Bournemouth University

School of Conservation Sciences

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Joint Day School

Unquiet Lands: People and Landscapes in Prehistoric North West Europe

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A history for British prehistory: eyewitness accounts and the end of the Iron Age
Miles Russell

A crucial element missing from any attempt to categorise, interpret or understand the world that later prehistoric people inhabited is a record of their own experiences written from their own distinct perspective. The absence of such an account has meant that, in an attempt to comprehend the lifestyle, belief systems, monuments, landscape, social systems and political structure of Iron Age communities in Britain, historians have had to rely upon Classical Greek and Roman authors such as Strabo, Caesar and Tacitus, all of whom had the decency to write things down. Such texts, although magnificent works of literature in their own right, unfortunately tell us more about the tastes and (rather bigoted) world view of a Roman audience than the reality of prehistoric life.
If only the Britons had themselves recorded their experiences in a more meaningful way. If only some form of ‘British History’ had survived from the late Iron Age, then a modern audience could more readily comprehend the world that the Britons created for themselves, their relationship to nature, the role of monuments and material culture, and the experiences they had whilst living in these lands.
But, of course, all these things were recorded. Eyewitness accounts from the Late Iron Age do survive. The forensic examination of these British testimonies can provide a very different outlook on the past, a period that some people still insist on calling “pre-history”.