My culture right or left
Archaeologist Francis Pryor explains how his growing admiration
for the ancient Britons led to the realisation that the British
had done to its colonies what the Romans did to Britain.
George Orwell's well-known essay 'My Country Right or Left' opens with the following words:
Contrary to popular belief, the past was not more eventful than the present. If it seems so it is because when you look backward things ... are telescoped together.
That, I believe, explains the extraordinary popular appeal of archaeology.
Justification
The essay, published in 1940, early in World War II, was Orwell's
justification for holding liberal views while, at the same time, being
proud of his country and its values. Today I find myself in a comparable
position, and the political climate seems depressingly similar.
I have never been particularly proud of the British empire, but I am proud of being British and of our culture. I admire our tolerance, our sense of social justice, our humour and our over-arching belief in the individual. Orwell's views were shaped by his time in colonial Burma. Mine have been influenced both by the current terrible situation in Africa – problems that range from Angola to Zimbabwe – and also by my admiration for the ancient Britons and their plight when faced by the might of Rome. Let me explain how I came to acquire my sympathy for our ancient predecessors.
A large scale
Over the past 30 years, I have excavated large sites in the Fens of
East Anglia to discover what life was like in pre-Roman Britain. Today
prehistorians like to work on a large scale, studying entire landscapes
rather than individual sites or finds. During the course of my research
in the Fens, I have been able to untangle a series of successive landscapes,
going back to almost 5000 BC.
These landscapes have included elaborate, specialised field systems for the management and control of huge numbers of livestock, which came into existence around 2500 BC and remained in use for almost two millennia. With the fields, we found settlements, industry, religious and ceremonial monuments – in fact, all the aspects of life that one would expect to encounter today. The society of the ancient Britons at that time – the Bronze Age – was stable, prosperous and well-organised.
We now know that closely similar landscapes existed across large areas of southern Britain, although, interestingly, they are not known on the continent at this early date. They appear to have been a uniquely British development, one that suited our moist, maritime climate well.
Animal husbandry
In the early 1990s, I found myself thinking more and more about the
livestock farming that lay at the heart of the story. My wife and I lived
in the rural Fens and we kept half a dozen sheep as glorified lawnmowers.
We next decided that, if we were to understand prehistoric animal husbandry,
we must do the job properly. So we went on a sheep-keeping course and,
in 1992, bought a small Fenland farm. Today we lamb 100-120 pure-bred
Lleyn ewes.
My practical knowledge of livestock handling has certainly allowed me to appreciate the skills of Bronze-Age farmers far better. But there is more to it than that. In the interests of supposed objectivity, archaeologists and historians are meant to distance themselves from the people they are studying. We are also supposed to put both sides of an argument when we propose something even slightly unusual in our reports. In other words, we try to be fair.
But I don't see why I should pretend that I am looking down on the ancient Britons dispassionately, from some Olympian height. The fact is that, over the years, and in part due to my farming experience, I have come to identify with them and the problems they surmounted. This, in turn, has led me to admire their monuments, their society and, especially, their art.
Life and movement
In the two centuries before the Roman conquest, the Britons had taken
a widespread European art style, known as 'Celtic art', and developed
it in a most remarkable way. They produced a series of objects in fine
pottery and metalwork that now include some of the most beautiful exhibits
in the British Museum.
Not only are these pieces well-executed and technically competent, but they are full of life and movement, with wonderful swirling beasts and writhing, sinuous designs – rather like the figures in that masterpiece The Book of Kells but, if anything, even more wild, free and exotic.
A book and television
My progressive identification and admiration for the ancient Britons
led to the decision, three years ago, to write a book about them. I didn't
want it to be a textbook. Rather I wanted to tell a story – their
story – from the perspective of a sympathetic friend.
The idea of making a television programme came while I was working on the proposals for the book. This goes back half a million years and covers Ireland as well as Britain. We decided to confine the films to the ten or so millennia after the Ice Age, when Britain became an island.
As I worked on the book and the scripts, I found my sympathy for the ancient Britons steadily growing. These feelings became focused on what followed the Roman conquest of Britain in AD 43.
Stop meddling
Niall Ferguson's excellent and well-argued Channel 4 series Empire
suggested that the British empire introduced industry and modern ways
to much of the world. My view is that these things would have happened
anyhow – as they did, for example, in Japan. I see the British empire
as no better or worse than that of Rome. There were some good aspects,
but these were out-weighed by the bad.
I'm in no doubt that the style of Celtic art that developed in Britain will prove to be its greatest contribution to world art. But the tragedy is that its headlong, free-fall development was terminated in AD 43 by the dead hand of Rome, a culture where art played second fiddle to the military.
If you look back at Britain after AD 410, when the Romans officially withdrew, you see a culture trying to re-assemble itself – and it took a long time. Surely we have seen something similar happening in post-colonial Africa? We should stop meddling and let the Africans sort out their own problems in their own way. That's what happened in Britain (with unlooked-for help from sundry Saxons and Vikings), and eventually life returned to a more stable state.
Terrified
I am convinced that intervention in the affairs of another culture
almost always causes more problems in the long term than it solves in
the short. Our politicians and statesmen must learn to take a longer view.
In the past, short-sighted decisions could sometimes be accommodated.
However, in today's crowded world, they could well prove disastrous.
I've often wondered how the ancient Britons felt as the massive Roman fleet approached the shores of Kent. Were they terrified for themselves, their families or their gods? Or all three? I cannot tell, but soon I might be able to ask people who have experienced such horrors at first hand.
Dr Francis Pryor headed the Fengate excavations in Peterborough between 1971 and 1979, making discoveries that revolutionised our understanding of British prehistory between the New Stone Age and the Roman conquest (4000 BC-AD 43). He then excavated other prehistoric sites, culminating in the discovery of Flag Fen, the largest and best-preserved religious centre of late Bronze Age Britain. He appears regularly on Channel 4's Time Team and, in 2001, published the best-selling Seahenge: A quest for life and death in Bronze Age Britain. He is also a past president of the Council for British Archaeology.
