Exactly fifty years ago, a second-year option entitled ‘Northwest European Prehistory’ at Manchester University comprised (in addition to a complete term dedicated to the typology of socketed bronze axes) a litany of (British) geographical couplets, Clyde-Carlingford, Severn-Cotswold and, most enticingly, Rinyo-Clactonian. There were few European terms, and those were seemingly restricted to the Iron Age Hallstatt and La Tène cultures; in truth, Continental Europe and its peoples and doings were sparsely represented.
But no more. In 341 pages of close text, with many black and white maps and site plans, the authors outline the prehistory of north-west Europe (the British Isles, north-western France, the Low Countries, north-western Germany and Denmark) from the ‘Late Foragers and early Farmers’ to the early Roman period, covering in six chapters a timespan from about 8000 bc to about 50 bc. Chapter 2 describes the Mesolithic and the coming of the Neolithic and farming; chapter 3, the monumental Neolithic; chapter 4, the Early Bronze Age and the Beaker Folk; chapter 5, the later Bronze Age; chapter 6, the Early Iron Age; and chapter 7, the later Iron Age (to use old money). These chapters are preceded by an historical review of essentially twentieth-century British/European prehistory research and followed by a retrospective review of the research given in the volume. The text chapters are followed by a lengthy appendix listing the sites cited in the text, a 100-page reference list and short index. It is worth having the volume just for these extras. This is a straightforward, time and data-driven, timely, well written précis and no doubt will form the basis for similar titled university courses today.
Where have many of these new sites and their new data come from? The authors remind us very, very frequently: from development-led fieldwork. They make it clear that this is a biased data set, one that essentially excludes major/protected sites and so effectively whole classes of monument (many in chapter 3), but rather is complementary; it is the domestic and small, often funereal, structures that dominate. Larger/monumental structures are not neglected (many have been re-researched in the last twenty years), but are given their dues and set, where possible, in wider geographical and cultural contexts.
This is not a book that can or should be read lightly; it is clearly focused on its audience and correctly assumes some prior knowledge, so it is perhaps churlish to complain that the captions of the many plans/diagrams, taken from the original sources, are often rather sparse, making the figures difficult to fully comprehend for most non-professional (field) archaeologists.
But what of an isolated Britain? The chapters show that, ‘culturally’, Britain and Ireland drop in and out of north-western Europe, which itself has only rare times of cohesion (Jutland seems to be singular for much of prehistory, and Ireland, often, too). There are other surprises – the Atlantic seaboard is not important throughout all time – and delights; the main chapters finish with the gradual encroachment of the Romans into the Iron Age north-west (invoking an odd feeling of schadenfreude). It is splendid to be led to appreciate all this in a single source, one that is a great exemplar of a dichotomy – an (authoritative) and focused overview.
Rinyo-Clactonian Ware, you are missing from the index, long renamed Grooved Ware. This sounds less romantic, but is geographically neutral and a more accurate description, far more in keeping with twenty-first century, less insular, prehistory research, as is so very succinctly described in this book.
