The land before time

The Making of the British Landscape: How we have transformed the land from prehistory to today

In 1982 he discovered the waterlogged timber of a Bronze Age ceremonial site at Flag Fen, near Peterborough, and in 1987, with his wife Mairie Taylor, he set up the Fenland Archaeological Trust which opened Flag Fen to the public.

He is known to British viewers from the TV show Time Team and the series Britain BC and Britain AD. This book builds on all these skills to range widely — perhaps too widely — from Britain after the Ice Ages through to what he calls ‘Sat Nav Britain’.

The in-between chapters introduce us to the first farmers, the significance of the Bronze Age and the rise of Celtic culture during the Iron Age, and provides new insight about Saxon landscapes. It moves on to the Viking and Norman landscapes, the impact of the Black Death and the emergence of early, modern landscapes.

The final quarter of the book introduces us to changing townscapes and countrysides in modern times, including the impact of the industrial revolution, and on to the landscapes of late 19th and 20th centuries — an era he refers to as ‘the planner triumphant’.

The most exciting and original sections of the book are the early chapters dealing with the prehistory of Britain. Here, Pryor is on his own specialist ground, and one feels on the cutting edge of the vast research being undertaken from Mesolithic to Dark Age Saxon Britain. There is a really stimulating section on ‘Doggerland’ — that lost landscape of the Mesolithic. Building on the detailed surveys of oil and gas companies in the North Sea, archaeologists are reconstructing the late glacial and Mesolithic landscapes of the submerged human worlds off the coast from north Norfolk to Yorkshire, in the shallow seas of the Dogger Bank region. Pryor says one of the most important conclusions is that the majority of the population of northwest Europe, including Britain, would have been living on these undulating plains, which are beneath the North Sea.

As sea levels began to rise after 10,000BC, Mesolithic people abandoned their plentiful hunting grounds, rich in fish, shellfish, wildfowl, hares and deer. This book provides telling new insights into the Mesolithic landscapes of insular Britain — including the discovery of more substantial Mesolithic houses.

Given his undoubted expertise in Bronze Age excavations, Pryor provides illuminating pictures of the making of Bronze Age landscapes. He says the revelation of the extent of Bronze Age fields and farming has been one of the most important discoveries of British archaeology — transforming our understanding of that landscape and its antiquity.

Combining the insights of aerial photography with excavations in the flat farmland of the Fen margins, he and others have demonstrated that ancient, straight and regularly-spaced banks were the main elements of a field system whose origins lay in the early Bronze Age, beginning about 2500 BC.

This Bronze Age field system was laid out to handle and manage large numbers of sheep and cattle — in a society where feasting and consumption of meat were important aspects of social life. Excavations also reveal the droveways that connected the coastal pastures with the inland grazings. This chapter on the Bronze Age provides a thrilling summary of current research.

Coverage of Iron Age Britain, and what he terms the ‘rise of a Celtic culture’, is also insightful — centred on the most iconic sites of the Iron Age, the impressive hillforts whose great, earthen ramparts still dominate so many landscapes. The Iron Age has much appeal because the evidence for it is so good, particularly in Britain — technically better pottery, settlement and field systems, giving rise to questions about the social and political organisation that went with the many hillforts.

There are most interesting maps dealing with the distribution of minor hillforts (under three acres), concentrated in what we would now call the Scottish borders, SW Wales and the West Country — and the major hillforts (over three acres), with a different distribution, stretching along the Welsh marshes and the rich countryside between the Bristol Channel and the Isle of Wight. Why these distributions? The Iron Age throws up fascinating places and fascinating questions.

Pryor is still at home with Roman and Saxon landscapes, but I was a little disappointed with his chapter on The Viking Age in Britain (800-1066). The summary of the Viking impact is competent, but insufficient attention is paid to the trading, as opposed to raiding, role of the Vikings and their deep settlement impact in north-west England and Scotland. It may be telling that the second half of this chapter is on Saxon landscapes, not focused on the mature Viking worlds, southern and eastern England. The impact of the Viking invasions on the destruction of the Pictish world, and the creation of an independent Scottish kingdom, required elaboration.

This latter observation indirectly draws attention to the failure in later chapters to put landscape changes in their political and cultural contexts. Landscapes are as much conceptual and ideological as they are material. Pryor finds it very difficult to spot many signs of the impact of the Reformation in the landscape. The stripping of the altars of parish churches, the demolished and deserted monasteries and abbeys, and the use made by Henry VIII of the extensive church land to consolidate and centralise state power, suggest other conclusions.

It is interesting that feudalism receives justified attention here, but capitalism, modernity and imperialism do not.

Pryor makes a useful distinction between two Britains — not the old ‘highland/lowland’ cultural dichotomy — but the Britain that faces the North Sea and the Channel, vis-à-vis Atlantic Britain facing the Irish and Celtic Seas. Yet the dramatic impact of early colonial expansion on western ports, such as Bristol, Glasgow and Liverpool, might have received more emphasis.

That is not to suggest that the overall analysis of townscapes, both in early modern times and in the industrial era post-1750, does not receive sufficient coverage. Both chapters, 11 and 13, provide stimulating insights into that dynamic nature of British towns and cities in these eras. But are people not also part of their cultural landscapes — and did not the distinctive cultural landscapes of the many, diverse ethnic neighbourhoods in urban Britain deserve more attention?

Pryor outlines his philosophy and methodologies in studying ‘landscape history’ in an engaging and interesting introduction. Yet, this reviewer regrets that the work of mainstream historical and cultural geography receives so little attention.

The Darby school ‘Domesday landscapes’, the work of Butlin and Dodgshon on the historical geography of England and Wales, and Cosgrove’s and Daniel’s insights about symbolic landscapes are neglected. Likewise, Pryor’s insights on Scotland would have been greatly enhanced by Dodgshon’s superb work on the landscapes of that country, as chieftains became landlords.

Nevertheless, this a highly readable and well-written book. The author’s experiences as archaeologist, broadcaster and farmer shine through and make for a clear and easy communication with the reader.

Pryor also has a very interesting capacity to make telling comparisons between the landscapes of very different eras. The book is also enhanced by many excellent maps, photography and drawings. It is a worthwhile study, if covering too wide a timespan and if a little too long. It probably should not be read all at one sitting.

- William J Smyth wrote Map-Making, Landscapes and Memory (CUP, 2006), and is joint editor (with John Crowley and Michael Murphy) of a forthcoming Atlas of the Great Famine 1845-1852.

Picture: CAMPING OUT: Battlesbury Camp, an Iron Age hillfort, Warminster, Wiltshire, England. There are most interesting maps dealing with the distribution of hillforts along the Welsh marshes and the rich countryside between the Bristol Channel and the Isle of Wight.