Ancient Britain and the Invasions of Julius Caesar

by T. Rice Holmes

Distribution of wealth: sources of gold, ivory, and amber.

While these things help us to realize the circumstances of the people who wore them, they also throw light upon the distribution of wealth, and supplement the information which we have already obtained from implements and weapons about internal trade and foreign commerce. Possibly some difference of burial customs may account for the comparative abundance of gold ornaments in Scotland and the almost entire absence of trinkets of any kind in Cornwall; but the evidence is generally accepted which seems to point to the conclusion that the inhabitants of Wiltshire—especially of Salisbury Plain—were richer than those of any other part of Southern Britain. The most expensive ornaments—amber, gold, ivory, and glass—have been found there in considerable numbers; and all of them must have been imported, directly or indirectly, in some cases from abroad. The glass beads, which, strictly speaking, were made of vitreous paste, perhaps came from the Mediterranean; and a blue one of real glass with yellow spirals, taken from a Ross-shire barrow, had its counterparts in the cemetery of Hallstatt.[682] Where the ivory was procured is doubtful: objects of this material, apparently made from the fossilized tusks of a mammoth, lay among the relics in the Paviland Cave in Glamorganshire;[683] but most of the mammoth tusks in this country are too decomposed to be susceptible of manufacture.[684] Gold has been obtained from most of the alluvial gravels in the West of England that have been worked for tin;[685] but many of the English and perhaps all the Scottish gold ornaments were made of gold that had been won in Ireland, which has been justly called the El Dorado of the ancient world. Many gold ornaments in Denmark are of Irish origin; and the leading archaeologist of Scandinavia affirms that the metal-workers of his own country and of France imported Irish gold.[686] Amber has been washed ashore at Deal and on other parts of the east coast; and the necklaces of Wiltshire may perhaps have been generally of British material as well as of British workmanship:[687] but those of Ireland were probably made from amber that had come from Scandinavia,[688] and may have been taken in exchange for gold. In the time of Augustus amber was one of the British imports;[689] and, although at least one necklace found its way even to Orkney,[690] its rarity in Scotland and in the northern counties of England suggests that it was imported even in the Bronze Age.[691] Indeed, since amber was so much commoner in Wiltshire than elsewhere, it would seem probable that it came generally from abroad.[692]

Why was Wiltshire exceptionally rich in ornaments?

But why was it so abundant in Wiltshire? Why are gold, amber, and ivory rare even in the other southern counties, and wholly absent in Derbyshire, where round barrows are so numerous?[693] Why was the wealth of Wiltshire, so far as it can be estimated from the evidence of the graves, almost entirely concentrated in the south, and especially in the district round Stonehenge?[694] The modern population of South Wiltshire is very scanty: Salisbury Plain is barren; and the only soil at all fertile is in the valleys of the Wiley and the Avon.[695] One would have expected to find that the wealthiest part of Britain was the south-east; and that in the prehistoric period, as in the time of Caesar, the richest of all was Kent. Yet Kent has yielded very few glass beads or gold ornaments of the Bronze Age, and not one of amber or ivory. Doubtless there were once many barrows in the south-eastern counties which have been rifled or ploughed down; but jewellery was not deposited only in barrows; and so many bronze tools and weapons have been found in this region that the scarcity of barrows will not account for the rarity of ornaments. No explanation, so far as I know, has ever been offered; and I offer one with diffidence. First, it is not certain, and indeed improbable, that more than a small proportion of the riches that have been unearthed from the sepulchres of South Wiltshire belonged to families who had lived in the neighbourhood. The prodigious abundance of barrows around Stonehenge can only be explained by supposing that the bodies of chieftains, of their wives and children, were brought from distant parts to be buried there, as to a hallowed spot. Secondly, it is conceivable that the clans which, early in the Bronze Age, settled in South Wiltshire were numerically stronger, better organized, or better armed than their neighbours, and that much of their wealth may have been obtained by plunder.

British trade and the spiral.

Another indication of ancient British trade appears in the geographical distribution of the spiral. This form of decoration, which was common in Egyptian and Aegean art, travelled along the route of the amber trade by the Danube valley and Hungary to Scandinavia, and ultimately reached the British Isles, where, however, it occurs only on stone balls,[696] the stones of cists, and megalithic monuments, of which the most conspicuous example is New Grange in the county Meath. The spiral is not found on objects of the Bronze Age in Spain, nor in France except on the dolmen of Gavr’ Inis in Brittany and in a grave in the department of the Aube: in the British Isles it is confined to Scotland, Cumberland, Lancashire, and Northumberland, the north of Ireland,[697] and Merionethshire (which may have owed its solitary specimen to Irish influence); and, moreover, in the British Isles and Scandinavia spirals are connected by the same device.[698] Scandinavia therefore was undoubtedly the source from which the spiral reached Britain.[699]

Comparative backwardness of culture in Britain.

Yet while the reader who has been accustomed to suppose that the Britons even of Caesar’s time were mere savages may be astonished to learn that already in the Bronze Age there was commercial intercourse between Britain and the Continent, he must beware of assuming that his forefathers were on a level with the inhabitants of Central and Southern Europe. Our country has long been the geographical centre of the civilized world: in ancient times it was outside the pale. Regular trade did not exist except with Northern Gaul and, probably towards the end of the age, with Massilia and Phoenician Spain:[700] such articles of commerce as found their way to Britain from Central Europe were flotsam and jetsam. Long after swords had come into use abroad the Briton’s chief weapon was still a stout dagger: bronze was used here for centuries after iron had been adopted in more fortunate lands; and the glass beads of which the women of Wiltshire were so proud would have been scorned by foreign ladies who compared them with their own.[701] Moreover, even in bronze our workmanship never reached the pitch of excellence which the artificers of the north, in their prolonged Bronze Age, were able to attain. Just as the neolithic cutlers of Britain were inferior to those of Denmark, so there is nothing in our museums which can vie with the astonishing splendour of the decorated palstaves and shields, the trumpets and vessels of the Scandinavian region.

The information obtainable from graves.

But we shall be better able to understand the relations that existed between our country and the Continent in the Bronze Age when we have studied the graves, the objects other than weapons, implements, and ornaments that have been found within them, and the rude stone monuments with which they were often associated.