The Iron Age
Summary. Describes the Iron Age in the first millennium BC, it origin in the
Middle East, its spread to the Mediterranean lands and into North West Europe.
Discusses the spread of the Indo-European language, in particular the Celtic
language.
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Character of the Iron Age
Cultural Developments in the Iron Age.
Religion and Worship in the Iron
Age
Iron Age in Europe (750 BC to 400AD)
The Celts and the Celtic Language
British Society in the Iron Age
Agriculture and Economy
Iron Age in Ireland
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The
Pre-Roman Iron Age
Character of the Iron Age
The Iron Age was so called by
archaeologists from the remains of iron objects found. This includes most
places from about 1000 BC to the present day. But for practical purposes the term
is restricted in Europe to the period between the first appearance of iron until the period of the occupation of the
region by the Romans which is then called the Roman period. There were many
great developments in literature, art, religion, government and conquests in
this period of roughly one thousand years that make it one of the greatest
epochs in the development of human society. In this period too in Europe we begin to get written descriptions
of events. Almost all the events described in the Old Testament took place in
this period. It was the period of the prophets, the psalmists, and the Wise Men
among the Hebrews. It was the period of the development of democracy and
philosophy. Further east it was the period of Buddha and of the earliest Chinese
writers like Confucius and the Taoist writers. In Persia and in China the imperial form of government by
appointed officials commenced. By the time of Alexander the Great c 333 BC
society had taken on the form which it was largely to retain until the great
European expansion in the nineteenth century when the use of steam derived from
the burning of coal totally transformed human society.
Iron
Age in Middle
East
and Aegean
The
beginning of the Iron Age in the Near East is signalled by the fact that the Philistines had the knowledge
of iron-smithing while the Israelites had not.
‘There
was not a single smith in the whole land of Israel because the Philistines had reasoned:
We must prevent the Hebrews from forging swords or spears. Hence all the
Israelites were in the habit of going down to the Philistines to sharpen every
ploughshare, axe, mattock, or goad. The price was two thirds of a shekel for
ploughshares and axes, and one third for sharpening mattocks and straightening
goads. So it was on the day of the battle of Michmash no one
in the whole army with Saul and Jonathan had either sword or spear in his hand
except however Saul and his son Jonathan’ (1 Samuel 13. 19-22).
Iron when first discovered was regarded
as a precious metal. In Deuteronomy it is recorded that Og the king of Bashan had a bed of iron. Obviously the metal
was considered precious enough to make a royal bed (Deut. 3.11). But its chief
use was soon to be for making weapons and edged tools. The Canaanites too had
chariots of iron, and doubtless other iron weapons as well. The emphasis placed on iron shows
how new and how valuable it was. The stories in the Bible illustrate
other aspects of the Iron Age as well. It is not clear what advantage it had
over bronze in chariot construction. The chariot would probably been made
largely of light wood and wicker-work, but with iron pieces to strengthen it.
There was a great emphasis on warfare, for
warfare was endemic. The picture of the divinity too changed from a god of
fertility and crops to a God of battles: ‘Yahweh is a warrior; Yahweh is his
name. The chariots and the army of Pharaoh he has hurled into the sea’
(Exodus 15.3-4). The third feature was the growing
aristocratic nature of society. In the Bible we see a confederation of tribes
turning into a small local monarchy with royal officers. Elsewhere the small
local monarchies were growing into mighty empires that aimed with greater or
lesser success to control the whole Middle East. But the periods when any single power, even the
Romans could dominate the whole Middle East were very short.
The
Israelites established a monarchy first under Saul and then under King David
around 1000 BC. David’s son Solomon built a great temple in Jerusalem. The kingdom of Israel was able to expand, as often happens,
largely because there were no powerful neighbours. Under Solomon’s son Rehoboam
the kingdom split in two, the northern part called Israel based on Samaria and the southern part Judah centred on Jerusalem. The biblical literature we possess
came mostly from the court and temple of Jerusalem. The hostility between the Jews and
Samaritans survives to this day. From the point of view of religion and
literature they had tremendous influence in the world, but militarily both
kingdoms were negligible.
The
rise and fall of the great empires in the Middle East are recorded in the Bible, first Assyria, then Babylonia, the Medes and Persians, the Greeks
and the Romans. Other kingdoms that tried unsuccessfully to become empires were
those of Egypt and the Hittites though their power
was passed by the beginning of the Iron Age. The first of the great empires to emerge
in the Iron Age was Assyria, and the Arameans of Damascus. Empire
is rather a misleading name, for the object of the imperial ruler was to
collect tribute. The local rulers were left in place, or a more docile member
of the ruling family substituted for a more rebellious one. The military ruler
led his army into another state, devastated it and demanded annual tribute. The
defeated king had then in addition to join his forces to that of the conqueror.
Revolts were regular, as we read in the history of the two Jewish kingdoms.
There was a general revolt at the death of each king, and the new king had to
re-conquer the empire afresh. This pattern of empire was not confined to the Middle East; we find it in Ireland all through the period of Celtic rule.
‘Ben-hadad, king of Aram (Damascus)
mustered his whole army- thirty two kings were with him, and horses and
chariots - and went up to lay siege to Samaria and storm it…The king of Israel
said summoned all the elders of the land and said ‘You can see clearly how this
man intends to ruin us’. All the elders and all the people said ‘Take no
notice. Do not consent’ (1 Kings 20.) Anyone in Ireland would have recognised the situation,
and the king’s reaction in calling a council of the elders of the people.
Next came the
Assyrians. The Assyrian local kingdom was founded in the Bronze Age and its
empire commenced about
745 BC. This was the first of the great empires that ruled the Middle East until the fall of the Turkish Empire in AD 1918. By 841 BC they arrived in
Palestine and Jehu king of Israel was forced to pay them tribute.
Assyrian power declined thereafter and the little kingdoms in Palestine refused to pay tribute. The power of Assyria revived in the following century.
After many revolts Sargon the Assyrian emperor brutally suppressed the
Kingdom of Israel in 721 BC and dispersed all of the ruling
class and the priests of the temple of Samaria to other parts of his empire and gave
their lands to loyal subjects from elsewhere. The common people,
the tillers of the soil were not removed and from the mixture of various races
the people of Samaria was derived. Attacks were continued on the
smaller Hebrew kingdom of Judah centred on Jerusalem.
The Babylonians were the
heirs of the Sumerians whose
traditions they preserved though they
were usually under the domination of their northern neighbours the Akkadians and Assyrians. A short-lived Chaldean empire
centred on the city of Babylon on the Euphrates overthrew the Assyrians in 609 BC and lasted
until 539 BC when it was conquered by
the Persians, an Indo-European-speaking people. The Babylonians suppressed the
kingdom of Judah in 586 BC and transported the ruling
classes to the waters of Babylon. 'He carried off all Jerusalem into
exile, all the nobles and all the notables; ten thousand of these were exiled
with all the blacksmiths and metal workers; only the poorest people of the
country were left behind (2 Kings 24.14). In other words he took the local
chiefs and all the warriors, craftsmen and smiths. From Ezra 2 we can glean
that the leading families and warriors from every village in Judah were taken, and from Jerusalem all the priests, Levites and temple
singers, temple servants, and palace servants. All the common people were left.
(Though the Bible does not record what the Babylonians did with the lands of
the deportees in Nehemiah 5 we find that various families of the Ammonites and Arabs
and Philistines were the chiefs of the land, their lands presumably being gifts
of the Babylonians for loyalty.)
The
Persians were descendants of the Indo-European conquerors of Persia and their rule lasted from 539 BC
until 331 BC. They introduced a new system of government. Native rulers were
replaced by provincial governors or satraps, a system of government copied in
all succeeding empires. In the Roman Empire satraps were called pro-consuls. The Jews in
Babylon were allowed to return to Judah in 538 BC. The Persians were
overthrown by the Greek-speaking Alexander the Great in 331 BC. The Greeks were
originally invaders from the steppes.
After
the death of Alexander in 323 BC his empire was divided among his generals. The
Ptolemids, descendants of Ptolemy ruled in Egypt until the Roman conquest in 30 BC when
Cleopatra was conquered and Egypt became a Roman province. Syria and most of the Middle East came under the Seleucids, the
descendants of Seleucus, until 63 BC when they were conquered by the Romans.
Various kings of the Seleucid dynasty were called Antiochus. Their capital was called Antioch. The Romans too spoke an Indo-European
language, and like the Greeks they too had come from the steppes. The Middle East was thus under the rule of peoples
speaking Indo-European languages from 539 BC until the rise of the Arabs after 632 AD.
Greek culture and the Greek language spread all over the Middle East and it was in that language that the
New Testament was written. The Old Testament was also translated from the
original Hebrew into Greek about 200 BC. When the Romans had conquered the
Carthaginians, the Seleucids, and the Ptolemids, the four great cities of the Empire were Rome, Antioch, Alexandria, and Carthage. The ruling classes in the eastern
half of the Empire spoke Greek and in the western half Latin. This represented
the greatest spread of Indo-European languages and influence until the
beginnings of modern times when the kingdoms on the Atlantic coast spread over
the entire world. In the Christian period Rome, Alexandria, and Antioch became the seats of ecclesiastical
patriarchs, but Carthage did not. Carthage was for a time the centre of the most
important group of Latin-speaking churches in the world, but it still looked to
Rome for spiritual guidance. The Christian
Church in the Latin world was thus unified from the start, while there were
different centres of authority in the east. The structure of the Christian
Church was derived from the conquests of Alexander the Great on one side and
the Roman Republic on the other.
The
little kingdom of Judah lasted until 586 BC. Judah was about the size of an Irish
province but was more like the traditional city state of the Middle East, an important town with a palace and
temple complex in Jerusalem which controlled a district around it.
Early Rome and Athens were similar, as were the Italian
cities of the Middle Ages. Thereafter Palestine was ruled by various foreign empires, Babylonians,
Persians, Ptolemids and Seleucids, until 163 BC. The Persian king Cyrus
permitted those Jews who wished to return to Jerusalem and rebuild the temple to do so in 537
BC. The leaders of this return and this work was Ezra
the Scribe and Nehemiah, the king's cupbearer, himself a Jew. The Jews in
Jerusalem were first under the Persians, then
the Ptolemids and then later the Seleucids. They achieved a short-lived
independence around 164 BC under the Maccabees, but soon came under the Romans.
In 163 BC Judas Maccabaeus and his
brothers sought an alliance with the distant Romans and established the
independence of the Jewish state under the high priests of the temple. But it
was always more or less dependent on the goodwill of the Romans. The views of
the Jews at the time of the Maccabees are interesting for they reflect what
outsiders thought of the Romans at the time of the Republic.
But where their friends and those who
relied on them were concerned they had always stood by their friendship. They
had subdued kings far and near, and all who heard their name went in terror of
them. One man, if they determined to help him and advance him to a throne would
certainly occupy it, while another if they so determined would find himself deposed; their influence was paramount. In spite of
all this not one of them had assumed a crown or put on the purple for his own aggrandisement. They had set up a senate where three
hundred and twenty councillors deliberated daily, constantly debating how best
to regulate public affairs. They entrusted their government to one man for a
year at a time with absolute power over their whole empire, and this man was
obeyed by all without any envy or jealousy (1 Maccabees 8.12-18)
There were actually two consuls, and the picture
seen by the outsiders was rose-tinted, but it was to prove an enduring ideal.
The Romans conquered Syria and Palestine in 63 BC and the later kings governed
only under the protectorate of the Romans. When the Jews were in exile their
language, Hebrew, was replaced by a local language Aramaic as the spoken
language of Palestine. Hebrew was used only for worship and religious
studies. The common people, for the most part, spoke their local tongues, Aramaic or Syriac
in Syria, and Coptic in Egypt. Aramaic replaced Hebrew as the spoken language
of the Jews. The inscription of the cross of Jesus was written in Aramaic,
Greek, and Latin. Aramaic was the language Jesus spoke normally, but it is
likely that he spoke Greek as well, and that Pilate, the Roman governor, spoke
to him in that language. Many Jews spread out over the Middle East and were known as the Jews of the
Diaspora. There were many points in the Law of Moses that they could not
practice in exile, like the pilgrimages, so allowance had to be made for this.
Apart
from the great empires there were three rather small groups of cities or tribes
in the Eastern
Mediterranean
who were to play a very important part in the history of the world. The first,
the Jews, whose collection of writings are easily accessible, have already been
mentioned. The others were the Phoenicians and Greeks.
The Phoenicians were Canaanites who
lived in towns on the coast, and who were famous for their ships and their
trade. Their most famous towns were Tyre and Sidon, both still in existence. King Solomon
asked the assistance of King Hiram of Tyre to get cedar trees from the forests of
Lebanon for the building of the temple. The
Phoenicians established trading colonies all along the Mediterranean, and on the African and Spanish
Atlantic coasts (Cunliffe, Facing the Ocean). The greatest of these was
Carthage in Tunisia, which for a time rivalled the Roman
republic. They may have come to Britain looking for tin which was found in few
places. But it was not essential for them actually to travel to Britain to get tin, for local merchants would
have traded it extensively. Tin was absolutely necessary for making bronze.
In the Aegean the iron-using, Greek-speaking Dorians
conquered most of the country. Many Greeks fled to the coasts of Asia Minor beginning the great spread of Greek colonies
abroad. From the petty Greek chiefdoms two major states emerged,
Athens and Sparta and after 600 BC were dominant in Greece. Greek art and architecture in what
was called the Classical period developed and produced some of the greatest
works of art in world history. Similarly the speculations of the Greek
philosophers of this period laid the ground for all subsequent Western
philosophy and patterns of thought. Theatre too was developed and remains a
form of artistic expression to this day.
The Greeks as well developed trading
colonies along the north coast of the Mediterranean and in the Black Sea. Their most important one was at Syracuse in Sicily. It was founded by people from
Corinth, and it fought off attempts by the
Carthaginians to capture. A disastrous attempt by the Athenians to conquer it
led to military decline of Athens. It was finally conquered by the
Romans. In the Western
Mediterranean,
the most important colony was Marseille situated close to the mouth of the Rhone, which provided a route not only into Northern Europe but also to the Atlantic coast. Greek
merchants and geographers were able to collect much information about places,
their products, and the best routes to them.
The
period of Greek culture
after the death of Alexander the Great (323 BC) is called Hellenistic.
It was not confined to Greece and the western shores of Asia Minor, but spread over most of the Middle East. Greek language, Greek philosophy,
Greek art and architecture were to be found everywhere. Though the Romans
conquered these, the Greek language and culture remained dominant until the
region was conquered by the Mohammedan Arabs in the eighth century AD.
All the Jews of the higher classes would have spoken Greek but would have been able to read
Hebrew. It is not recorded if the text of the Bible that Jesus read was in
Hebrew or Greek. It was not translated into Latin until about the fourth
century AD. The translation of St Jerome, known as the Vulgate, became the
official text of the Latin Church. It became the official Bible for the whole
Latin Church, and was the Bible introduced to Ireland by St. Patrick. Traditionally a boy
being taught to read and write in a monastery or cathedral school commenced
with the first words of the first psalm Beatus
vir. The twelve apostles probably all spoke Greek, and Christianity spread among the Greek-speaking Jews of the Diaspora, and among the Greek colonies throughout the Roman Empire. There was a Greek-speaking community
in Rome itself, as well as in Marseilles.
When
finally Greco-Roman culture reached the British Isles the strands of development which had parted company with each other at the beginning of
the Bronze Age were re-united. The one strand had spread up through southern Russia and over Central and Northern Europe. The other developed in the Near East and spread along the Mediterranean and up through France.
The point of this brief tour of the Middle East is that when Christianity was
introduced numerous other elements were introduced along with it that had been
developed in the Middle
East. There
was writing, in the Latin language and in a Roman script. There was a body of
religious writings concerning the dealing of God with the Hebrew people. There
was a history of the Middle East, and the moralising wisdom of that region. Greece contributed philosophy, and Roman
contributed law, while the administration of an empire came from the Romans,
Greeks, and Persians. When people embraced Christianity they embraced much of
the culture of the Middle
East and the
Mediterranean It should be remembered too that when the Christian Church spread
and literacy was spread the almost exclusive reading matter were the books of
the Bible and the commentaries of the Fathers of the Church on them.
[Top]
Cultural Developments in the Iron Age.
Writing
had become fairly
commonplace in the Near
East by 1000
BC so that we have true history for many parts of that region from that date onwards.
The Bible, even as a human book, or collection of books, provides an accessible
collection of writings
from the period, and the entire history of Palestine, with very few gaps, is recorded for
the entire first millennium BC. For some reason
unknown, those under the Indo-European warlords north of the Alps did not record anything in writing, and we are ignorant of
what they knew and what
they did.
There
were several major developments in the region
where writing was common,
political organisation among the
Persians, religion among the Hebrews, philosophy among the Greeks, money among the Lydians, the calendar and
law-making among the Romans. In addition
the Greeks brought literature, especially the theatre, and the arts to a peak which has never
been surpassed. Likewise the achievements of the Romans in engineering have
only been surpassed in recent
times.
As
mentioned above, the Persian Empire had
developed the system of satrapies or provincial
governorships. The
imperial ruler divided his
conquered territories into logical sections
and appointed governors to each.
These were to govern in accordance with a fixed and written
code of laws, to collect the taxes, and to maintain order. The system was eventually taken over by
the Romans. As the latter systematically conquered much of Europe, North Africa,
and the Near East, they divided the empire into
provinces, (and at a later date dioceses). Roman order, Roman law, and Roman
administration had a profound influence on the development of Europe, and also on the development of the Christian Church.
One very important idea was of a unified inhabited civilised earth, ( the oikumene or inhabited world from whence
ecumenical) of which all men were,
or could become citizens. There were no
national boundaries. A Roman
would speak of a 'distant province' not a 'distant country'. The
Romans gradually granted the privileges of citizenship in their state to other
peoples, first in Italy and then outside Italy. St Paul, a Jew of Tarsus in Cilicia, was born a Roman citizen, and so had
the right to appeal to the emperor from any provincial tribunal. It was also
possible to buy citizenship. Men from Britain to Mesopotamia could share a common citizenship and common
interest, speak a common language, be ruled by the same laws, be served by the
one army, and worship the same gods, whatever their origin. This was totally
different from the rulers of the north who belonged to intermarried families.
This idea of a common citizenship of a common empire was to persist until quite
modern times. Nobody found it
strange to have an Italian archbishop of Armagh in the Middle Ages, though the
local clergy might not have liked
it much. Nor did the Pope think it out of the way
to appoint Henry of Anjou ruler of Ireland. The same idea of many peoples
gathered in a
single Church underlay Christianity as well.
Religion
developed in Israel. David established the political monarchy, and his son Solomon built a great temple as an annex
to the palace as was the custom in the Near East. Religious worship at the time of Solomon differed little in most respects from that of their
neighbours. The
temple could have been built in any town in Palestine, and was probably a fairly close copy of such a one. The religion of the
original amphictyony of the Twelve Tribes had certain characteristics that were
to form the foundation
of future developments. The first was that
it recognised only one god for worship. The first of the Ten Commandments
was not an expression of monotheism, but the exclusion of the worship of any other god. The second
was its ethical component. The prohibitions were few, simple, but basic,
not to commit adultery, not to steal a
man's person or possessions, not to
kill, and not to give false testimony
in court on a capital charge.
Thus the life, liberty, possessions, and wife of a man were protected. It was
believed that God gave these commandments to Moses on the way out of Egypt. In time, all the prescriptions in the
five books of the law were assigned to Moses and were known as the Mosaic Law. The third element was
the historic. It was connected, no longer with the rhythm of the seasons but
with specific historical events, the promises
to Abraham, and the rescue from Egypt. With David a further promise and
expectation was added, a future great king who would put everything in the world to rights.
This placed the
emphasis on the future,
an emphasis that was
continued in Christianity.
In the temple religious songs were composed
and the hundred and fifty songs, traditionally called psalms (songs
accompanied on a plucked string instrument like a lyre) form one of the
greatest bodies of religious poetry and
songs ever composed. The idea of God, and the idea of religion as having primarily a moral dimension, were elaborated resulting in an ethical monotheistic
religion. The one god was seen as all powerful and omni-present, rewarding the good and punishing
the wicked, the sole creator of all things. The prophets, from Amos onwards,
stressed the need for justice and
kindness especially to the poor and afflicted. The temple
worship was not of course an early version of Protestantism. The rituals of
sacrifices of animals continued. But when the Jewish
leaders were exile to Babylon the worship of God had to be carried on without a temple and its rites. The family meal on the eve of
the Sabbath and worship in buildings called synagogues formed the basis of religious life. This was later to form the basis of
Christian and Mohammedan worship.
It
should be noted in passing that the architectural remains of the ancient world
show how public life was conducted in the open air. Worship was outside the
great temples not inside them. Theatre was in the open air. For shelter
buildings with rows of columns but open on one side were built. This kind of
building was called a stoa. The Jews
adopted the stoa when the temple was re-built, and open colonnades surrounded
the great courtyards of the temple. The apostles preached in the stoa of
Solomon, which formed part of the temple (Acts 5.12). When Jesus taught in the
temple it was not of course within the temple building where only priests could
enter, but in the temple courtyards, most likely in one of the stoas which gave
shelter from the sun and the rain. Philosophers like Aristotle and Plato in
Athens taught in public gardens, doubtless in
similar colonnaded shelters. The schools of philosophy continued until the time
of Justinian, 529 AD.
Diaspora
is a word also applied to the expansion of the Greeks outside Greece. The earliest Diaspora was on to the
mainland of Asia
Minor that
came to be called Ionia. Here in the city of Miletus western philosophy began. Thales of
Miletus c 580 BC is regarded as the first to speculate on what universal principles underlay all things
in the universe. Thales
and his disciples, called the Ionian philosophers, are important
not for their answers but
for the questions they asked. The
great development of philosophy took place in Athens in the heyday of the city with Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle. Plato and Aristotle were to have a
profound influence on Christian thought.
Money
or coinage was
invented in the rich trading kingdom of Lydia about 600 BC and the idea was quickly copied by other trading nations. The
use of regular weights
of silver can be seen early in the
Bronze Age when Abraham paid four
hundred shekels of silver to the
Hittites of Kiriath Arba for the cave of Machpelah
near Hebron in which
to bury his wife Sarah (Gen. 23.15). In Israel, the shekel, a unit of weight of silver, about half an ounce, became the
principal coin. At the beginning of the
Iron Age, as mentioned above, divisions of the shekel and the pim were used for smaller amounts. With coinage came
also hired labour where the labourer could be
paid with a small coin at the end
of each day (Deut.. 24.14-15). The Iron
Age saw the gradual spread of the use of money.
Ancient
law was a blend of
custom, morality, religion and
magic and attempts by magistrates to interpret the will of the gods. Collections of these rules and customs were made
at an early date. In Babylon, the laws were codified by Hammurabi in the 18th cent
BC. The Mosaic Law in its present form is a very late collection, but it
enshrines earlier collection such as
Exodus chapters 21 to 23 that are earlier and may even be pre-Mosaic. One characteristic form of the laws was 'If a man does
such-and-such then the penalty is.'
Roman
law was codified about 450 BC and written down on twelve tablets. This was an
attempt to codify and set
down in writing exactly what laws the plebeians were bound by.
But it also included
an attempt at rationality and fairness. This was developed by
later Roman law-makers
and culminated in the Code of Justinian 483-565 BC. The Code of
Justinian had a profound influence on canon law and civil law in most European countries,
and on maritime and international law.
In common law
countries it is taught as civil law for it has still some applications.
The
original Roman calendar drawn up about the 7th century BC was a lunar calendar with
all the problems that involved. There were no clocks, or any
devices for measuring time, so the phases of the moon were convenient. The gods were often associated with the planets or wandering stars.
They were so-called because they did not keep their
fixed place in the cycle of the heavens. From the point of view of the
ancient astronomers the earth was at the
centre of the universe. What are now geographical expressions, poles,
tropics, and equator, were
then astronomical expressions. The poles were to points round which the sky, not the earth revolved. But
some stars wandered about all over the
place, but in a predictable fashion, and
they were called planetoi 'wanderers' Among the Romans
we find the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn,
among the gods, and they were further
assigned to the days of the week. The
days of the week still mostly retain the same names in modern European languages.
Several of the names of the months are derived from festivals in the Roman
calendar.
The
calendar was corrected first by Julius Caesar the Pontifex Maximus, or principal priest of Rome, who made it a solar calendar, and
later by Pope Gregory XII in the sixteenth century. It was a religious calendar,
and remains so to this day. To it
was added the date of
Easter. This latter which still controls almost every event in the world is derived
from an attempt in Palestine to tie in a spring festival with a
spring full moon. The Babylonian calendar was thus superimposed on the Roman one, the
Roman giving the fixed parts of the
year, and the Babylonian the moveable parts. Finally, when England adopted the Gregorian calendar in 1752 11 days
had to be dropped in England, Ireland,
and Scotland. The Julian calendar allowed the dates
of future feast days or holy days when certain rites had to be performed to be
computed with great accuracy. The solar year is the time the earth takes to go
round the sun. A day is the time the earth takes to spin once on its axis. It
takes the earth 365 days 5 hours, 48 minutes and 45.5 seconds to go round the
sun. If one takes the hours and minutes as being approximately 6 hours or a
quarter of a day, the hour being one twenty fourth of a day, then a reasonably accurate calendar can be
maintained by adding one day every fourth year to take account of the six hours
difference. This is what Julius Caesar did, following the advice of the
astronomers. It was however adding 12 minutes too much each year that
comes to roughly 20 hours in a century.
Between the Council of Nicaea in 325 AD and 1582 10 days too many had been added to the calendar and
these were dropped by the order of Pope Gregory XIII. To avoid a similar build
up three leap day are dropped every four centuries, which will keep the solar
and lunar calendars, and the Church festivals in harmony until far into the
future.
[Top]
Religion and Worship in the Iron Age
As
in dealing with the Bronze Age we are forced largely to conjecture regarding
areas where the art of writing had not been developed, and to base our
conclusions on written sources in the Middle East and increasingly in southern Europe. The coming of iron brought no great
cultural change and trends in the Late Bronze Age were continued. The great megalithic
shrines were deserted but other local sites were developed. Raftery notes that there were four major cult
centres in the Iron Age, at Tara in Meath, at Cruachain (Rathcrogan) in Connaught, at Dun
Ailinne (Dun Aulin) in Leinster,
and at Eamhain Macha (Avan Macha) in Ulster. (There is no similar site in
Munster.) As cult sites these may have
originated in the Late Bronze period, but most of the buildings whose remains
survive are from late in the Iron Age. It is reasonable to assume that the
trends in religious worship observed elsewhere in the Iron Age were also found
in Ireland and that no great Osiris-type of myth and ritual
survived at these shrines. It may be at this time that the idea of a chief over
each province, the ri ruirech originated. If such existed his
functions would have been purely religious.
Religion
was not connected with morals. Religious beliefs prescribed many things to be
done or omitted, but observing a moral code was not among them. Genuine
religious feeling existed of the kind mentioned earlier with Jacob at
Bethel. But most religion was more practical.
As the Romans put it 'Do ut des', ' I give that you may give'. Worship was made that
disasters might be averted, or favours like good crops, children or success in
battle obtained. Sin was not connected with morality but with offending the
gods. A god could be offended by a dog getting in and eating the bread or meat
set before the idol.
In general it may be said that religious
beliefs fragmented, and the system that we call
polytheism or polydaemonism developed. A different god was ascribed to places
where some force or divinity was noticed. Then gods were ascribed to a whole
range of natural phenomena such as rivers, wells, or thunder
There
seems to have been a tendency to develop local cults. Gods related to the
heavenly bodies seem also to have grown in importance. In Egypt an attempt had been made to replace
the old gods with the sole worship of the sun god, but the attempt failed. In
Palestine and Syria numerous temples were built, and each
contained the image of the god who was worshipped locally. This spread to the Aegean. In Athens, the Parthenon, the most beautiful temple
in the world, that of Pallas Athena, the guardian of Athens, known as Parthenos, the Virgin, was built. All these temples had an inner
room, or holy place, in which was kept the image of the god or goddess. In the
temple in Jerusalem there was no image in the inner cell.
The form of Roman temples was derived from Greece. The altar was outside the temple in
the courtyard. The worshippers stood outside. Hence the
remark of Jesus about Zechariah 'whom you murdered between the temple and the
altar'. Among the Romans we find
the sun, the moon, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus, and Saturn, among the gods,
and they were further assigned to the days of the week. The Greeks, Norse, and
Hindus, had similar pantheons. Myths became stories told about the gods. In Greece especially the story-telling about the
gods seems to have become divorced from all practical religion. In
Rome, most of the traditional religious
rites seem to have been kept on just as traditional rites. The office of chief
priest, the pontifex maximus was
politically important, and both Julius and Augustus Caesar secured it for
themselves.
Religious
worship, especially in the temples in Canaan, had a high sexual component, though without the
corresponding mythology it is hard to say what the rites were for. It is
generally considered that they were connected with promoting fertility in man,
in animals, and in crops. The religious leaders recorded in the Old Testament
constantly rebuked the people of Israel for resorting to these temples.
Syncretism or mixing elements of religious worship from various sources was
common. Outside the confines of the Near East there seems to have been no connection between
sexual acts and religion.
The
Celtic world had no sacred writings. The Romans however found considerable
connections with their own beliefs. It would have been strange if they had not
for Celts and Romans split from the same stock about a thousand years earlier.
Much of the information we have about Celtic religion comes from Julius
Caesar's account about Gaul
and Britain. In Gaul and Britain at least they had an order of priests
called druids, recruited from the aristocracy. Aspirants to the order spent
twenty years memorising the religious lore in the form of verses. They
regulated all public and private sacrifices, and gave rulings on all religious
questions. The religion seems to have been little more than superstition, but
without any clear system. Omens were seen everywhere. A bird could scarcely fly
past or settle without it being regarded as an omen. The druids do not seem to
have had temples, but to have worshipped (or worshipped at) graven images of
oak or possibly also carved stones. (It may very well be that the idea of
temples never took root among the pastoral nomads of the steppes, and that they
always had shamans instead of temple priests.) Caesar noted human sacrifices
usually of criminals, but if the numbers were short, innocent people as well.
Among known deities in Britain were Sulis the goddess of the
hot springs at Bath, Nodens (Nuada of the Silver Hand) in
the Forest of Dean, and Brigit or Brigantia in the north
among the Brigantes. Celtic religion was one of local gods. A god called Lug or
Lugh was widely worshipped, and his name survives in various placenames in Europe. In Ireland he was called Lug Lamfota, Lu of the long hand.
But
religion was an all-pervasive force. The greatest crime was one that would
anger the gods. Blasphemy was punished by instant death. The persecutions of
the Christians rose from the fact that they refused to worship other gods, and
nobody was prepared to risk the consequences. Homer attributed all the disasters
of the Trojan War to the anger of an insulted goddess. Rulers of course averted
popular anger from themselves by finding a group which had failed in its
religious duties.
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Iron Age in Europe (750 BC to 400AD)
Iron
appeared in Italy about 1000 BC shortly after its
appearance in the Levant. The first Iron Age culture known in Italy is called the Villanovan. It was
closely related to the Hallstatt culture. The Villanovans are believed to have
entered northern Italy from Central Europe, but there is no indication that they
were Italic speakers. Burials were in urns. Metalwork was of a high order, geometric
in style, and showing Greek influences. It existed in Northern Italy between 1000 BC and 750 BC. Various
groups of Italic-speakers were found in Italy. Italic is so-called because it was
spoken in Italia in Roman times. The spread of the Italic speakers in Italy is as mysterious as the spread of the
Celtic speakers in Western
Europe. Italy was a relatively poor region though in
places, especially in the North, there were some rich soils. It had been undistinguished
during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.
Rome was traditionally founded in 753 BC by
Romulus and Remus. It was a small town
situated on a hill called later the Capitoline after the capitol or arx, a
defensive point on the top of the hill and near a crossing of the river Tiber.The
were several other low hills in the vicinity and the ground between them was
marshy and unhealthy. The site had no particular advantages and the inhabitants
were drawn from the neighbourhood. But at a very early stage the Roman
character seems to have been formed with an emphasis on foresight, patience,
courage, and a refusal to accept defeat. At first they had ‘kings’ like all
other little city states, but after a conquest by the Etruscans and the
imposition of Etruscan kings, they threw out the kings and thereafter elected
two consuls annually. The Republic was constantly at war, and bit by bit it
conquered all the peoples and nations around it. The empire finally extended
from Britain to Mesopotamia, and from the Danube to the Sahara.
Hallstatt
was a Bronze Age site in Central Europe where the people produced salt. But it is chiefly famous as being
the place where iron goods in a distinctive style were manufactured about 750
BC. The Hallstatt style or period
extended from 750 to 450 BC. Hallstatt art continued the geometrical patterns
of the preceding age. As noted above, at this date Indo-European warriors were
probably in control of the region. Hallstatt and La Tene refer to artistic
styles and characteristic artefacts. These were made by metal-workers who presumably
had no direct connection with warrior tribes. While we have no idea what
language the metal-workers spoke, it may have been Celtic, and furthermore
these traders could have been responsible for the spread of the Celtic
language.
The
Hallstatt phase was followed by the La Tene style or period 450 to 58 BC when
the region was conquered by Caesar and Roman influences were introduced. A new
and very distinctive curvilinear style based on Mediterranean influences was
introduced. It was often called Celtic art based on an
misapprehension that the Celtic overlords were responsible for it. La Tene was
an archaeological site in Switzerland on the
shore of Lake Neuchatel discovered in 1857. Motifs
include stylised animal, bird, and human forms, but the most characteristic
were the thick-lobed spiral and the trumpet curve. It was developed north of
the Alps around 450 BC. The artists adopted and
stylised Classical Greek motifs.
Though
characteristic of the Iron Age the art was not confined to metal objects. It is
found on bronze and other metal objects, carved on stones, and later, drawn on
parchment. Artistic beauty apart, it is chiefly important as a marker of the
extent of the spread of certain later Iron Age trends.
The
La Tene style is also found in the Marne valley in Northern France at an early date. Its presence in western Europe does not of itself indicate the presence of
Celtic-speakers. La Tene art developed in specific places ruled by
Celtic-speakers, but La Tene art was not typical of the whole area where the
Celtic language was spoken. If Celtic names and La Tene art are found together
there may be reason to suppose a direct migration or direct conquest. But we
can equally well assume that they were borrowed independently and that there is
no connection between the inhabitants of Ireland for example and the La Tene Celts of
the Marne.
It is better to restrict Celtic to the language, and keep La Tene for
the art. Neither makes any assumptions regarding the population. The question
too must always be kept in mind whether a generic name like Keltoi (Celti,
Galli) or local names like Treveri or Boii refer to all the people or only to
the ruling classes.
The name Celtic for the language was
derived from the Greek name Keltoi for the dominant peoples in Western Europe. The only conclusion is that the
dominant people were speaking that language at that time. Hilaire Belloc
remarked that language spreads over a surface like oil and there is no need to
assume any movement of population. The spread of the language, in the absence
of writings, is more easily traced than the movement of populations. For
example, we know that the Celtic language in the form of proto-Indo-European
originated on the steppes not later than 3000 BC. Languages have characteristic
forms, so philologists can determine for example that the name
Bohemia is derived from the Celtic tribe name
Boii, though the Slav-speaking Czechs occupied the area by the 6th
century AD.
[Top]
The Celts and the Celtic Language
The question of the Celts is a particular case
of the wider question of the spread of the Indo-European languages. The same
question must be asked, Did the Celts exist as a
distinct population, or were they only a part of the existing Bronze Age and
Early Iron Age population distinguished only by the language they spoke? If the
latter, did the adoption of the language come from conquest in warfare, or was
it spread by peaceful means. If there was some movement of the population, such
as by bands of warriors, did these amount to more than
a tiny minority of the whole population? The fact is that we have no idea. For
this reason I have preferred to refer to Iron Age society, agriculture, art,
religion etc., and to refer to Celts only when the written historical sources
actually mention them, and to Celtic only when referring to the language.
It would be much less confusing if
there was a different name for the language as there is for the art. The use of
Celtic to refer to a distinct language dates only from 1739 (Mirriam Webster)
but we are stuck with the terminology. There is a circularity
in the argument. Celtic is the language of the Celts; the Celts are those who
speak Celtic. This is as helpful as describing a board as thin plank, and a
plank as a thick board. It does not tell us anything. The question of the
definition of Celt is discussed at length by Cunliffe. For my part I prefer to keep
population and its social composition, ironworkers and art, and the spoken
language absolutely distinct, and not to imply any necessary connection between
any of them. Obviously this rules out the old idea of an invasion by Celtic
warriors wiping out the earlier population.
We
can look for a parallel in the Norman invasion of Ireland. Very few were Normans from Normandy speaking Norman French. Most of them
were from England and Wales, but spoke Norman French. Some were
Flemings who spoke or understood Norman French.
There were but a handful of them, mostly younger son of the nobility,
looking for lands for themselves, but were accompanied
by men-at-arms who probably just understood Norman French. They would doubtless
later have brought in individuals with special skills like stone cutters to
train a local workforce. The common language of communication at first would
have been Latin spoken by the clergy of all Western Europe. Within a few centuries in some parts
of Ireland, the native Gaelic would have been displaced
among all classes, first by Norman French and then by English, all contact with
Normandy having long since ceased. A particular
town like Dublin could have passed in a few centuries
speaking successively, Norse, Gaelic, French, and English. The Normans freely intermarried with the Irish, so
that within a few generations, all the major ruling families in Ireland would have been of mixed race. But in
some families, French and then English was adopted as the common tongue for
speech within the family, while in other families Gaelic would have been the
usual language. If the new language was seen as useful for getting on in the
world it would have been adopted. Otherwise it would not. In the nineteenth
century, Gaelic-speakers were anxious to learn and used English simply because
it was more useful for getting employment. If older people could not learn they
were anxious that their children would become fluent in the new language.
We know from Greek written sources that in
parts of central and western Europe in contact with
Greek merchants various groups whom the Greeks called Keltoi had by 400 BC established themselves as the dominant powers.
The Romans in Italy called them Galli. It is now recognised
that the genetic make-up of the population of Europe, though not completely uniform, has
not changed significantly since the Glacial period.
The speakers of ‘Celtic’ were not different from the Neolithic farmers who
themselves were not different from the Palaeolithic hunters. It has long been
recognised that they could never have been more than an aristocracy in the
lands they conquered (Hubert 30). They
first appeared as a distinct group in Bohemia (Czechoslovakia) which is supposed to be named after a
ruling clan called the Boii. The use
of the war chariot still continued but there is no evidence that this use was
confined to Celtic-speakers. The battle of Telamon in 225 BC is the last one on
the continent of Europe in which the use of the chariot is
recorded. The British were still using
chariots in Britain at the time of Caesar’s invasion in 55
BC. The Celts were by that stage using cavalry. Their chief battle-winning
tactic, the massed charge of infantry, was to prove effective in Scotland as late as 1745. But it was also used
effectively by peoples like the Zulus well into the nineteenth century. It was
a simple strategy relying almost exclusively on intimidation and brute force to
break the enemies front. But if the enemies
front did not break, and Roman and later British lines did not, the undisciplined
mass was likely to turn tail when repulsed.
The great warlike expansion of the Keltoi commenced around 400 BC. The
Celtic-speaking warriors conquered northern Italy and in 390 BC sacked Rome. They went down through the Balkans
about 360 BC, attacked the Greeks, and fought in Asia Minor The
descriptions of them given by the Greek writers could have been applied to any
group from central or northern Europe and merely reflected the differences in height,
complexion, and bodily hair between the Mediterranean peoples and those of
northern and central Europe.
These differences dated back to the Ice Age or earlier.
The Celts had no empire. What was done
was done by inter-related families speaking a common language and acting in
concert. It has been surmised that this spread of the Celts actually occurred
after they were driven from their homeland in Central Europe, presumably by Teutonic-speakers. This
pressure continued all through the Iron Age and through Roman times. The most famous
of these Teutonic invaders were called Franks. The region where the
Celtic-speaking warriors became strongest was modern France, then known as Gaul (Latin Gallia or the country of the Gauls; it was
later called Franchia or the country
of the Franks). It may very well be that as the Celtic-speaking ruling families
were dispossessed of their lands in Central Europe they sought to conquer other lands
from weaker neighbours to the west and south But it is
possible that the westward spread of the Celtic language was peaceful, involved
little warfare, and a minimum migration of people. There is evidence too that
the migrations of the Celts were as complicated as those of the
Teutonic-speakers a thousand years later and that some of the Celtic-speakers
who arrived in France were descendants of those who set out eastwards (Cunliffe
86ff). Nor do there seem to be any significant differences
between Celtic-speakers and Germanic-speakers.
What
languages were spoken in Europe
before the arrival of the Indo-European-speakers we do not know.
Nor do we know if those languages were the same as those of the Palaeolithic or
Neolithic inhabitants. As Europe
was re-peopled from the south the likelihood is that, like Egyptian, they were
developed from a Proto-Semitic.
Sources
of Information
There
are no written records made in the British Isles before the coming of the Romans. There were no
records written in Ireland before the fifth century AD. There are
however two sources of written information to amplify and explain
archaeological evidence. The first is contemporary and consists of accounts
given by Mediterranean writers about their northern neighbours. This includes
the accounts by Julius Caesar who spent a considerable time in Gaul and Britain. The other source is accounts written
in Ireland and Wales but at a much later date. The latest
of these were written in English in the sixteenth century by Englishmen in Ireland.
All modern descriptions of the ‘Celts’ or ‘Celtic Society’ rely on
these.
There are two points to be noted about
these sources of evidence. The first is that there is a considerable overlap.
It would seem that society changed very little over large parts of Europe between 1000BC and 1600 AD (If one
counts Russia one could probably extend that to the end of the
nineteenth century.) Descriptions of
‘Celts’ could easily be applied to contemporary Franks or Saxons. The other
point is that there are few grounds for believing that a specific account of
the ‘Celts’ in one region can be applied everywhere. Specifically we can ask
ourselves if the accounts that Caesar gave of northern Gaul and Eastern Britain can be applied to the whole of Scotland and Ireland? On the whole I believe they can for it
does not seem that society in northern and western
Europe changed very much from the end of the Neolithic period when increasing
wealth brought about a more complex social structure.
[Top]
The British Isles in the Iron Age (600 BC to 100 AD)
British Society in the Iron Age
There
is no doubt that Celtic tribes or clans in Gaul were to be found also in Britain. (Tribe or clan is taken as referring
to the ruling families only, not to the whole population of a
region who were always ignored, and who were expected to continue with
their everyday non-military work.) Caesar
found that members of the Belgae, as he calls the tribes north of the Seine and Marne, had established a powerful kingdom in
the east of England. But these were quite late arrivals.
It is assumed but cannot, in the absence of records be proved, that other
Gallic tribes had established themselves in England at an earlier date.
Apart from the probable increase in
warfare and cattle-raiding, the imposition of their adoption of their language,
and the organisation of the higher ranks of society, the Celts possibly
affected the cultural development of Britain very little.
It is not known if Celtic-speakers arrived
before or after the introduction of iron, or if they introduced it. If the
recorded invasions into Italy are any indication it is probable that
there were invasions. But as we have
noted, some people maintain that the spread of the Celtic language was not
marked either by migrations or invasions (Cunliffe 270). Neither Celts nor iron
were common before the La Tene period i.e. before 450 BC. It is likely
therefore that the main expansion of the Celtic language into Britain coincided with its expansion south of
the Alps after 400 BC. Horses and chariots and a broad-bladed slashing
sword made originally of bronze, but later of iron were used. The war-like
character of the early Iron Age and presumably of the earliest Celtic arrivals
should not be exaggerated. The forts and other defences of the early period
were quite slight (Collingwood and Myers 22 ff). Most of them date from the 4th
and 3rd centuries BC and appear to be a response to wars among the Celtic
chiefs themselves. Archaeologists recognise Iron Age cultures in southern England during the Hallstatt period. In the La
Tene period a tribe called the Parisii,
doubtless the same as that from which Paris derives its name, settled in Yorkshire. Their warriors were buried with their
weapons and war chariots as in the La Tene burials on the Marne. The Celtic settlers in Yorkshire were pastoralists and probably
cattle-raiders and it is reasonable to assume that here at least we find
migratory warriors. The poetic legends of the Celts, later written down in Ireland, may have been originally composed in Yorkshire. Their language spread over the north
of England, and into Scotland and Ireland.
Yet the further the Iron Age culture spread the more diluted it became,
and at the time of the Roman invasion the north was still virtually in the
Bronze Age.
The Belgae had provided the toughest
resistance to Julius Caesar in France, and he crossed to Britain to subdue their relatives there as
well, and to show they were not outside the reach of Roman arms. They were in
touch with the latest developments on the Continent, and had the wheeled
plough, towns, pottery made on a wheel, and coinage. As usual, it is impossible
to say if they brought them, or they arrived independently. They were however
characteristic of the regions occupied by the Belgae.
The
name of the Celtic tribes in the British Isles as a whole was
Pretani (later in Gaelic Cruithin).
The form Britanni was given by Caesar
and has been followed ever since (Collingwood and Myers 31).
The
social organisation was much more complex than in the Bronze Age not only in
the more developed states of the Near East, but also in the tribal societies north of the Alps. Society was definitely aristocratic
with overlords ruling a race of farmers and craftsmen. This is sometimes
referred to as Celtic society, but the social arrangements differed little
whether the overlords spoke Celtic or Teutonic. Roman society too in the days
of the Republic had much in common with societies north of the Alps.
According
to Caesar, the Celts originally had kings, but in Gaul in his time these had largely been
supplanted by magistrates who ruled with the aristocracy. This was not universal,
and many tribes had chiefs. Those who elected magistrates were clearly copying
the Romans (Cunliffe 232). Magistrates were largely non-sacred figures elected
for periods of time. Under them came the nobles among whom were included the
priests. The priests or druids were concerned with the worship of the gods and
also decided nearly all private and public disputes (ibid); the nobles did
nothing but fight and this they did every year (Ross 44 ff). Strabo
distinguishes between druids, bards, and vates. The bards were the singers and
poets, and the vates were the interpreters of sacrifices and the keepers of
natural knowledge, while the druids studied the science of nature and moral
philosophy (ibid). The moral philosophy was unlikely to be an Aristotelian
study of ethics, but moralising after the nature of the Book of Proverbs and
similar Egyptian works. According to Caesar the druidism of his time was first
developed in Britain, and had there its chiefs centres, and
from there spread to Gaul
(Raftery). Beneath them were the free
landowners, and the same status was assigned to the smiths and other craftsmen.
These three grades were the only ones that really counted. The Romans brought their own religion,
and also some cults from the Middle East.
The religion brought with them by the
invading Celts or adapted by them from that of the older inhabitants persisted
throughout the Roman occupation. Among the gods were Nodens, found also in Ireland as Nuada of the Silver Hand, and
Brigant who seems to be the same as Brigid. But in general there was no group
of great gods, but numerous local cults of local gods. The Celtic-speakers were
inclined not to name their gods but to refer to them indirectly as 'the shining
one' or 'the kindly one' in the same way as the Jews referred to 'the Lord'.
Below the three grades referred to were
those without any property of their own, who had no legal rights, and were not
allowed to bear arms. These corresponded to the plebs in the early days of the
Roman state. Its members comprised those who had lost their property, conquered
peoples, and strangers. They were often in debt to the nobles or rich
landowners often brought down by heavy taxes or other injustices. Beneath them
were slaves. Caesar remarked that the common people were little above the level
of slaves. As Cunliffe notes, Gaulish society was probably more complex than
Caesar’s brief description would indicate (Cunliffe 107). But Caesar’s
observation that there were only three classes who counted is probably as true
of Gaul and Britain as it was of Rome.
We
can assume that each chief had menial workers attached to his household who had
a right to shelter, clothing, and meals as long as they worked or until their
death, who were never paid otherwise. But technically they would have been free
servants not slaves. There had to be cooks, butchers, bakers, brewers,
seamstresses, spinners, weavers, and so on. Alternatively these could have been
of the cottier class, bound to services, but given land on which to support
themselves. These were the people who
actually worked, who produced the things that sustained life, yet they were
treated with contempt. At the time of Caesar they probably comprised the bulk
of the population. By the end of the Middle Ages in Ireland they had probably fallen considerably
as a proportion of the population as all the land was seized by the relatives
of the chiefs. But they still had to do most of the work and pay most of the
taxes. As the first of the prophets Amos said,
Listen
to this, you who trample on the needy,
and try to suppress the poor people of the country’
you who say ‘When will the New Moon be over
so that we can sell our corn
and sabbath so that we can market our wheat?
Then by lowering the bushel, raising the shekel
By swindling and tampering with the scales
We can buy up the poor for money
And the needy for a pair of sandals
And get a price even for the sweepings of the
wheat
(Amos
8.4-6)
As among the Romans
clientship was very important. The lesser man had no real defence except through
the protection of a greater man. Nor could he effectively put his case in
higher courts unless the greater man undertook it. For his part he had to give
unconditional support to his patron. The
patron gained in prestige from the number of clients he had. Greater chiefs
took lesser chiefs as clients. This was a personal bond between the greater
chief and the client chief, and would have had to be renewed as each chief,
greater or lesser took office. It was not a permanent subordination of one tribe
to another, and the lesser chiefs could when useful seek the protection of
another powerful chief (Cunliffe I, 108)
Warfare
was the chief occupation of the members of the noble classes and they fought
among themselves every year. Basic to life of these warrior elites was the
raid, or cattle-raid, in Ireland called the tain (toyne). The raid was the means by which an aspiring warrior
chief could attract followers and reward those followers. The rewards would
have been prestige goods like gold ornaments but also women, slaves and an
abundance of alcoholic drink. The Celtic chiefs especially liked wine. A
successful raid could also conquer a weak neighbouring tribe and provide land
and serfs to work it. (Cunliffe, I, 74, 88 ff). These
raids would return to their home base at the end of the summer. There seems
also to have been organised bodies of what were later called mercenaries who
enrolled themselves under a chief and could set out for distant parts, for
example, from the Marne into Italy (ibid.) Thirdly there were the cases when
the entire population of a region decided to move elsewhere to conquer and
occupy larger territories or more fertile lands. The classical example of this
was the migration of the Helvetii blocked by Julius Caesar.
In Britain, though never in Ireland, the latest invading Celts, the
Belgae, followed the current practice on the Continent, and formed villages and
large towns, and adopted the use of money.
During
the period of the Roman occupation the history, the manufactures, the customs
of the rulers, the townspeople, and the upper classes were those of the Romans.
The Romans brutally suppressed the tribal system with its constant warfare and
imposed it own rules and systems of administration and of laws derived from the
city-states and empires of the Middle East. Yet most of the people were little affected by
Roman ways. Unlike in France, the Latin language never struck a
firm root, and as the Romans withdrew it re-asserted itself. Southern England was most like France and this became the most Romanised
part of the country. Wales was the great mining area and was
heavily militarised, two legions being stationed there permanently. Mining was
not confined to Wales. Lead was the chief metal dug up, but
though the Romans made extensive use of lead, the associated silver was more
prized. Roman influence was thin over much of the midlands and the north.
The Romans made one attempt to conquer Scotland and none to conquer Ireland probably because there was nothing in
either place worth stealing. Neither had any resources of
minerals worth mining, or fertile lands worth cultivating. The
cultivation would have had to be sufficiently profitable to allow of the heavy
taxation necessary to support the army and the civil administration. Both these
areas were really still in the Bronze Age though there was some use of iron.
Though there had been a highly developed agriculture in the Bronze Age, it does
not follow that the high standards were maintained in the Iron Age. Southern
and eastern Scotland was not worth the cost of maintaining
garrisons for the sake of barley alone. This could always be bought at Hadrian’s Wall. But the quantities carried by pack
ponies would not have been large.
Though the Roman frontiers along Hadrian's Wall, and by sea along the length of the Irish Sea were well guarded against raiding
parties, they were not closed. Merchants crossed them continually. So too
probably did those visiting relatives even if their weapons had to be put aside
when in the area of Roman administration. Numbers doubtless from Ireland and Scotland would have joined the Roman army, and
either settled within the Empire after their service was finished or returned
home. The building of Hadrian’s Wall 122 t0 128 AD can be considered as marking the ending of the
conquest and the beginning of the Romanisation of British society.
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Agriculture and Economy
In this period the whole of the British Isles can be treated as a unit. Unlike in
previous periods where we were entirely dependent of material remains found by
archaeologists, for this period we have various literary sources. Once again
the name of the period is derived from a typical artefact found in excavations
with no implication that it was in common use. Hallstatt ironwork has been
found dating from 600 BC but such finds are rare. Similarly the period from 400
BC is often called the Celtic period because it was then that the
Celtic-speaking warlords spread over most of western
Europe and established their over-lordships.
The
economy of the Iron Age was a simple continuation of that of the Bronze Age.
The climate was that of the Sub-Atlantic Period which is given as being from c
750 BC to 200 AD. In this period the climate though getting wetter due to the
influx of Atlantic winds was also getting warmer reaching an optimum in Roman
times. Agriculture, including tillage and stock-rearing, was far and away the
most important economic activity. Vines could be grown outdoors in Britain from the Roman period until the end of
the Middle Ages though over-all temperatures were slowly falling (King 18 ff).
(This improvement in temperatures in northern Europe led to growing densities of population
in the Teutonic-speaking regions, which were to have major repercussions on Britain and Ireland.) Farmers could now have their
ploughshares, mattocks, axes, sickles, and goads made from the superior metal.
An interesting experiment was carried out in England to reconstruct an Iron Age farm and
live in it for a period and try various experiments (Reynolds). For cows they
used the Dexter (derived from the Kerry), small, very hardy and able to survive
outdoor on poor pasture, but handy as a draught animal and giving a useful
amount of milk. The actual Iron Age cows were like the Kerry and the
Highland. They got a pig by crossing a Tamworth with a wild boar and got a small rangy
beast, fleet, and almost impossible to contain. The actual pig in the Iron Age
was somewhat smaller. They were hairy and lean; fatness was a trait introduced
much later from China. For the sheep they used the Soay. This gave a kilo of wool a year, but were almost impossible
to control. Goats proved more amenable, gave abundant milk, and ate the weeds
left by other animals. The Exmoor
pony they regarded as being nearest the typical horse. The native horse may
have been hunted to extinction in the preceding ages, and the new breeds
imported from the Continent. (Henson pp 4 ff)
The
ard plough needed to be tipped with stone or metal, and proved very effective.
It consisted basically of three pieces of wood joined together with pegs. The
first piece lay flat on the ground, was pointed at the front, and the point or
share tipped with metal. Two curved beams were attached. One curved forward and
to this the yoke of the oxen was attached. The second curved backwards forming
a handle the ploughman could hold. (There were all kinds of variations of this
simple model, a prime consideration being the need for the ploughman to be able
to raise or lower the depth of ploughing.)
It was effective on light soils, and could turn and mix the soil to some
depth. Just before the arrival of the Romans, an improved plough with a
coulter, seem to have been brought into southern England, and to have been commonly used in
Roman times. The coulter was a vertical blade of metal in front of the
ploughshare. This could cut through the sod. The share or the beam of which it
was part could be given small wings to made a wider
cut. There was no mould board to turn the sod, so a man had to follow the
plough with a mattock to break up the sod. The coulter plough required a larger
team of oxen, but could be used on heavier soils. The Romans probably
introduced a primitive form of harrow. The hand-held spades, hoes, sickles, and
mattocks from the Neolithic Period continued in everyday use.
The crops sown were barley, wheat, and
oats. The grain was threshed on the barn floor. The chaff and weed seeds were
burned. The wheat varieties used were emmer and spelt. These are bearded wheats
whose protein content is twice as high as in modern wheats. They were difficult
to thresh. In reaping it was often easier to break off the heads than to use a
sickle for the stalks were very uneven in length. Other Iron Age crops were
beans, vetch, and flax both for linen cloth and for oil. Storage was in pits
lined with clay. In these grain with a moisture content of 16% could be safely
stored, and would germinate easily afterwards.
The houses were circular, constructed
of posts set in the ground, which were interlaced with wattle of split hazel
plastered with mud. The conical roof was constructed in a similar manner, and
thatched with straw or reeds (Reynolds passim)
The
farms at the time would have belonged to a four-generation extended family, and
so would have been quite large. Names like Ballymac (the homestead of the sons
of) indicated the plurality of ownership. Indeed, in Ireland the farm and the townland were
probably the same thing. Ownership of the tilled soil would have been allodial,
i.e. the absolute possession of those who lived on it and tilled it. There
would have been no question of holding from another. But as probably less than
a quarter of the land was tilled the great forests and moors would have been
open range for each farming family. As
the chief was able to give cattle to those who did not have them it is clear
that the number of cattle each family was allowed to browse and graze in the
wild was strictly controlled. Especially in the west and north the economy
would have been largely pastoral.
Cattle-raiding
and crop-burning were endemic, and the peasantry had no means of defending
themselves, so a strict look-out would have to be kept at the appropriate times
of the year for any signs of the advancing foe, or any signs of burning houses
or crops. Cows were the easiest for the raiders to drive away. They were also
the easiest to conceal in the woods as the raiding party, unless very numerous,
would not split itself up very much to search for the
cattle. Most grain would have been kept in dispersed and concealed stores. The
feelings and the losses of the lower orders were never considered.
Coinage
was introduced to Britain by the last of the Celtic invaders,
the Belgae, about 100 BC.
The Romans brought improved livestock, the
most influential being the long-woolled large sheep. Crosses with the Soay
could have resulted in breeds like the Cheviot while the Lincoln long-wool, and the Leicester would have been more direct
descendants. The British cloth industry developed from these improved breeds.
They also brought in improved breeds of goats that were kept for milk (Henson 7
ff). The production of grain was greatly increased as it was the staple food of
the Roman army. Half the crop could have been taken as a tax. The villa estates
were vast commercial enterprises. The Romans also introduced cats and hens.
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Iron
Age in Ireland (600 BC to 100 AD)
Material Remains: the Evidence of Archaeology
There
is a great problem connected with writing about this phase of Irish history and
this is the dearth of sources. Earlier historians drew largely on myths and
legends. Later historians extrapolated from writings about the British and
Continental Iron Ages, or from Irish writings of a later period. But Barry
Raftery sub-titled his book on the period in Ireland, ‘The Enigma of the Irish Iron Age’.
He points out that while there are considerable archaeological remains, their
interpretation is in conflict with conclusions from philology, early Irish
history, tradition, and folklore. As Raftery says, just at the onset of the
Iron Age in Ireland the country slipped into a Dark Age.
He notes that it is almost heretical to insist that a Celtic invasion of Ireland never happened (Raftery, p228). Yet if
the Celts never came what value is there in quoting from writings about other
Celts? The answer perhaps is, as I have suggested before, that there was a
common culture among all the peoples of North Western Europe, so in general it would not matter if
descriptions were made of Celts, Germans, or Vikings. The variation would only
be in the details, the shape of houses or swords, the names of the gods, and
such like.
The first appearances of the use of
iron in Ireland was in the was
in the Hallstatt period but very few remains survive from then. Even later
there was very little of it. Bronze continued to be the common metal. The name
Iron Age in Ireland is something of a misnomer, for very
little iron was used or survived. Nor is there evidence that the working of
iron was known in this period. We know almost nothing about life in the early
Iron Age in Ireland, or about the arrival of the Celts or
if they ever came. Nothing was written down until several centuries later. We
try to draw conclusions from these later writings, and from the writings of
Julius Caesar who wrote about Gaul and Britain in his time. It is impossible to say
if the use of iron pre-dated the coming of the Celtic language.
Some
places like Eamhain Macha continued
in use from the late Bronze Age to the Early Iron Age. Crannogs too continued
to be inhabited, and because timber submerged in water is more likely to
survive, they provide much of the evidence for the period. Bronze swords but
with Hallstatt designs have been discovered as isolated finds.
There was no connection between the hoard of
the Dowris period which may have lasted until 400 BC and the undoubted La Tene
objects which can be dated provisionally between 100 BC and 100 AD (Raftery 36)
The assumption is that the art of the Dowris period had stopped before the
arrival of La Tene patterns. But there is little evidence regarding what
happened. A climatic change with lower temperatures and heavier rain could
cause a heavy leaching of the soil, loss of fertility and de-population. (This
supposes that the rainfall in the Sub-Atlantic period increased before average
temperatures rose, which is not unreasonable to suppose.). The rapid
regeneration of forests would indicate a rapidly falling population.
Raftery
noted that the hill forts must be dated to the Late Bronze Age. On the other hand
the four sacred sites or royal sites he identifies as Tara in Meath, Cruachain, in Connaught, Dun Ailinne in central Leinster, and Eamhain Macha in Ulster, all four in the northern half of the
country and outside the region of the hill forts, show traces of use from the
Bronze through the Iron Age. Tara and
Cruachain are more clearly burial
sites. The other two, like Tara, have a boundary wall with an internal
ditch. They are consequently not defensive positions, and more probably sacred
sites. At Eamhain Macha in the Iron
Age, in the final phase of occupation, there was what seems to have been a
large circular hut or temple that can be dated accurately to 95/94BC. It was
not used but was immediately covered by a cairn. Even if all four sites are sacred
ones, there is no need to concludes they were not
royal ones as well for powerful chiefs would associate themselves with famous
shrines. We know the O’Neills, in the early Middle
Ages, made great efforts to control Armagh, though the site itself was always outside their
territories and in the lands of the Orghialla
(Oriel) tribes.
Raftery
sees their purpose as sacred sites connected especially with royal
inaugurations and royal rites to ensure fertility. Such rites did not
necessarily include sexual acts but may have done (Raftery 80). As in Greece, the sacred sites were associated with
games or oenachs. The royal fort or
palace would have been built on the mensal lands of the chief, not beside the
shrine. How Eamhain Macha became transformed into a royal residence and
connected with the 'Warriors of the Red Branch' in the very much later stories
is a mystery.
The
linear earthworks which run across south Ulster date from the Iron Age, and one of
them, the Dorsey, in Co. Armagh, can be dated to 95 BC. Other earthworks are dated some centuries
earlier. There is no indications that the line was
ever continuous, or that the various parts were contemporaneous. A strange
peculiarity is that when situated on a slope, the ditch is on the up-hill side
of the wall. However the main purpose may have been to prevent the driving away
of cattle. But there are stretches of dry land where the ditches are absent.
Though
finds of Iron Age horse bits are numerous there have been no finds of chariots.
Though this is no proof that there were none in Ireland it is no argument either that there
were. If the climate was sufficiently cold and wet, as we have supposed above,
the soil most of the time would have been too wet to use chariots effectively.
If a chariot got bogged down it would provoke more mirth than terror. Undersoil
drainage scarcely existed before 1850. All movements of troops virtually came
to an end in winter. The infrequent winter campaigns in the historical period
occurred in times of hard and prolonged frost.
Tillage
seems to have declined, while the growth of bogs and forests increased (Bellamy
124f). As noted earlier the low point in temperature reached in the Late Bronze
period was reversed. The Sub-Atlantic Period in general was both wetter and
warmer than in the Late Bronze Age. It was ideal for growing bogs. Settlements,
at least from Roman times (after 44 AD) could be placed higher up hillsides
than would be comfortable nowadays. What is now a heather-covered mountain glen
could well have been a grassy valley. The ard plough
was still in use, but the rotary quern had replaced the saddle quern. These
latter however are found only in the northern half of the country. There are no
certain traces of field systems. Cattle-raising had become, and was long to
remain, the dominant agricultural pursuit. As in Britain cattle and horses were small. Raftery
comments on the small size of horses bits, which indicate that the ponies or
horses were scarcely larger than modern Shetland ponies.
There
were wheeled vehicles drawn by oxen. Only light carts would have been drawn by
horses because a harness that did not throttle the horse was not invented in
the West until much later. There are few remains of boats from this period.
Similarly traces of houses, farms, and graves are few. Few grave goods were
found in those graves that were excavated. What have survived are objects
belonging to the rich warrior class. Some metal cauldrons survive but far fewer
than from the Bronze Age. Pottery is almost non-existent, so most vessels must
have been made of wood.
Many
of the artistic metal objects found, as in the Broighter hoard, are of foreign
manufacture, but some high quality native work has been found, mostly in bronze
that survives better. Iron smithing was added to the other skills in metalwork.
Elaborately carved stones, including human figures, from this period survive.
The ornamentation in the La Tene style displays great beauty and high technical
competence. All the finds in the La Tene style are from the northern half of the
island. The full repertoire of La Tene motifs is not found in Ireland indicating that the Irish had no
direct knowledge of the Continental originals.
Trade, almost by definition, was trade in
luxuries, and that included salt. Ireland was not like the Roman Empire where there was a vast trade in
cereals and other bulk cargoes. Only the rich could afford wines. Fine textiles
were also probably imported. Tin also for making bronze. Like most northern regions the
exports would have consisted of 'forest products' of which furs and
pelts would have been the most important. Hides for making
leather was always a great staple of trade from underdeveloped areas, it
being the chief part of the animal that could be transported. But Irish hunting
dogs were valued, and St Patrick escaped when he fell in with a merchant
shipping these. They may have resembled the traditional Irish wolf-hound. Gold
could no longer been important or the Romans would have invaded.
The Irish Sea narrows at four points, the Mull of
Kintyre, the Mull of Galloway, Anglesey-Lleyn peninsula, and St David's Head.
The shortest are the two northern crossings, and to this day the local accents
on either side of the crossing are closely linked. But the main crossing point
in Roman times for traders from Britain and the continent was between St
David's Head and the river mouths of Waterford and Wexford. Command of the headlands
and their nearest ports of shelter allowed the exaction of tribute. The tribute
would be exacted in the first instance by the local ruler or petty chief, who
would have to pass on the bulk of it to his overlord. In the Middle Ages the
great lords from the interior always sought a direct access to the coast for
themselves, and it has often been remarked that all the diocese in Ireland
touch at some point on the sea-coast or the bank of a navigable river leading
to the sea. The import of wine was essential for the Church, but the wine trade
long ante-dates the coming of Christianity
Similarly
in the period of slave-raiding, the great overlords would have taken the lead,
but those on the coasts would have been obliged to supply the shipping. They
would also have been obliged to re-capture runaway slaves or captives. Wherever
St Patrick was held captive his best plan of escape would have been to flee
inland and cross to the opposite coast, and after several years of captivity
would have been prepared for this. But he still would have had to bribe his way
past the borders of every small kingdom unless he by-passed them by keeping to the
woods. The robbers in the woods and the slave traders, as in the Deep South in America, would have had an equal interest in
betraying him. On the other hand there was likely to be groups of travellers,
smiths, merchants, and entertainers moving from place to place, so he may have
been sheltered by such a group.
As
far as possible, outside the Roman Empire, people travelled by boat inland. Roads existed and were maintained, but by a 'road' was meant
a cutting through the forests. In medieval England there was a law
compelling people of the parish to cut back woods and undergrowth in a
wide band on each side of the major roads as a protection against robbers.
Roads, where they existed, would have been always closely watched and guarded.
The territory of each tribal chief, the
tuath, would have been protected as far as possible by a belt of forest.
The original tuaths were tiny with up to
perhaps twenty for each modern county. Even if there was a reversion to
slash-and-burn agriculture care
would have been taken to protect
the forest barriers. These were also necessary
for the grazing of cattle, and for the
granting of licences to graze so many cattle. It was therefore in the interest
of the war-lords to keep the forests as extensive as possible, and to prevent random clearances. Nevertheless,
as the population began to grow the chiefs probably could not, as elsewhere in Europe, entirely prevent assarting, the
clearances of small patches of the forest for tillage. What started as a tiny
and almost invisible patch of clearance could become after some years quite a
large patch which nobody would admit owning. The war chiefs would only allow one set of robbers in their territory, themselves. So a merchant or other traveller
would have to bestow a 'gift' on each petty chief. St Patrick remarked on the
amount of gifts
he had to pay out, but the gifts in his
case would probably have covered rights of settlement and freedom to preach. No gift, no
licence.
The
four great cultic sites dated by Raftery to the Late Bronze Age seem to have
continued in use. Trees used in building the great wooden temple at Navan Fort
have been dated to 95/94 BC. (There may at one time have been the rath of a chief at Navan Fort or
even an oppidum like those of the Belgae, but this is speculative. (Connection
with the Red Branch knights and Cuchullan is mythical.) Many of the earthworks
at Tara may belong to the Iron Age., but if
there was any truth at all in the legends of the meeting of St. Patrick
and the high king at Tara it could only be because the latter was there for
religious purposes. (Raftery passim).
Various
linear earthworks have been dated to the pre-Christian Iron Age. Their purpose
seems to have been to control traffic and cattle-raiding along particular
routes. They are also found in England. Charcoal dating puts them between 490
BC and 30 BC. (ibid.)
The
Iron Age in Ireland is, as we have noted, the Dark Age. Apart from the fact that some very skilled craftsmen
were there we know very little about the
period. Tillage was in decline; the art of pottery-making disappeared. It may be that the
population fell sharply Most utensils were made of wood or leather. Houses were insubstantial; no elaborate graves were made. In some parts of the north much effort
was put into building elaborate defences, and there were a few other works of construction which
required great labour and skill. As these were few in number, it is assumed that
they had some connection with worship. The forests and bogs regenerated.
After the year 300 AD. there seem
to have been various changes, the most notable of these being the revival of
agriculture. The long
period of decline
came to an end and signs of
tillage re-appear. Why this was so is unclear. There was no noticeable change
in climate for the
rate of bog increase was unchanged. Nor is there any signs of a decrease in
warfare. It is thought that
the difference was made by the introduction of the plough with the
coulter drawn by ox-teams, This
would have allowed the farmers to
plough deeper and draw up minerals from
a lower level, as much as nine inches. The sour acid soil that favoured the growth of heathers and birches would have been ploughed again. Even in the fallow periods trees other than
birch could thrive. Some soils in Ireland are permanently fertile, but there are
many soils which need long fallows and
indeed become so exhausted that they return to wasteland and
are reclaimed periodically. Such are the heavy clay soils
in south Louth which were reclaimed by the Cistercians in the Middle Ages, and
reclaimed again in the 18th century by Baron Foster who spread vast quantities
of lime to counteract the acidity. By this time iron was quite common, displacing the bronze tools.
Iron
Age History in Ireland
Archaeology
is the science of the interpretation of material remains; history the
interpretation of written records. The written records regarding Ireland in this period were those of
foreigners often writing at second or third hand. Native Irish writings were
derived from oral traditions that were not committed to writing until after
several hundred years and often contain more information about the time they
were written than the time
supposedly written about. The trouble about depending on later
writings and traditions is that they too may have been imported. Travelling
minstrels and poets could have brought their tales with them. There is no
reason at all to assume that the tales of Cuchullan and the chariot warfare it
describes originated in Ireland. Indeed we know from later studies of
written Lives of the Saints, for example, that incidents could migrate from
story to story all over Western Europe. There is little likelihood that there ever was chariot warfare in Ireland itself.
Almost
nothing is known of the history of this period, however much archaeology can
tell us of the material culture. The major question is with regard to
conjectures when and how the people of Ireland came to be speaking a Celtic language.
There is no consensus regarding the time the Celtic language arrived. Cunliffe
considers that a form of Celtic was being spoken in Ireland by at least 500 BC. It is unlikely
that Celtic was spoken in Ireland before the expansion of the Celts
after 400 BC. Raftery seems to prefer a date in the La Tene period
, three or four hundred years later. As noted earlier Roman writers do
no refer to a distinct language from British spoken in Ireland in their time. This obscure period of the Irish Iron Age
(600 BC to 500 AD) is the most likely
time to date the arrival of Celtic language. There is nothing in the archaeological
record at this time
or any other time to indicate the time of
their arrival. It was once assumed that the presence of La Tene material
indicated the presence of Celtic-speakers. But in Ireland most of the La Tene objects were
manufactured in Ireland and clearly not imported, or brought in by invaders. The only certain fact
is that when writing was introduced to Ireland in the fifth and sixth centuries, a
Celtic language similar to that in Britain was spoken. There is no need to assume
that this language was spoken before the Roman period in Britain, and indeed British warriors fleeing
the Romans could have introduced it. Or even by British traders and merchants
in the Roman period.. The place names recorded by
Ptolemy (around AD 140) are in the form of P-Celtic. So it is reasonable to
assume that some people at least in the places where the merchants traded spoke
Celtic. We can assume that Celtic was spoken in at least eastern parts from 100
AD.
The consensus now
is that, if warriors did come, they were few in numbers, possibly not
more than some boat-loads, who conquered
the island. If they did come they would have come from the Welsh and
Scottish coasts opposite. The chances are that there had been inter-marriage
between both sides of the Irish Sea, for centuries if not millennia, and that British would have thus
been spoken all along the east coast of Ireland. Contrary to what used to be held, they spoke the same
P-Celtic language that was spoken in Britain
and on the Continent. The change to the Q form occurred in Ireland. There is the rather peculiar fact
that La Tene objects are not
found in Munster. In the historical period Munster was as much Celtic-speaking as any other part of Ireland. It is clear that the connection of Ireland with ‘Celtic’ warriors or ‘Celtic’
culture is tenuous in the extreme.
With regard to the language spoken before the arrival of the Celts, the rather
remarkable connection between Gaelic and
North African languages like Coptic (Egyptian) would seem to indicate that a
Semitic or Hamitic language had survived in Ireland to that date. As there were no major invasions since
the first entry of the Neolithic farmers
this would not be surprising (de Paor, Peoples of Ireland 37f).
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