The Hebrides
11 Oct 2010 Leave a Comment
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Sparks and I are watching Time Team again. He favors Roman excavations, but I just love any large-scale excavation on an island, and especially Iron Age ones.
I love the cists, especially the one with intact skeletons… and ESPECIALLY that one that had a 1400-year-old plait of hair still with the body. They were right, it’s somehow much more intimate than the bones.
I love the roundhouse foundations, and the wheelhouse foundations. I love to read about just how advanced the Iron Age peoples were, without the Romans. I get my nose out of joint when the Britons are compared unfavorably to the Roman invaders. Grrrrrr.
These people plowed fields and planted crops.
They fished.
They raised sheep and goats and cattle.
They processed wool, spun it into fine yarn, and woven exceptionally beautiful cloth from it (beautiful woolen textiles are one of the most beautiful things in the world, to me).
They made beautiful bronze and enamel objects, covered in gorgeous knotwork and zooforms (knotwork is one of the most beautiful kinds of ornamentation, to me).
They built huge earthworks, to turn hills and crags into impenetrable forts.
They also built huge stoneworks. They built dry stone walls for the house foundations and also as walls for animal pens and forts. They built brochs and duns (look ‘em up on Wikipedia) (beautiful dry stoneworks are one of the most beautiful things in the world, to me).
They didn’t build barrows, but they lived with them.
They created some of the giant chalk drawings.
They had a writing system.
They had coinage.
They had trade with the continent.
They had ships that could cross the channels.
They occasionally became Bog Bodies.
