The Origins of the British: The New Prehistory of Britain Read Online Free PDF Page A

culturally, linguistically and genetically – by invading Angles and Saxons. This sort of logic derives partly from the idea of a previously uniformly ‘Celtic’ English landscape, together with the clear evidence of uniformly Germanic or Norman modern English place-names today, and the preponderance of Germanic words in modern English.
    Now, Gildas and Bede painted a grim picture, but neither actually specified complete ethnic cleansing. Some geneticists, and rather fewer historians and archaeologists, however, still believe that these invasions were massive and involved the influx of whole communities from Germany. In the extreme view, invaders were thought to have swept across a defenceless and largely depopulated England and to have replaced all the remaining ‘Celts’ in the country. Such complete replacement, not only of a people but of their presumed ancient English Celtic linguistic and cultural heritage, would have to be explained in the context of the lack of any Celtic linguistic substratum in English of any period.
    How sure can we be that England was universally Celtic before? Roman writers, for instance Strabo, explicitly exclude Celtic affinities of the English on various grounds, such as greater size and less yellow-hair. Unfortunately we have little to go on as to what Romans actually meant by ‘being like Celts’. From his own stated view of ‘Celtic’, Strabo would have meant southwest rather than Central European. Tacitus, on the other hand, felt that those Britons living near Gaul were more like the Gauls physically and linguistically as a result of migration, although it is probable that he meant the Belgic and not the Celtic Gauls (see below). He was more explicit about some other Britons that we now choose to call Atlantic Celts. Referring to theWelsh, whom he calls ‘a naturally fierce people’, he states: ‘The dark complexion of the Silures, their usually curly hair, and the fact that Spain is the opposite shore to them, are an evidence that Iberians of a former date crossed over and occupied these parts.’ 3 This observation can hardly be support for the notion that the other parts of the British Isles were necessarily the same or had a common ancestry even at that time, and merely reinforces the new genetic evidence I shall present in this book.
    So, if not ‘Celtic’ by Strabo’s description, but rather Gaulish according to Tacitus, who were the Britons occupying England at the time of the Roman invasion? The Belgae of northern Gaul (Belgium and France north of the Seine) had tribal namesakes in England during Caesar’s time (e.g. there were tribes called Belgae and Atrebates around Hampshire as well as in Gaul). Tacitus, like Caesar, reported that between Britain and Gaul ‘the language differs but little’. 4 As we know from Caesar’s famous opening paragraph of the
Gallic Wars
, which begins ‘All Gaul is divided into three parts’, 5 ‘Gaul’ included the Belgae in northern Gaul, a region that stretched from the Rhine as far south as the Seine and Paris. However, unlike the Celtae of the middle part of Gaul, who he said identified themselves as Celtic in their own language, Caesar did not specify the language of the Belgae – stating repeatedly, however, that they mostly descended from the Germani.
    The history of early coins in Britain reveals a pre-Roman influence that is predominantly derived from north Gaul. The earliest coins to circulate in south-east England, c.150 BC , were made in Gaul and were produced by the Belgae. The richest Iron Age treasure ever discovered in Britain was unearthed at Snettisham in Norfolk. A burial date of c.70 BC is suggested bycoins found in the majority of such hoards as grave goods, along with bronze, silver and gold torcs (Plate 16). Coins were subsequently produced locally throughout southern England, but not in contemporary Cornwall, Wales, Scotland or Ireland.
    Even farther north, the curious Iron Age culture of East Yorkshire