Chapter 1
The Times: before 600 A.D.
The settlement of England goes back thousands of years. At first, people hunted and gathered their food. They wore animal skins over their bodies for warmth and around their feet for protection when walking. These skins were sewn together with bone needles and threads made from animal sinews. They carried small items by hooking them onto their belts. They used bone and stone tools, e.g. for preparing skins. Their uncombed hair was held by thistlethorns, animal spines, or straight bone hair pins. They wore conical hats of bound rush and lived in rush shelters.
Early clans, headed by kings, lived in huts on top of hills or other high places and fortified by circular or contour earth ditches and banks behind which they could gather for protection. They were probably dug with antler picks and wood spades. The people lived in rectangular huts with four wood posts supporting a roof. The walls were made of saplings, and a mixture of mud and straw. Cooking was in a clay oven inside or over an open fire on the outside. Water was carried in animal skins or leather pouches from springs lower on the hill up to the settlement. Forests abounded with wolves, bears, deer, wild boars, and wild cattle. They could more easily be seen from the hill tops. Pathways extended through this camp of huts and for many miles beyond.
For wives, men married women of their clan or bought or captured other women, perhaps with the help of a best man. They carried their unwilling wives over the thresholds of their huts, which were sometimes in places kept secret from her family. The first month of marriage was called the honeymoon because the couple was given mead, a drink with fermented honey and herbs, for the first month of their marriage. A wife wore a gold wedding band on the ring finger of her left hand to show that she was married.
Women usually stayed at home caring for children, preparing meals, and making baskets. They also made wool felt and spun and wove wool into a coarse cloth. Flax was grown and woven into a coarse linen cloth. Spinning the strands into one continuous thread was done on a stick, which the woman could carry about and spin at anytime when her hands were free. The weaving was done on an upright or warp-weighted loom. People of means draped the cloth around their bodies and fastened it with a metal brooch inlayed with gold, gems, and shell, which were glued on with glue that was obtained from melting animal hooves. People drank from hollowed-out animal horns, which they could carry from belts. They could tie things with rawhide strips or rope braids they made. Kings drank from animal horns decorated with gold or from cups of amber, shale, or pure gold. Men and women wore pendants and necklaces of colorful stones, shells, amber beads, bones, and deer teeth. They skinned and cut animals with hand-axes and knives made of flint dug up from pits and formed by hitting flakes off. The speared fish with barbed bone prongs or wrapped bait around a flint, bone, or shell fish hook. On the coast, they made bone harpoons for deep-sea fish. The flint ax was used to shape wood and bone and was just strong enough to fell a tree, although the process was very slow.
The king, who was tall and strong, led his men in hunting groups to kill deer and other wild animals in the forests and to fish in the streams. Some men brought their hunting dogs on leashes to follow scent trails to the animal. The men threw stones and spears with flint points at the animals. They used wood clubs to beat them, at the same time using wood shields to protect their bodies. They watched the phases of the moon and learned to predict when it would be full and give the most light for night hunting. This began the concept of a month. Circles of stone like Stonehenge were built with alignments to paths of the moon.
If hunting groups from two clans tried to follow the same deer, there might be a fight between the clans or a blood feud. After the battle, the clan would bring back its dead and wounded. A priest officiated over a funeral for a dead man. His wife would often also go on the funeral pyre with him.
The priest also officiated over sacrifices of humans, who were usually offenders found guilty of transgressions. Sacrifices were usually made in time of war or pestilence, and usually before the winter made food scarce.
The clan ate deer that had been cooked on a spit over a fire, and fruits and vegetables which had been gathered by the women. They drank water from springs. In the spring, food was plentiful. There were eggs of different colors in nests and many hare to eat. The goddess Easter was celebrated at this time.