts which have been mentioned, it is clear that they were occupied by an industrial population: iron slag, which lay among the deposits on Hod Hill, was evidence of metallurgy; while the loom-weights which were collected on the same spot, the bone weaving-combs of Cissbury and Mount Caburn, and the spindle-whorls which abounded not only in these comparatively civilized settlements but also in a stone fortress on far St. David’s Head show that among the inhabitants were women who pursued their ordinary domestic avocations.1073 This Welsh stronghold was almost identical in construction with Carn Brea,1074 and the hut-circles which the two contain are exactly alike; yet the time which had elapsed since the Cornish ramparts were thrown up was as long as that which separates us from Alfred the Great.1075
Although many of the Scottish forts can be referred to the Early Iron Age, it would perhaps be impossible to prove that the relics found in any of them were earlier than the time of Caesar’s invasion;1076 but two have an interest of their own as being the only examples that have yet been observed in Britain of fortifications constructed, like the Gallic walls which he described,1077 conjointly of timber and stone. In one of them, situated at Burghead near Elgin, wooden logs were actually discovered in the stone walls;1078 while at Castle Law, which stands upon a hill commanding a view over the Tay, as it winds through the carse on the west and loses itself in its eastern estuary, the outer face of the wall contained rectangular openings, which had manifestly been designed for the reception of beams.1079
Hunsbury.
While the hill-forts were probably only inhabited permanently by comparatively small numbers, and, like Gergovia, the mountain-city of Auvergne, where Vercingetorix defeated Caesar, may have sheltered thousands of fugitives in time of need, one stronghold at least of the other group was a town in the strictest sense of the word. Hunsbury, the most celebrated representative of this class, which stands upon high ground about two miles south-west of Northampton, might never have surrendered its precious relics if the iron ore which was known to underlie the site had not attracted the prospector. About thirty years ago a company was formed to win the iron; and navvies accidentally did the work which would have been better performed under scientific direction. Hunsbury is so small that it could hardly have been a tribal centre: the entrenchment encloses only four acres—less than the twelfth part of the area of Hod Hill. Not the faintest trace of Roman influence could be detected among the remains, which are now arranged in the Northampton Museum; and the experts who examined them concluded that they belonged to the time of Caesar’s invasion. They were found in pits, resembling those of Mount Caburn, about three hundred of which had been dug inside the rampart; and here too there was evidence that the dwellings had been huts of wattle-work. The townspeople were well armed: they kept horses and chariots, wove their own cloth, sawed their own timber, made their own earthenware, and grew their own corn; and heaps of slag showed that they had smelted the ore, which lay thenceforward undisturbed for nineteen hundred years.1080 One of several skulls which were found just outside the town was perforated with three holes, which suggest that the British Celts, like the Gauls and their neolithic predecessors, made amulets out of the remains of their own dead.1081
Inhabited caves; pit-dwellings; ‘Picts’ houses’; beehive houses; and brochs.
But perhaps not many British settlements were of this comparatively advanced type. In the Late Celtic Period, and indeed long after its close, caves were still inhabited, as throughout the prehistoric ages, in some cases by outlaws, who made a precarious livelihood by robbing wealthy travellers.1082 Pit-dwellings in small groups, which apparently differed little from those of the Neolithic Age, have been found stored with Late Celtic relics;1083 and doubtless it was from habitations of this class that the thatched huts of mud and wattle-work which Strabo1084 describes, and the remains of which have been already noticed, were evolved. Such cottages, as Caesar1085 testifies, were much the same in Gaul and Britain. Posidonius was made welcome in them when he travelled in Gaul. He tells us how his hosts, seated on straw round low tables, took their meat in their fingers and tore it like lions or chopped it in pieces with their pocket-knives, and washed it down with draughts of beer from earthenware or silver beakers; how the meal was sometimes interrupted by a quarrel, when the disputants sprang to their feet and fought till one was slain.1086 In the far north and in the Cornish peninsula men lived in underground dwellings, commonly called ‘Picts’ houses’, which generally consisted of a paved trench lined with dry masonry, roofed over with slabs, and terminating in a round chamber; while in some Scottish examples rooms were grouped on both sides of the gallery.1087 Related to these structures are the Scottish mound-dwellings or bee-hive houses, specimens of which in the island of Lewis were still inhabited in the nineteenth century. They may be looked for in places such as the Hebrides, where branches large enough to form roofs like those of pit-dwellings were not to be had. In some a central chamber was connected with others which opened out of it: a hole, which could be closed at will, was left in the roof for the escape of smoke; the chinks between the stones were stuffed with grass or moss; and the roof was covered with turf, which adhered to the interstices and made the structure compact. It is impossible to assign a precise date to these huts. Some of them contained querns and were certainly occupied in the time of the Romans; but probably many had been built before, while others are comparatively modern.1088 The most elaborate buildings of this type were the brochs, whose range extends from the Orkney and Shetland Isles, which contain nearly a hundred and fifty, to Berwickshire, but which do not exist outside the Scottish area. These buildings, which were really small forts, represent the art of dry-walling at its zenith. They were round towers about sixty feet high and fifty feet in diameter. If an enemy succeeded in forcing a way in, he found himself in an inner court open to the sky and enclosed by a commanding wall, pierced by numerous apertures, which formed the windows of encircling galleries, from behind which the defenders were prepared to shoot.1089 The relics which have been found in them belong for the most part to the close of the Roman occupation and even later; but some which have been excavated in Caithness contained painted pebbles like those of the late palaeolithic cavern of Mas d’Azil; and it is possible that they may have existed in pre-Roman times.1090
The Glastonbury marsh-village.
The most interesting, however, of all the Late Celtic settlements is the far-famed marsh-village of Glastonbury. Besides those of Holderness, which have been already mentioned, there are several lake-dwellings in Great Britain which belonged to the Early Iron Age; but almost all seem to have been built after the commencement of the Christian era.1091 Glastonbury, on the other hand, was first inhabited more than two centuries before the Roman conquest. The peat-moor on which it stands was then surrounded by a shallow mere, and is now covered by low circular mounds which mark the positions of the former huts. Timber and brushwood, surmounted by layers of clay and stones, were laid upon the peat to serve as foundations, and retained in place by piles fixed round their margins. The huts were then built of wood, filled in with wattle and daub; and the entire village was protected by a palisade. The foundations were, however, so unstable that they gradually sank; and in order to keep the floors dry, fresh timber and clay were periodically added. When this was done, the old hearth-stones were left undisturbed; and their presence attests the construction of the successive floors. Among the numerous relics which excavation has revealed, and which prove that skilled agriculturists, potters, weavers, wood-carvers, and coopers lived in the village, there is hardly a single weapon: the sling-bullets evidently served only for killing game. Dozens of coloured pebbles, similar to others which have been found on Hod Hill, were perhaps used in some indoor game;1092 and the spur of a cock may suggest to those who remember that the Britons thought it impious to eat poultry that the pastime for which, as Caesar says, the birds were reared was cockfighting.1093 It is hardly necessary to mention the weaving-combs, the spindle-whorls, the querns, the harness-buckles,