Two visions of Avebury
Reviewed by Mike Pitts
Avebury: the Biography of a Landscape
Joshua Pollard & Andrew Reynolds
Tempus £18.99
ISBN 0-7524-1957-9 pb
Prehistoric Avebury (2nd edition)
Aubrey Burl
Yale £12.95
ISBN 0-300-09087-0 pb
Compare two visions of an early historic landscape. In one, there is a small Roman town. This is succeeded a few hundred yards upstream by an Anglo-Saxon 'sprawling settlement', which by the early 9th century has moved into enclosures. In late Anglo-Saxon times the settlement has risen to the status of a burh, comparable to the contemporary Marlborough a few miles to the east.
The alternative begins with the passing of occasional Roman tourists, followed, in the 4th and 5th centuries, by 'bands of mercenaries rap[ing] the countryside'. The native British use an ancient earthwork here as a defence against the 'shabby veterans' of the Saxon invasion, who build a hut and, early in the 10th century, a 'field-church for the shepherds on the downs' which in time gathers a 'huddle of crofts'.
Both visions purport to describe the origins of modern Avebury. The differences reflect the characters of these two books. Both are easy to read, well illustrated and referenced, and rewarding, but they approach their subject in quite different ways.
Pollard and Reynolds, who give us Avebury as an early town, have elegantly crafted the biography of a nation in microcosm. It is a history, beginning at the close of the Ice Age and ending with Elizabeth I, of a patch of southern England that happens to include one of the great ancient religious complexes. Both authors are actively engaged in excavation and research in the area. The historian Reynolds exhibits an impish delight in questioning everything - medievalists, he says, have a 'strange tendency to use the word "deserted"' - and he conjures up an entirely new history of the early village. Through historical argument, for example, he suggests the 'barber surgeon' was a victim of murder rather than industrial accident, a conclusion that I have independently reached from study of the skeleton.
Pollard brings to the prehistoric account his ideas of Neolithic world images encapsulated in earthworks and buried objects, and also his hands-on experience of almost all recent excavations - not least those proving the existence of the Beckhampton Avenue. The originality of their joint story is emphasised by the 140 illustrations, the majority new or newly published, ranging from photos of excavations in the 1960s and 70s to a new interpretation of Avebury church's font, and including ten new period maps from Palaeolithic to medieval.
Burl, whose focus is largely the Neolithic monuments, eschews simple narrative, instead seeing Avebury as if he were a tourist, beginning with the modern village, seeking explanations of ancient landscape loss in tales of early antiquaries and destructive land-owners, and intertwining visits to excavations and ancient rituals. This is at once a rambling and deeply informed tour, anecdotal and amusing and hence, perhaps, appealing more to visitor than academic. Yet it would be a mistake to assure the non-specialist that here is a 'safe' authoritative text, or to miss the deeper significance of the book.
In Burl's past, people 'squat' and 'huddle' and live in 'huts'. He writes of their 'dark world', their 'untutored minds' and 'seemingly incomprehensible, superficially sterile values', likened to 'the impenetrable thinking of modern primitives'. Depending on your point of view, such judgements are either outrageous or refreshingly frank. What matters is that, while helping to give his book colour, they shape his version of history, not least - as illustrated above - that of the early village.
His major theme is the elaboration of a complex sequence of monument construction - introducing such novelties as the 'horseshoe' - through at least seven phases. The general reader needs to know, however, that these phases are all more or less hypothetical. Prehistoric Avebury is notoriously poorly dated, and Burl's sequence does not strictly follow even the few absolute dates that there are. Radiocarbon suggests the henge ditch was dug around 2970 BC, an event Burl places at 2600 BC. The specialist, however, should know this phasing, as Burl may one day be proved right.
Burl's espousal of academically unfashionable causes such as Beaker people and climate change, his fascination with issues otherwise rarely considered such as counting systems, and his distinctive vision make this, like any of his books, a treat for the open-minded specialist and a trap for the unwary generalist. The solution, of course, is to read both books.
Mike Pitts is an archaeologist and the author of 'Hengeworld'. He excavated at Avebury in 1982 and 1999
Kent or Sussex
Reviewed by Richard Brewer
AD 43 - The Roman Invasion of Britain: a reassessment
John Manley
Tempus £17.99
ISBN 0-7524-1959-5 pb
The year AD 43 and the Claudian invasion is one of the key dates and events in the history of Britain, ranking just behind 55 BC, 1066 and perhaps 1966! Those of us answering an exam question on the conquest of Roman Britain some 20 or more years ago, would almost certainly have included Shepherd Frere's statement from his Britannia - a History of Roman Britain, 'At Richborough, then, the army landed'.
This short, unequivocal sentence did not encourage any alternative thinking on the location of the initial landing. The 'Richborough hypothesis', forcefully argued by Francis Haverfield - whose views were undoubtedly influenced by military strategy in the years leading up to the First World War - has found consensus with archaeologists and historians for much of the 20th century. This was not always the case, however, and 19th century scholars, attempting to interpret the brief historical sources available to them, advocated various landing points - near Southend in Essex, in Hampshire, in the Solent, as well as beach-heads in East Kent.
In more recent years the debate on where the Roman army disembarked and the route of its march northwards towards Colchester has been reopened. The argument, invigorated by the discoveries made by John Manley and others during recent excavations at Fishbourne in Sussex, has, in some quarters, polarised views and set the 'men of Kent' against the 'men of Sussex'. This confrontation culminated in two recent conferences, one organized by the Sussex Archaeological Society and the other by the Council for Kentish Archaeology.
John Manley takes us through the debate and critically reviews the evidence, invariably revealing its shortcomings. The classical literary sources - Cassius Dio, Tacitus, Josephus, Suetonius and Eutropius - are brief, secondary and, for various reasons, imprecise. This has generally allowed modern writers to interpret these accounts to fit their own, favoured scheme of events, challenging the accuracy of the ancient authors when it suits.
Surprisingly, our knowledge of the environment of south-eastern Britain in AD 43 - including vegetation, and river and coastal conditions, which would have had a direct bearing on Aulus Plautius' military strategy - is sketchy and contributes little to our understanding of the likely course of events in the first few critical weeks of the invasion. It is also questionable whether contemporary military strategy or logic can be used to map the Roman landing and operations.
Archaeological discoveries, especially those at both Richborough and Fishbourne, are explored in some detail. To the credit of the author, the evidence in favour and against each of these sites as the initial landing place is reviewed without bias. He also considers the idea, which is currently finding favour with some, that the invasion was not a sudden dramatic event, but the conclusion of a gradual political annexation of south-east Britain by the Romans over a longer period.
And so to the final, revealing chapter and John Manley's conclusions as to where the Romans landed; was it the Solent or Richborough? To find out you will have to read the book, a pursuit certainly made easy for the general reader by the author's informal, narrative style.
Richard Brewer excavated at Caerwent from 1981 to 1996. He is keeper of Archaeology and Numismatics at the National Museums and Galleries of Wales
Role of castles
Reviewed by Anthony Emery
Behind the Castle Gate
Matthew Johnson
Routledge £15.99
ISBN 0-415-26100-7 pb
This book, the runner up for the Book Award in this year's British Archaeological Awards, is a radical reassessment of castle development in England and Wales. More particularly, it is a reconsideration of castles built during the later Middle Ages and their further life during the 16th and early 17th centuries. Matthew Johnson, who is a professor of archaeology at Durham, develops a theme that a handful of architectural historians have been considering over the last few years. For castles should no longer be seen as simply defensive structures but assessed in a much broader context, and appreciated as different and individual reactions to particular political, social and financial circumstances, whose function changed substantially over decades and even centuries.
This is particularly true of castles of the 14th and 15th centuries, which the author emphasises were comparable to stage settings - 'active and complex pieces of landscaping and material culture' which formed a backdrop to the changing lifestyle and culture of their owners. Furthermore, there was no single reason for building or redeveloping a castle, but a raft of reasons which differed in emphasis from structure to structure.
This is a wide ranging study which encompasses archaeology, landscaping and cultural materialism. It is intended to be thought-provoking, rather than tell the story of castle development during the later Middle Ages.
The re-examination of Bodiam Castle in Kent initiates a discussion on castles sited in watery landscapes and the staged processional approaches to them. Tattershall in Lincolnshire introduces a brief review of power and politics in the late medieval household, and its implications for the spatial ordering of a castle's interior and accommodation facilities, and also for the castle's role as a stage setting.
A review of changing views on the transitional period between medieval and Renaissance England leads to an examination of the donjon at Warkworth in Northumberland. This building is used to assess the impact of gunpowder, the Reformation, Tudor royal palaces and Elizabethan theatre on the structural and cultural landscape of older castles.
Johnson's views are brought together in his analysis of Kenilworth Castle in Warwickshire. He discusses its late medieval development, and also examines this castle as an exemplar of his theories on the medieval/Renaissance transition. The final chapter looks at how different social classes understood and reacted to the buildings they were looking at.
Johnson writes in a relaxed style that carries the reader along. I would have welcomed a discussion on Edward III's redevelopment of the apartments round the upper court of Windsor Castle, a pivotal event that affected the development of many castles and residences such as Kenilworth and some of the northern castles until the close of the 14th century. The photographs are apposite but their reproduction quality is rarely worthy of the text they illustrate.
Even so, this is a major contribution to the ongoing debate on the form, purpose, and context of the late medieval castle, and I welcome it with open arms.
Anthony Emery is an architectural historian and author of the three-volume work 'The Greater Medieval houses of England and Wales 1300-1500'
Archaeology of war
Reviewed by John Schofield
Landscapes of War
Paul Hill & Julie Wileman
Tempus £17.99
ISBN 0-7524-1963-3 pb
The use of archaeological methods and mindsets to explore warfare, ancient and modern, has become vogue in recent years. Much new work has been conducted to assess what survives from World War II (including the CBA's own Defence of Britain project-see News) and the Cold War for example. Military history is gaining in popularity, crashed aircraft being excavated by Time Team and Two Men in a Trench. The related subjects of military and modern archaeology are now being taught at universities here and abroad, and surviving sites are afforded protection either by inclusion on lists such as the Battlefields Register and SMRs, or through designation.
But until now, a wide ranging, popular and accessible textbook about the archaeology of warfare has been lacking. Paul Hill and Julie Wileman, both continuing-education history and archaeology teachers at the University of Surrey, have put that right with this book - an extensive review of the material remains of aggression and defence, which provides a suitable complement to John Keegan's A History of Warfare (1993) in which many of the same examples and themes are addressed from an historical and military-strategic perspective. While other publications on archaeology and warfare have appeared over the last two years, these have invariably been focused thematic statements, or edited volumes describing related projects, issues and philosophies. Landscapes of War provides the context, the general framework within which those more focused works can be placed.
The book represents an ambitious and largely successful attempt to draw together common themes using examples from all periods and places. Describing the material culture of warfare in Ancient Sumeria, the Roman Empire, medieval England and the Second World War, the subject is arranged thematically, examining why fighting occurs, the significance and identification of frontiers, how warfare made use of the landscape in which it occurred, defence, and cycles of warfare.
The relationship between evolving architectural traditions and the changing nature of warfare is a recurrent theme - although it is a touch determinist in its outlook. Another theme is that of scales of conflict, embracing individuals, families, the community and so on. The book also describes the various sources of evidence open to archaeological scrutiny - physical remains, testimonial evidence, documentary sources and the experience gained from re-enactment.
The importance of intelligence, deployment, visibility, difficult ground, weather and the use of ambush in the conduct of warfare are all assessed in the landscape section, citing examples including Agincourt 1415, the Battle of Normandy 1944, the Apache Wars 1100-1400 and Thermopylae 480 BC.
This is the first generic account of its type and represents a thorough and informative introduction to the subject. There are, however, one or two striking omissions. The worst atrocities in the recent past, often best communicated through a combination of physical remains and the first hand accounts of those most affected, are omitted. And the Cold War too is excluded - a shame, given that this period of history saw for the first time the preparations for a placeless war embracing the landscape in its entirety. The Cold War was everywhere, and nowhere. Military training also gets barely a mention, despite its impact on the landscape and on landscape change.
John Schofield is Head of Military and Naval Evaluation programmes at English Heritage, and an Inspector in its Characterisation and Designation Team
