An Upland Biography: Landscape and Prehistory on Gardom's Edge, Derbyshire

By John Barnatt, Bill Bevan and Mark Edmonds

Gardom's Edge is an area of gritstone upland situated on the Eastern Moors of the Derbyshire Peak District. Like other parts of the Eastern Moors, Gardom's Edge has long been renowned for the wealth of prehistoric field systems, cairns and other structures which can still be traced across the surface. Drawing on the results of original survey and excavation, An Upland Biography documents prehistoric activity across this area, exploring the changing character of occupation from the Mesolithic to the Iron Age. It also tacks back and forth between local detail and regional patterns, to better understand the broader social worlds in which Gardom's Edge was set.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oxbow Books
• Release date: Feb 28, 2017
• ISBN: 9781911188162

Book preview

An Upland Biography

Landscape and Prehistory on Gardom’s Edge, Derbyshire

John Barnatt, Bill Bevan & Mark Edmonds

with contributions by

Pauline Beswick, Kevin Cootes, Caroline Jackson & Patrick Quinn

Windgather Press is an imprint of Oxbow Books

Published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by

OXBOW BOOKS

The Old Music Hall, 106–108 Cowley Road, Oxford OX4 1JE

and in the United States by

OXBOW BOOKS

1950 Lawrence Road, Havertown, PA 19083

© Windgather Press and John Barnatt, Bill Bevan & Mark Edmonds, 2017

ISBN 978-1-911188-15-5 (paperback edn)

ISBN 978-1-911188-16-2 (epub)

ISBN 978-1-911188-17-9 (mobi)

A CIP record for this book is available from the British Library

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Contents

List of Illustrations

1. Biographies of Landscape

2. Contexts

3. Marking Time

4. Acts of Enclosure

5. Working Land

6. Building Biographies

7. Drawing a Line

8. Land, Time and Identity

Appendices

A: Worked Stone

B: Pottery

C: Thin Section Ceramic Petrography

D: Blue Glass Beads

E: Stone Ring

F: ‘Shale’ or Cannel Coal

G: Lead Object

Acknowledgements & Bibliography

List of Illustrations

1. The Peak District with places and sites mentioned in the text

2. The Peak District’s eastern moors and the distribution of prehistoric fields and cairnfields

3. Gritstone crags on Gardom’s Edge

4. Gardom’s Edge, showing the prehistoric remains on both the northern and southern halves, and a selection of later agricultural, industrial and transport features

5. The distribution of houses, agricultural features and monuments on the northern half of Gardom’s Edge

6. Selected ‘early’ lithic artefacts recovered during fieldwork

7. The main rock art slab

8. Rock art slab in its landscape setting

9. The large northern cairn ( Trench 99/3 )

10. The façade of large boulders at the north end of the large cairn at Trench 99/3

11. Polished knife from Trench 99/3

12. Standing stone on Gardom’s Edge

13. The large scarp edge enclosure

14. Surface appearance of stone banked enclosure in central area, Zone A

15. Boulder strewn ground in the interior of the large enclosure

16. The blocked eastern entrance at the scarp-edge enclosure ( Trench 95/1 )

17. A section of excavated bank at the scarp-edge enclosure ( Trench 96/3 )

18. The enclosure bank at Trench 96/3 , looking south

19. The enclosure bank at Trench 96/3 , looking west

20. The northern entrance at the scarp-edge enclosure, showing the bank imposed on natural earthfasts

21. The northern entrance at the scarp-edge enclosure

22. The enclosure bank at Trench 98/2

23. Zone A, the south-western scarp-top area with its large enclosure and cairnfield

24. Small clearance features on and against a large earthfast boulder in Zone A ( Trench 95/4 )

25. The cairn at Trench 95/4

26. Clearance cairns in Zone A ( Trench 95/5 and 96/7 ) and the small funerary cairn between field zones A and B ( Trench 97/4 )

27. The cairn at Trench 96/7 showing the cist-like setting at one end

28. Linear clearance and cairns in Zone A ( Trench 95/6 )

29. Trench 95/6 , looking south-east

30. Trench 95/6 , looking north-west

31. The complex linear boundaries and cairns near the rock art slab in Zone A ( Trenches 95/3 , 96/4 and 96/5 )

32. Trench 96/5

33. Trench 96/4 , looking north-east

34. Trench 96/4 , showing the carefully built bank at the south-western end of the northern boundary

35. Zone B, the south-eastern area with its associated cairnfield on the Redmires Flags ridge

36. A damaged multi-phased cairn in Zone B ( Trench 97/5 )

37. Cairn 97/5 nearly 20 years after reinstatement

38. Banks, lynchets and cairns in Zones B and C ( Trenches 99/5 , 99/6 , 99/9 , 99/10 & 99/11 )

39. Trench at the eastern side of the small Zone B ‘enclosure’

40. Trench at the western side of the small Zone B

41. Trench 97/4

42. Trench 97/5 looking south-east

43. Trench at the south-eastern corner of the small Zone B ‘enclosure’ ( Trench 97/1 )

44. The south-eastern corner of the small Zone B ‘enclosure’

45. Zone C, the northern scarp-top area with its associated

46. Linear clearance in Zone C ( Trench 99/7 )

47. Linear clearance in Zone C

48. Trench 99/4 , looking west

49. House 1 showing all stone features

50. House 1 , showing the door postholes and stakeholes

51. House 1 , showing the cremation pit, with associated setting

52. House 1 under excavation in 1995

53. House 1 , showing the distribution of Post Deverill Rimbury sherds

54. House 1 , showing artefact distributions

55. Querns and rubber recovered from House 1

56. House 2 , showing all stone features ( Trenches 98/1 and 99/1 )

57. House 2 , showing all postholes, pits, stakeholes and earthfasts

58. Lead object from House 2

59. House 2 , interpretative plan

60. House 2 , showing artefact distribution

61. House 2 at an early stage in the excavation, in 1998

62. An example of a well-defined posthole with stone packing at House 2

63. House 2 , showing the distribution of flintwork (dots)

64. The stone settings of House 2 nearly 20 years after reinstatement

65. House 3 ( Trench 99/8 )

66. House 3 at an early stage in the excavation

67. House 3 feature plan and artifact distributions

68. Pit alignment in Zone B

69. The pit alignment ( Trench 98/3 )

70. The pit alignment ( Trench 99/2 )

71. One of the excavated pits with clay lining at Trench 98/3

72. On Birchen Edge, looking south across the lower slopes of Gardom’s Edge towards the Chatsworth Moors

73. On Baslow edge, looking north towards Curbar Edge

74. The central area of prehistoric remains on Big Moor, north of Gardom’s Edge

75. The prehistoric fields and cairnfields at Beeley Warren

B1.

‘Early’ pottery from Gardom’s Edge

B2.

Pottery from House 1 and Trench 97/5

B3.

Pottery from Houses 2 and 3

C1.

Generalized geological map of the Peak District National Park

C2.

Photomicrographs of selected Late Bronze Age-Early Iron Age ceramics and ‘daub’ samples from Gardom’s Edge, and comparative raw material field samples analysed in this report

F1.

Worked Shale from Houses 1 and 2

G1.

Lead object from House 2

Tables

4.1. Radiocarbon dates (at two sigma) from features associated with the enclosure

6.1. Radiocarbon dates (at two sigma) from features associated with buildings

A1.

Flaked stone recovered during excavations

A2.

Raw materials, reduction sequences and condition of flaked stone

B1.

Quantities of first millennium BC pottery found on each house site

D1.

Composition of the blue glass beads from Gardom’s Edge, Derbyshire, and comparative low magnesium glass compositions

CHAPTER ONE

Biographies of Landscape

The uplands of Britain hold a prominent place in the archaeological imagination. Walk across elevated terrain in many regions and you’ll encounter upstanding cairns, boundaries, enclosures, standing stones and other monuments, many of them prehistoric in origin. Revealed by low sunlight or by your feet as you stumble through heather and bracken, these features survive largely as a consequence of historic patterns of ownership and land-use. Set apart from areas where improvement and the plough have bitten more deeply, these stretches of more elevated country often retain the surface signature of human engagements with land that stretch back more than five thousand years.

These patterns of survival have caught our attention for over two centuries. The simple fact that so much can still be traced across the surface has given these landscapes a quality of accessibility for those with an interest; from antiquarians fixated upon the dead, to archaeologists interested in process, from walkers with a passing curiosity to others dedicated to mapping their ‘own square mile’. Of course, appearances can be deceptive. These landscapes have also been inaccessible, claimed and contested in many ways, most recently in campaigns for access and the right to roam. Informed by arguments initiated in the late 18th century, these more recent ways of seeing uplands stress their value as places of escape and improvement; a change of gear and air for predominantly urban populations. Rather ironically, this has fostered a popular misconception of these areas as somehow constant and stable, set apart from the drive and din of modernity.

Disciplines such as Archaeology and Landscape History have played their own small part in tinting these romantic images. But over the past thirty years or so, projects across the country have begun to dismantle the popular vision of moors and fells as largely natural and unchanging (e.g. Butler 1994; 1997; Fleming 1998/2008; Geddes & Hale 2010; Herring et al 2008; Johnson & Rose 1994; Oswald et al 2005; 2006; Silvester 2011). Beyond everything else, such work has made it clear that the term ‘upland’ is no more than shorthand, a catch-all for landscapes that vary considerably in their elevation and form, in their ecology and their history. It is also wholly relative, a counterpoint to more low-lying terrain, commonly delimited by the ecotones across which patterns of land holding and land-use have often tended to break. The history of upland research also reveals common concerns; issues of approach and interpretation arising from conditions encountered in the field. Indeed, it is arguable that current landscape perspectives in prehistoric archaeology, at least in Britain, owe much to the forms of enquiry that working with these kinds of terrain encourage. Fieldwork is usually extensive, the mapping and characterization of surface remains often, though not always, linked to small-scale excavation and palaeoenvironmental sampling. Inevitably, this has encouraged a gravitation towards periods which have left significant surface remains. But it has also fostered a particular sense of perspective. Long before it became important or fashionable to do so, researchers working in these areas have looked beyond individual sites, following patterns and asking questions across the landscape as a whole.

It is perhaps because of this that the uplands are prominent in work on the inhabitation of landscape, research that sees a powerful link between practical engagements with land and the constitution of identity (Barnatt 2000; 2008; Barrett 1994; Bender et al 2008; Bruck 2008; Edmonds 2004; Johnston 2005; Tilley 2010). Such work is often pitched at scales which relate, however loosely, to the scales at which people’s lives unfolded in the past. From this has come a renewed interest in exploring how the character of activities created the conditions for different forms of social identification (Bender 2006). Working at a landscape scale has also brought home how much more there is to time than chronology. A focus on inhabitation has fostered interest in the temporality of people’s lives and, by extension, the past in the past; the sense of the world that people make through the time-laden palimpsests they inhabit (Barrett 1999; Bradley 2002). And this, in turn, has also led us to explore how people in the past sometimes blurred the sharp lines we often draw between history and nature (Bradley 1996; 2000; Tilley 2010). These interests have also brought us back to older matters of history and social geography; questions of time depth and scale, contingency and environmental affordance. Why do some areas have high densities of features while others appear, on the surface at least, to be more sparsely populated? Were certain cairnfields or boundary systems rapidly realized, or did they develop in a more piecemeal fashion? How were they worked and reworked over time and how were they articulated with activities on more low-lying ground? Questions such as these have encouraged a tacking back and forth between the intimate details of occupation on a particular ‘patch’ and broader regional patterns, allowing insights on the social constitution of settlements, the scale of neighbourhoods and their articulation in broader regions (Barnatt 2008; Chadwick 2008; Fleming 2008; Johnston 2008).

These developments have been important. However, it often remains difficult to grasp precisely how land was occupied and used, nor how the specifics of people’s lives related to broader processes. There are many reasons for this. Sometimes it is a problem of focus, especially when past engagements with land are reduced to the experience of a solitary observer treading an essentially Picturesque path (Bruck 2007; Edmonds 2006). But it is also a matter of preservation. To begin with, the evidence is notoriously patchy. Upland soils and sediments are often heavily leached and detrimental to the survival of materials like unburnt bone, pollen and plant macrofossils. This can make it difficult to address basic questions about the nature of economic activity, let alone more complex issues, such as seasonality or the duration of occupation. As if that was not enough, structures that seem simple on the surface often reveal complex sequences when excavated, adding further uncertainty to arguments about the nature, scale and history of developments (Fleming 2008; Johnston 2005). Artefact assemblages can also be relatively impoverished, particularly when compared with inventories from the chalk or from lowland valleys. No doubt survival and the scale of intervention has some bearing on this (Bradley 2007; Cooper & Edmonds 2007). That said, there can be genuine differences in the size and composition of assemblages between these settings, something which poses questions in its own right.

Beyond these problems lie others. We often tend to play down variety in our syntheses, assuming similarities in the character and chronology of occupation from one region to another. And we still sometimes evaluate the past potential of land by extrapolation, imposing an historic concept of marginality onto terrain that was actually very different in prehistory. Although it varies depending on where and how elevated you are, the thin acidic podzols we commonly encounter today only began to form during the latter part of the prehistoric sequence, and have only fully developed in the millennia since then. Our failure to recognize the actual character and potential of these landscapes during prehistory is also compounded by a common tendency to equate recent economic marginality with social subordination, pushing prehistoric occupants of the higher ground to the borders of our narratives (Bradley & Hart 1983). Indeed, we sometimes take this so far that today’s moors and fells can still become a kind of terra nullius, set apart from the flow of history. The contour-driven prejudices that coloured Cyril Fox’s The Personality of Britain (1932) have proved remarkably difficult to shift. What Fox and many since his time have missed is just how diverse these landscapes are. Grazing is certainly a commonplace, responsible for the open, close-cropped views dominated by grasses or heather that many visitors mistake as natural, and which we now conserve to maintain ‘landscape value’, effectively an economy of appearances. But the same land to which sheep and cattle heft have seen many kinds of occupation and a wealth of extractive and other industries. And many possess a pays-like quality that has been fundamental to the ways that people live and work and to how they recognize themselves (Everitt 1985). These more recent ways of belonging to country may be historically specific. But they remind us that people in prehistory probably identified themselves with and through the landscape in ways that were just as complex, if rather different in their content and expression.

These concerns provide a context for the work presented here. They require us to think carefully about the scales at which interpretations are pitched, finding ways to harness a creative tension between local and broader scales of enquiry. The biographies of specific upland landscapes remain central. But the study of any one small stretch of moorland cannot be pursued in isolation. Throughout Prehistory, the flow of people’s lives would have carried them beyond the limits of any one particular ‘patch’, articulating them in broader social geographies. Life may have often been small-scale, but it was also extensive, the playing out of relationships resolved at regional and still broader scales. However close and detailed work in the field may be, we need to keep one eye on the horizon. Our work on Gardom’s Edge documents the changing character of prehistoric activity on one small part of the Eastern Moors of the Derbyshire Peak District. It describes features specific to this tract of land as well as others which find close parallels elsewhere. In what follows, we tack back and forth between some of the details of our evidence and what is currently known about the changing character of the region over time. Avowedly close in its focus, the story of this one small stretch of open moorland provides a vantage from which to consider those broader patterns.

Gardom’s Edge from Birchen Edge

Running up from the south, the drystone walls of Moorside Farm mark the junction between improved land and rough grazing, a cultivated green giving way to the mottled colours of the moor. Coarse grass and heather dominate, the latter more or less the signature cover of the Eastern Moors. There’s plenty of birches too; after a fire in 1959 the trees were quick to get a toe-hold, a first step on the path to woodland succession. Left to themselves, the birches would extend their colonization, others following behind, rowan, oak and alder. But as elsewhere on the Moors, grazing levels are high enough to keep the new growth down. Trees are thinned to keep the landscape open and the heather is managed by periodic burning. Once fired to foster cover for grouse shooting, the heather is now maintained to conserve a valued ecology, to sustain what’s known as landscape value. This is not the landscape’s dynamic. It is a choice we make.

CHAPTER TWO

Contexts

Settings

The Peak District lies at the southernmost tip of the Pennines, an area of hills extending to the Cheshire Plain in the west, the Trent Valley in the south and the Coal Measure foothills to the east (

FIG.

1). In broad terms, the region is characterised by three distinct topographic areas; a central limestone plateau all but contained within a ‘horseshoe’ of gritstone moorlands, with shale valleys separating