In Your Granary, Eating Your Grains

This may sound like a slightly boring topic, but I promise you it isn't. The question of how to store food from one harvest to the next has plagued humanity since the Neolithic (c. 10,000 BCE- the oldest granary ever found dates to 9000BCE in the Jordan Valley), and we've only had preservative techniques like canning and freezing in the Modern period (i.e. post-Medieval). And, of course, food supply is vital for the survival of human society, so how did ancient societies go about keeping their food safe?


Egyptians

We'll start with a pretty easy one. Egypt grew mostly grain. In general, the floodwaters of the Nile covered most of the farmland with silt every year, providing both water and nutrients to the soil. This allowed for (reasonably) reliable harvests, barring disease or faliure of the floodwaters. Grains were stored in granaries, as the name might suggest. Egyptian granaries looked like this:

 

If you remember your Bible stories/ Andrew Lloyd Webber musicals: Joseph told them to store up grain for a coming famine. They already did that, but I guess it was good advice anyway. With the climate being so dry, grains stayed edible for several years, and the shape of the granaries- raised but covered- helped create a preservative environment. Keeping them off the ground also made it harder for pests to invade the supply.

The Egyptians also had not-so-secret weapon: Cats. We all know that the Egyptians worshipped cats, and mummified them after they died, but one of the origins of this worship is thought to be their excellent pest-destroying activities. The local wildcats (from whom DNA suggests the Egyptians' cats were domesticated) killed not only rats and mice, but cobras and other poisonous snakes. Of course, this is pretty reductive; if simply killing vermin were enough to cause a culture to worship an animal, there would have been cat-cults all over Napoleonic ships and in every palace kitchen. Unfortunately, the origins of religions are obscure- this is the kind of thing cognitive science of religion is trying to deal with- and many of us in ancient history have stopped trying to search for the origin of religions. We usually don't get anywhere, and when we do we haven't actually learned anything new. Still: CATS.

Bronze statue of a cat and her kitten, Ancient Egypt (be more specific, won't you Wikipedia?)

Romans

The Romans did not have such a hospitable climate in much of their empire, especially not from Britain where our next example is from. Recognise this?

No? Okay then, it's the granary from the Roman fort at Housesteads, on Hadrian's Wall. You'll notice that the floor is covered in square stones. Actually, it's not the floor; those stones would have held up a floor that no longer exists, allowing air to circulate beneath the grain. This helps prevent mould, as anyone living in a student house will know ("Just keep the window's open" "It's winter!" "If you don't keep the windows open, you'll get mould" "?!?!"). It may also have helped keep pests out, though it's unclear whether a foot or so was really enough.

Notice how thick the walls are? This granary (and the one next to it) had to feed the entire garrison from one harvest to the next (presumably- grain transport is tedious, so it makes sense to put it all in once place once it's been taxed off the locals and keep it there). They would pile literally tons of grain up against the walls, so they needed to be pretty sturdy.

Hang on a second!  Walls aren't waterproof! (This is true, actually. It's how damp gets into houses). Romans knew that too, so their granaries had extra wide eaves

 

This is not a Roman granary, it's a helpful visual aid

This kept water off the walls, and thus, the grain was saved!


Medieval

This one is by far the best and most interesting. As long as by "best" we mean MOST AWESOME. By Medieval times, barns were often massive affairs, intended to hold the tithe grain from large numbers of peasant farmers. They were simply too big to be raised up. If you've ever been into the Buckland Abbey tithe barn, you'll know what I'm talking about.

The roof has been replaced, but the walls and floor are, to my knowledge, original.  

However, they had one, awesome and totally amazing innovation: owl chutes. This is a small hole or chute in the wall or roof of the granary which allows owls (most often barn owls) to enter the granary. The owls then find and eat the mice, preventing the mice from eating the grain!

(No, I'm not making this up) 

 

 

Burns Throughout History #8

This one is from a modern archaeologist, who mostly works on the European Iron Age (though he gets around a lot): Barry Cunliffe. You know what he once called Classical Archaeology?

"Text-assisted archaeology"

...burn.

Richard III

I know, I know I'm late with this post. This news has been out for over a week! But hey, I've been doing my dissertation. We can swap if you'd like.

So, they've found Richard III, last of the Plantagenets. And by "they" I mean "those lovely archaeologists over at the University of Leicester". But how do they know it's him, anyway? Surely one skeleton looks a lot like another? Even if it does have scoliosis.

The folks of UoL put out a brief press statement, which you can read in full here. It says there's a "wealth of evidence, including radiocarbon dating, radiological evidence, DNA and bone analysis and archaeological results". But how can that evidence tell us who someone was?

The first thing we need to know is that Richard III wasn't just on ordinary person. We have lots of historical documents describing him, though some (Shakespeare, I'm looking at you) have always been thought to be inaccurate. Because of our historical knowledge, we can say: "[The skeleton] had unusually slender, almost feminine, build for a man – in keeping with contemperoneous accounts". We also know Richard suffered from scoliosis, which is very easy to spot, and we can look for other details that coincide.

Scoliosis is a twisting of the spine, easily observable in this image.

Since Richard was the defeated king, we can expect him to have been killed violently, and the skeletal pathology matches that. While natural causes and most illnesses leave no marks on the skeleton, violent wounds often do, and this skeleton bore fatal injuries to the skull, recorded by pathologists. He also had "humiliation injuries" and may have been tied, both of which also showed up in the pathologists' report.

You can just about make out a large crack in the skull, running from the nose to the jaw. In the first image, you can see the other gash in the top of the skull. 

The state of the body in the grave is another giveaway: this body wasn't in a shroud or a coffin, and had been dumped into a shallow grave.

Before his death, Richard engaged in activities that also allow us to identify him. In the report, they note that he ate a lot of meat, and in particular fish. This would not be surprising if he lived on the coast, but as a body discovered in the midlands, we can assume he was wealthy if he ate fish. But more importantly, how do we know he ate fish?

Keep calm, it's about to get technical. The UoL release says they used "radiocarbon dating" to find this out. I'm convinced this has to be a typo, otherwise I've literally no idea what they mean. We'll assume it's a typo, however, and that they were actually using stable isotope analysis.

So, everyone knows the human body is made of nitrogen (and other elements like carbon), right? If you didn't, you do now. Nitrogen exists in two isotopic forms: N14 and N15. These number just mean the atoms have different weights, though they're both nitrogen. The percentage ratios of these in the body are determined by the percentage ratios of the nitrogen you consume: i.e. your diet. With me so far? Here's the really cool bit: the nitrogen ratios of aquatic plants and animals is markedly different to the ratios of land based plants and animals, so if you have a high sea food diet, your nitrogen ratios are different! Archaeologists then measure these ratios, and can thus partially reconstruct your diet! Stable isotope analysis can be applied to some other elements (strontium and oxygen come to mind) and can tell us about where you lived.

All of this together seems strong, if circumstantial. How many wealthy men with small statures, scoliosis and violent, undignified deaths can there have been? On the other hand, we've so far not proved it's Richard, just some guy who shared many of his unfortunate attributes.

This is where DNA testing comes in, though we won't have been able to sequence a full genome from the bones (since DNA is a very long molecule, it doesn't survive completely intact for very long. I'm afraid that bit in Jurassic Park where they use fossilised DNA is pretty much bunk). However, we should have been able to get quite a bit from his skeleton. Enough to match DNA with a high probability of success, anyway. Genealogists then tracked down two relatives, via maternal line (easier to trace, as everyone has an X chromosome) and matched them to his DNA. This is where it's handy that Richard was a historically documented figure: it's much easier to find relatives if you know which line of gentry you're looking for.

It's pretty safe to say, therefore, that we really have successfully discovered Richard III.

And now, introducing an all new blog feature...


Burns Throughout History #1

This section will preserve tales and anecdotes about people sassing each other, throughout history. This week, we're looking at Athanasius and Arsenius, both Christian bishops at the Council of Tyre. Athanasius had been accused of cutting off Arsenius' hand for heresy, and indeed the grisly trophy had been displayed to the council. Arsenius' followers demanded Athanasius be punished. Athanasius responded:

"He caused Arsenius to be introduced, having his hands covered by his cloak. Then he asked them "Is this the man who has lost a hand?"... [they agreed]... Athanasius, turning back the cloak of Arsenius on one side showed one of the man's hands... afterward he turned back the cloak on the other side and exposed the other hand. Then addressing himself to those present, he said "Arsenius, as you see, is found to have two hands. Let my accusers show the place thence the third was cut off"."


...burn.

Inconspicuous?

This week I thought I'd continue with the theme of archaeology, and discuss barrows.

What are Barrows?

Simply put, barrows are burial mounds. They are generally not infested with wights, as in Lord of the Rings, or walking skeletons as in Skyrim. They are also much smaller than these things portray them; the Skyrim barrows look far more like catacombs than actual barrows.

West Kennet Long Barrow, in the Avebury region. There are a couple of people in this picture, but they're so small you can hardly see them. For scale, those stones at the front are all taller than a human.

Barrows usually, but not always contain burials. These can be of one person, or many people, with wealthy grave goods, or no individual markers at all.

The term 'barrow' applies right the way through from the Neolithic long barrows (above), to Bronze age round barrows (below), to Saxon barrows. That's a period of over 4000 years, so naturally they would have meant many different things in different times. 'Barrow' would not have been the builder's name for them: it's more a classification name, such as 'temple'. Synagogues, churches, mosques and so on could all be called temples, though they all mean something a little different both to believers and non-believers; the same kind of thing applies to barrows, though the different traditions were not concurrent.

Bronze age round barrows from near Stonehenge

 As you can see from the two pictured examples, barrow shape and size are very variable. Many barrows were ploughed out by intensive agriculture, but those that remain are now protected, which is why these look like bright green acne in the middle of all that nice farmland.


What are they for?

Barrows were for burying the dead. In the Neolithic, that meant putting a select group of people in the tomb, generation after generation. Once the bodies had rotted a bit, you swept them back towards the sides of the rooms, and put more bodies in. In some long barrows, the bones have been carefully sorted, and in others they're a bit of a jumble. Often recognisable bones such as skulls or long bones were removed, either for reburial elsewhere, or some kind of ritual.

Bronze age barrows are a bit different. They usually had just one burial, and the monument seems to have been raised specifically to hold them. The body was often laid out ceremonially, with many grave goods. We don't really know what these goods were for; whether votive deposits (gifts for the gods), gifts for the dead, items for use in the afterlife or some other purpose. They were often in use for only one generation or so.


Inconspicuous Barrows

But barrows are big, imposing, in-your-face, right? How can a barrow be inconspicuous?

It turns out that there is another class of barrow from the Bronze age. These are usually found near normal barrow clusters, but are tiny. According to one of my lecturers, you pretty much only spot one as you drive over it in your excavation land rover.

See that tiny lump these people are standing on? That is an inconspicuous barrow.

Inconspicuous barrows are used for a much longer amount of time. Most large barrows seem to be built, used an abandoned within a few decades. The smaller barrows tend to continue to have deposits placed in them for decades or centuries.

As a tradition, they also continue to be built for longer, and are seemingly less of a thing than large barrows. By the end of the barrow-building period, many large barrow groups have been almost segregated. There are big patches of unbuilt on earth and unfarmed land around them, as if there is something taboo about their presence. Other times, people have enclosed them in small ditches, to 'fence them off' from the normal world. In contrast, inconspicuous barrows are just built around, either non threatening or ignored.

So who were these builders? The Methodists of the Bronze age world? Does this difference in barrows imply a different religious practise, with different beliefs and customs (even a different culture), or are they two traditions from the same belief system, concordant rather than competing?

To link back to the Stonehenge post, we just don't know!

Stonehenge

We've all seen Stonehenge, if not in real life, then in pictures. It's a symbol of Britain, and a symbol of Prehistory.  I went for the first time ever last week, which is pretty poor, given that I'm an archaeology student within an hour's drive, but I digress.

Stonehenge, showing one of the 'gallows-like' structures

Stonehenge has been the subject of hundreds of books and papers, thousands of hours of arguments and even some legal cases have been about it. So what's going on here? And why do people care so much?


What's in a name?

Why is Stonehenge called 'Stonehenge'? Like almost everything else about it, Stonehenge's name is a little ambiguous. Almost all of the etymologies suggest it derives from the Old English stan meaning 'stone'. The 'henge' may come from hencg meaning 'hinge', or hencen meaning 'gallows' or 'hanging place'. It is not clear if they were actually using the stones to hang people from, or whether they simply thought that the stones resembled a gallows.

Archaeology took the word 'henge', and used it to define a monument that is circular or ovular, with a ditch and bank structure, and the ditch on the inside, the opposite of a defencive structure. All well and good; we needed a word to describe those pesky circles. Except... Stonehenge doesn't have an internal ditch, and it's bank is pretty pathetic: only about 1m high. So actually, it's not a henge.

Avebury, which has an actual henge surrounding the stone circles.

It's also, and this is the mind blowing part, not made of stone.

Okay, it is actually stone, but it almost certainly symbolically represents wood, rather than stone. It doesn't look like any other stone circle. Normal stone circles do not have connecting stones on top of the uprights, but this is thought to have been very common in timber circles.  Below is a picture of the Stones of Stenness, a 'more typical' stone circle, and a reconstruction of a timber circle.

 

 Which one looks more like Stonehenge?

The way the lintel (top) stones are attached is also by a method far more suited to woodworking than stone building. Above is a close up of one of the standing stones. See the little bump on the top? That's to attach the lintel stone, which would have a corresponding hole gouged into it. This is still used in Ikea furniture.

Archaeologists have started to think about Stonehenge in the context of timber, rather than stone circles. A good place to start, if you're interested, is Stonehenge and other Timber Circles by Alex Gibson.

Who built Stonehenge?

A wizard did it. No, really. Geoffrey of Monmouth in the 12th Century wrote an account of the building of Stonehenge. By Merlin.

Not that Merlin. The proper one. Here's a picture of him directing some giants to help him build Stonehenge.

This is the oldest known depiction of Stonehenge. 

A bit later on, in the 1600s, a man called William Stukeley had some other ideas about Stonehenge. Stukeley was one of the most important fore-runners to modern archaeology, who drew some brilliant pictures of the monuments, and did quite a bit of 'excavating'. This was closer to Time Team's methods than a real archaeological enquiry, but pioneering for the time. He was also one of the first biographers of Newton, who was a personal friend. Stukeley suggested that it might have been built by the Druids. This isn't as mad as it first sounds: he identified the building as ritualistic in nature, and then looked for a corresponding 'Priestly-caste' in the ancient sources for a people who had lived here before the Romans. The priests he found were the Druids. Druids became quite popular at one time as folk heroes: those Celtic people who had fought the Romans. This was important, because most of the folk heroes of the individual countries of Great Britain were heroes for killing the others. Usually the English.

More recently, thanks to various dating methods, it has become clear that Stonehenge is much, much older than the Druids.* They existed about 2000 years ago, all across Western Europe. By AD86 they had been herded across Europe by the Romans. Agricola, the governor of Britain cornered the last of them on Anglesy and had them all killed.

However, Stonehenge had been built long before that, from about 3100BC - 1600BC, in a series of very distinct phases. Clearly the place was important, but it's meaning would almost certainly have changed over that time. Since we think the average life expectancy was about 30,  that's 3 generations a century, or 45 generations in total. That's more than the generations between our time and the time of Jesus.




What does  it mean?

No one knows. Is it, as Mike Parker Pearson has suggested, a place that represents death? Would people have processed from Woodhenge (a timber circle), the symbolic place of life to Stonehenge, the symbolic counterpart?  Or does it represent life, as a timber circle, immortalised forever as durable stone? Is it a landing place for aliens, an inter dimensional portal, a prehistoric computer?

Jaquetta Hawkes said that 'Every generation gets the Stonehenge it deserves', by which she meant that each new group of archaeologists has a new take on the meaning of the monument, usually at least in part driven by their own ideas about the world.

What Stonehenge meant to the people who built it is likely to be something archaeologists argue about forever, and probably something we will never really know. However, Stonehenge is more than just a dead monument; it has meaning to people in the here and now. In that case, Stonehenge can mean anything you want it to; Stonehenge can be all things to all people, as long as they don't extrapolate that back onto those in the past.

*Note: the Neo-Druids contest this; they continue to believe that Stonehenge was built by Druids.

Boudicca

With Alex Salmond and Scottish independence hitting the headlines, I thought we could take some time to look at another British hero, resisting a somewhat more hostile takeover.


Why was Boudicca so angry with the Romans?

Aside from the bit where they invaded her land. The Roman invasion was in 43, and her revolt wasn't until 62. That's a pretty long time to wait for revenge. Then again, if the film Leon taught us anything, it's never to underestimate girls with a grudge and a lot of time on their hands. While there were some other catalysts, this probably made up some of her motivation.

Mind you, her husband, Prasutagus, was a collaborator with the Romans, so she can't have been too anti-Roman.  He was leader of the Iceni, (a tribe of Britain located in the Norfolk area) and a client king of Rome. This meant that he and his family would be able to continue as rulers of the Iceni, until his death, when their land and tribe would become the property of Rome. However, when he died, Prasutagus left half of his land to Rome, and half to Boudica. Since the Iceni almost certainly didn't have any real property law, this probably means that his troops simply refused to let the Roman troops take control. There had been another Icenian revolt previously, which had been defeated, and they had had their weapons confiscated, but Prasutagus had been allowed to keep control. It seems possible, then, that after his death, a more anti-Roman faction took the opportunity to sever their ties with Rome.

Catus Decianus was the procurator of the province at this time. The procurator was of equestrian rank (one below senator), and was basically the chancellor of the exchequer. He was not of the same class as the governor (a senator) to prevent them from forming an alliance and using their money and soldiers to try to take over the empire. Even with this restriction, some managed this fairly well anyway. He decided the only logical thing was to recall all 'loans' (here read: gifts of money that Catus arbitrarily decided he would like back,) at the same time as Seneca, loan shark and author, recalled all his loans. Since both these measures were likely to be in place to allow some leading British citizens to become senators (in an attempt to integrate them into the empire), the resulting revolt was something of an own goal.

When the Iceni either wouldn't, or couldn't pay, Catus decided enough was enough, and launched a putative raid.  His troops burned and pillaged their way through the Icenian territory, raped Boudica's daughters, and had her 'scourged', that is to say, whipped with a barbed whip. This was one of the punishments supposedly meted out to Jesus and the other condemned criminals in Judea. It wasn't pretty.

So Then What?

Your collaborating husband is dead, the Romans just burned all your stuff, raped your daughters and beat you within an inch of your life: what would you have done? You guessed it: Boudicca called her banners. Presumably after getting some medical attention.

She and the Iceni rampaged south, towards Camulodunum (modern day Colchester), where they were joined by the Trinovantes, and 'other tribes'. Tacitus wasn't too picky about their names when they were trying to kill Romans. They proceeded to systematically destroy Camulodunum, the current centre of Roman administration. Men and women were supposedly stripped naked, slaughtered and had bits of  body parts lopped off and sewn on in other places, mostly breasts sewn to mouths. This is almost certainly the kind of horror story that spreads after the fact, rather than an accurate representation of what actually happened. None the less, in the archaeological record, there is a clear black line of burned material from this event.

While all this was going on, Suetonius Paullinus, the governor, was on campaign in north Wales. He received word, and rode south with a detachment of cavalry. He decided that Londinium was indefensible, and so abandoned it to the rebels. It was also mostly destroyed, though some of the citizens had managed to flee. He rode north again to meet up with his legions. He also sent a messenger, commanding the II legion, stationed in Cornwall, to go and fight the rebels, but the commander ignored him. Later, he 'fell on his own sword'. A young military prefect (and I really like to think of him as the officious public school type), called Cerialis led his cavalry detachment against them. They were utterly destroyed, but Cerialis survived, and later returned to Britain as its governor.

After destroying Londinium, Boudicca and co. turned north, buoyed up by their success and planning to destroy Paullinus' legions. By now they had been joined by many more tribes, and may have numbered into the hundreds of thousands (though ancient sources are always prone to exaggeration). On their way, they stopped at the cultural capital of Verulamiun (St Albans) and destroyed that too.

Unfortunately, this allowed Paullinus the chance to pick his own ground, and if there's one thing you don't want to let a Roman do, it's pick his own ground. Pompey could tell you that for nothing.


THE BIG BATTLE AT THE END!

All historical stories have this, right? The Romans holed up in an as-yet-undiscovered battleground, with trees to their back and flanks. You might have heard that this was at Mancetter: for a while people thought the battle had been around there, but more study has suggested it might not have been. Boudicca hadn't just brought her troops, she'd brought he tribes. Hundreds of women, children, and the elderly made up her baggage train, and they arranged their wagons

Unfortunately, the Romans had rather better tactics and arms for fighting in a small, enclosed battle, and they won, pretty decisively. The wagons prevented the Celts from fleeing, and their 'civilians' as well as their soldiers were massacred.

Soon afterwards Boudicca died, or committed suicide, and the revolt was the last major resistance to Rome in southern Britain.

And then?

That's sort of it for her, until, many years later, some people know as the Victorians decided they needed a role model. They picked Boudicca, as the plucky English hero, but for one thing: 'Boudicca' sounded silly. They would call her 'Bodeceia'