PRE NORMAN CONQUEST INTRODUCTION
After the Norman Conquest in 1066 and the recording of the Domesday Book in 1086 there is much factual documentary evidence of our history which gives us a very full picture of events up to the present day.
Prior to that date evidence of historical events is much more fragmented and is still being investigated. It has been suggested by historians that man has occupied river valleys and forest clearings in our area for possibly 70,000 years. Chicheley Brook and the Rivers Ouse and Lovat are close by in the clay and gravel lands of North Bucks.
Before the Bronze (Circa 1900 BC) and Iron Ages (Circa 500BC) societies often used wood which in many cases has rotted away to nothing over the thousands of years leaving no trace, however The Fens which is a million acres of low lying ground that is an extension of The Wash has four rivers that flow into it our own River Great Ouse, The Nene flowing through Northamptonshire, The Welland and The Witham and archaeology has discovered much evidence of occupation and trade as the waters have preserved many structures and outlines of boats.
At Etton for example causewayed enclosures were some of the earliest large ceremonial monuments constructed in a ritual landscape including water dating from 3775BC. An upside down pot was found on a sheet of birchbark measuring 1.5 meters by 0.5 metres. Repeated beating and soaking were part of a process of softening for use as waterproof containers, shoes and boxes and nearby a 0.5 meter of fine twine was made from Flax fibres and plaited together. Religious offerings such as human or animal skulls, or the inverted pot on a mat or corn grinding stones set on edge separated by 1.5 metres were placed on clean gravel at the bottom of a ditch and then covered with gravel.
Neolithic causeway enclosures were often more about social organisation and the family rather than religion or trade. Grain and Livestock were exchanged to cement family ties and obligations , there was no market economy, a supply of pork may have been given for oatmeal and a good potting clay. Religion, ideology and families were united in the belief of another dimension (afterlife) from whence the dead enforced agreements, field and property boundaries.
At Haddenham near Huntingdon preserved oak timbers were found deep inside a massive mortuary structure in a Long Barrow. Long Barrows were the earliest form of communal burial before 4000 BC and most had gone out of use by 3000 BC and then Round Barrows followed until about 1500 BC the end of the early Bronze Age. Prehistoric woodworking was done without saws which were not introduced until a couple of centuries before the Roman Conquest. Planks were split from freshly felled trees with seasoned oak wedges.
At Fengate near Peterborough bronze age pottery has been found together with trackways and ditches , traditional droveways with tall hedgeways to keep animals on track, sides of fields acted as funnels with an entrance at the corner of the field and villages were connected by droveways. The layouts indicate mutually agreed tenure and inheritance with rules probably enforced by village elders. Water was sacred with it’s reflections, bronze age mirrors appeared about 300 BC and then the Romans when they arrived brought with them glass.
At Holme next the Sea a 2000 BC bronze age shrine was discovered named Seahenge.
A circle of posts surrounded a 2.5 ton Oaktree place upside down in the centre was probably the final resting place of an important person. It was a case of Excarnation where the flesh of a dead person was removed by Carrion crows. A timber and earth barrow erected close by was dated 2049 BC.
One common denominator throughout all ages is farming and hunting and providing for the family which continued often uninterrupted through historical events and weather through all ages and the rivers and droveways and trackways and roads which were essential means of communication through the landscape,
The most complete evidence available to us starts with the Roman invasions of Britain which started with Julius Caesar in his expeditions of 55BC and 54 BC and the successful conquest of Britain by Claudius in 43 AD.
When Julius Caesar invaded in 54 BC the local tribe occupying this area was named the CATUVELLAUNI, an Iron Age tribe from Belgium and North East France who had spread up through Kent, Essex, Herts, Bucks, Northants and Oxfordshire.
Our sequence of Pre Norman Conquest local history can be described under the following headings.
PALEOLITHIC (EARLY STONE AGE)
MESOLITHIC (Circa 10000BC=2500BC)
NEOLITHIC (Circa 2500BC-1900BC)
BRONZE AGE (Circa 1900BC-500BC)
IRON AGE- (Circa 500 BC onwards)
CATUVELLAUNI Circa 100BC to 400AD)
ROMAN (55BC, 54 BC and 43AD to 410AD)
ANGLO SAXON (Circa 410AD to 1066AD)
CHRISTIANITY AND THE RISING DOMINANCE OF THE CHURCH AND RELIGION
VIKING (Circa 800AD to 1066AD)