Pagan Britain

496 Pages·2014·13 MB·English

by  Ronald Hutton

PAGAN BRITAIN
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PA G A N
B R I TA I N
RONALD HUTTON
YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON
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Copyright © 2013 Ronald Hutton
All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form
(beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and
except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.
For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact:
U.S. Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.com
Europe Office: [email protected] www.yalebooks.co.uk
Set in Minion Pro by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd
Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- publication Data
Hutton, Ronald.
Pagan Britain/Ronald Hutton.
pages cm
ISBN 978-0-300-19771-6 (alk. paper)
1. Great Britain—Religion—To 449. 2. Paganism—Great Britain—History. I. Title.
BL980.G7H865 2013
200.9361—dc23
2013021870
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
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CONTENTS
•
Acknowledgements vi
A Note on Definitions vii
List of Illustrations x
Preface xv
1 The Palaeolithic and Mesolithic: How Ritual Came to Britain 1
2 The Earlier Neolithic: A Craze for Monuments 32
3 The Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age: The Time of the
Sacred Circle 81
4 Late Prehistory: Earthworks, Pits and Bones 161
5 The Roman Impact: Temples, Statues and Inscriptions 227
6 The Conversion to Christianity: A Clash of Religions,
A Blend of Religions 274
7 The Legacy of British Paganism 340
Conclusion 397
Notes 401
Index 460
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
•
The research which underpins this work was carried out over a period of
two decades, in which I accumulated many debts of gratitude to librarians,
archivists, colleagues and publishers, the list of which would run to many pages
if expressed in full. In the short term, of the actual writing up, three stand out.
The first debt is to my university, of Bristol, for awarding me a research fellow-
ship in the final year of the process, so that my work could be completed on
time following an exacting and exhilarating period as head of department. The
second is to Heather McCallum, of Yale University Press, for having pursued me
so relentlessly as a possible author for a long time, and treated me so cleverly
once she had secured me. The third is to Ana Adnan, for her customary shrewd
encouragement and advice.
After the writing, four notable scholars and friends – Joshua Pollard,
Sir Barry Cunliffe, Martin Carver and Brendan Smith – read individual draft
chapters, relevant to their own expertise, and provided invaluable advice. Clive
Ruggles, the national expert, read the section on archaeoastronomy. To have
taken the time for this work from their own concerns, to no personal advan-
tage, especially as the sections concerned are not short, is one of the most
generous acts that a fellow professional can undertake, and I shall always be
grateful.
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A NOTE ON DEFINITIONS
•
It may be wise to define from the beginning the key words employed in
this book. At no point will the term ‘art’ be used of the many images painted
and carved during British prehistory, even though it is both convenient and
sanctioned by long scholarly tradition, viz. ‘Palaeolithic cave art’, ‘megalithic
art’, ‘rock art’, etc. This is because of the modern connotations of the word, as
something intended to be decorative and inspirational, giving pleasure to those
who see it, rather than functional. The prehistoric imagery may indeed have
had exactly that purpose, but some or all of it may have operated as well or
instead as a form of language, providing information to the observer in the
form of directions, lessons, blessings, prayers, curses, prohibitions or declara-
tions; and to use the conventional word obscures that possibility. That is why
more neutral terms such as ‘images’, ‘figures’ or ‘designs’ will be preferred.
Next come those two old lexical friends, ‘religion’ and ‘magic’. Both have
been fought over extensively by professional colleagues in recent years, and
merely to use the latter, or to use the former in the context of prehistory, may
arouse the ire of some, while others may be as severely provoked by the impli-
cation that the latter has a separate identity from the former. I have argued at
length in a previous publication (Witches, Druids and King Arthur) that they
can indeed be distinguished, and have a different essence, even though they
can easily overlap or blend and magic can form a category inside religion. The
definitions offered and explained there will be retained here. Religion is char-
acterized as belief in the existence of spiritual beings or forces which are in some
measure responsible for the cosmos, and in the need of human beings to form
relationships with them in which they are accorded some respect. When a group
of people operates it in the same way, it becomes ‘a’ religion. Magic embraces
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viii a note on definitions
any formalized practices by human beings designed to achieve particular ends by
the manipulation and direction of supernatural power or of spiritual power
concealed within the natural world. The word ‘ritual’ has been the subject
of equally extensive and complex debate. In previous publications I have used
Clifford Geertz’s lovely and simple definition, of ‘consecrated action’, which
captures perfectly its sense of action invested with an exceptional formality and
freight of meaning, often expressed in repeated patterns. This puts perfor-
mance at the heart of ritual, which seems correct, and enables the term both to
be linked to religious behaviour and separated from it.
Finally, this book needs a definition of ‘paganism’, a word central to its
being. There is an obvious one: that the term refers to the pre- Christian
religions of Europe and the Near East. This holds the essence of the way in
which it is most commonly used, and is employed here, and retains the original
positioning of it as something defined by and against the Christian faith. It
does, however, beg the question of what religions are, and while that has
been answered above, the reply that was provided does have some knock- on
effect for the matter now at issue. By highlighting relationships with spiritual
beings it confines the term ‘paganism’ to an active worship of the deities associ-
ated with those old religious traditions. This is the ‘minimalist’ position, as
defined by twentieth- century philosophers of religion, and one which avoids
endless, and irreconcilable, arguments over the extent of the survival of the
essence of a religion when the people who professed it have been formally
converted to another. It draws a boundary which is at least clear and can usually
be recognized in the historical record.
Throughout this book I retain the old-f ashioned expression ‘the British
Isles’ to describe the whole complex archipelago with Ireland and Britain at
its centre. This is not intended as a slight upon citizens of the Irish Republic,
who have long won the right not to be regarded as British, but is purely the
result of geographical accuracy. The alternative term of ‘Britain and Ireland’
seems to forget the Northern Isles, the Hebrides, Man, Anglesey, the islets off
Pembrokeshire, and the Isles of Scilly and Wight, all of which play a part – and
often an important one – in the issues discussed here, and which often have a
strongly marked cultural character of their own. The centrality of Britain to the
expression is simply a reflection of its size, as the main island of the group, as
in ‘the Canaries’, ‘the Hawaiian Islands’, ‘the Maltese Islands’, and so forth.
A greater personal discomfort attaches to the means of reckoning historical
epochs. In a previous book of mine, Witches, Druids and King Arthur, I adopted
the increasingly fashionable, and religiously neutral, usage of bce and ce, to
replace bc and ad, which are specifically Christian. As I explained in the intro-
duction to that book, I myself had no strong feelings on the matter, and have an
instinctual wariness of gesture politics; but, none the less, I accepted that it was
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a note on definitions ix
a courteous gesture to make towards the ideal of a multi- faith, multi- ethnic
society. My commitment to that kind of society is as strong as ever, and will
feature prominently in the conclusion to the present book, but here I have
reverted to the older usage. The difference is purely one of context. The new
forms are most common among newer publishing houses and in disciplines
such as Religious Studies, where the issues involved are most sensitive. That
earlier book of mine was placed with such a publisher and overlapped with
the concerns of those disciplines. The present book is devoted almost wholly
to history and archaeology, older- fashioned scholarly traditions which have
adhered to the bc/ad forms. Archaeologists in particular, who have most to
reckon with dates bc (or bce) have done so, not because they are usually
Christian but because of the reverse consideration: that as a group (with striking
individual exceptions) they tend to be less religious than most and so more
indifferent to hallmarks of particular belief systems. The older usage is also
the normal house style of Yale University Press, the representatives of which
had accommodated my wishes in other respects and whom I was accordingly
reluctant to press over this one.
The matter cost me much aching of conscience, till I discussed it with
a Roman Catholic friend, an Irishman. With the wit and geniality of so many
of his nation, he replied that to use the traditional forms was itself a gesture of
inter- faith co- operation, because Christians like him had employed the pagan
names for days of the week, months of the year and constellations, for centuries
without complaint. It therefore seemed to him an appropriate gesture of
gallantry on my part, this time, to accord the chronological framework in
return. His argument won the day, and so during this book I record the last two
millennia as Years of a Lord to whom I owe no personal allegiance, but of
whose followers I am frequently fond.
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