On the Archaeology of Roman and Neo-lithic Britain

I like Archaeology.  In fact, so much do I like archaeology that I used to be head of finance for an archaeological consultancy.

I was reading a post from f4f3 about his recent visit to Kilmartin Glen and it set me thinking about what I find interesting about archaeology.

I am interested in the archaeology of the classical period, mainly Roman, but if you’ve got Hellenistic I’ll take Hellenistic.  I’m also interested in the archaeology of  pre-historic Britain (mainly Britain).

I like them for different reasons.

One of the things I like about Roman history is that they were pretty similar to us.  I could imagine living in the Roman Empire.  People lived in houses that I would recognise. They bought and sold goods and services that I still use today. Some of the jobs that people do today are the same as jobs that Romans would have had.  Carpenters, butchers, book keepers, bath attendant, commodity brokers, estate managers. I see lots of similar economic activity. Many jobs were done in ways that the people doing them today would find recognisable, perhaps even exemplary. The politics feels very familiar. The role of religion seemed similar. Some people pious, some not. Some believers, some atheists. A formal role for religion in society, sometimes as a custodian of public morals, sometimes as a prop to the Establishment.

The social, political and economic ecosystem feels similar to the one I live in.  People seemed to do and build things for reasons that I would recognise. The landscape of Roman streets makes sense to me.

So I can walk around a Roman archaeological site and picture myself there a few thousand years ago. I can even picture myself having a pretty similar life to one I currently have.

Not so with neo-lithic Britain.  When I look at sites like Avebury, Kilmartin Glen or Neo-lithic Orkney I think I just don’t see the landscape the way the people who embedded their buildings in it saw the landscape.  The landscape clearly meant a lot to them. They seem to have placed their buildings with great care. Perhaps greater care than insula in a Roman city. The buildings are hugely economically valuable.  Silbury Hill is estimated to have taken 18 million man-hours to build. That’s

Did they live in a magical realm like the Dream Time where the real and the unreal inhabited the same landscape? Did ordinary people see the landscape the way the people who commissioned the stone circles and howes see them?  Are the buildings religious? Are they used by many people during acts of collective peopleness or reserved for the elite or for the strange?

Did the Iron Age kings who stood in Dunadd’s footsteps really believe that this created a mystical connection between them and the land or did they believe it was only symbolic? 

When I visit Orkney and go to the Stones of Stenness or the Ring of Brodgar I struggle to imagine what these places meant to the people who built them. Are the places sacred or do they mark places of flow in a sacred landscape. Are they the words of the hymn or the punctuation?  Scara Brae is much easier to understand. Homes, small and cosy, near sources of food and water and friendship.

How did these people who lived in a home I can recognise as a home live in a landscape that seems richer to them than it does to me?

I just don’t know.  

When I used to work the archaeologists they would often talk about ritual. I once asked them what they meant by ritual. Ritual, it turned out meant “anything we don’t understand.”

I can’t connect to the neo-lithic landscape in the same way I can connect to the Roman Forum, the Kaiserthermum in Trier  or Chedworth Villa.  What were these people doing when they went to Avebury? Did they even ever go? This is what makes neo-lithic archaeology fascinating for me.  I am baffled by the lack of connection to a world view that seemed to be so important to the people who build neo-lithic Britain.

Roman archaeology satisfies my desire to see how people who I think were similar to me lived when their technology and their geo-politics was somewhat different to my own world. In my mind I can inhabit that world and stand in the place

Neo-lithic archaeology shows me something that I can’t connect to.

On What I Would Do If I Came Into a Lot of Money

What would I do if I came into a significant amount of money? I was asked this a wee while ago and these are my sort of serious musings.

The answer really depends on how much money I came into.

£1 million. 

A million isn’t enough to retire on. Not quite. More accurately, it is not enough for MLW and I to retire on and still have the same level of material comfort in perpetuity.

A million invested in treasury bonds at 3.5% would yield £35k.  Split between MLW and I with some judicious tax management we’d probably not pay any income tax and pocket the whole £35k.  £35k is a nice income but between two of us it’s not exactly living in the lap of luxury. There would still be the mortgage to pay.

Also, with inflation running at 5% we’d really need to tuck away some of the income and re-invest it to maintain the value of our investment over the coming years.

We could invest in a more risky balanced portfolio and perhaps make 5%. We’d pay a little tax, still tuck away a little against inflation and probably have about £40k a year to live on between the two of us.  It’s getting there but there’s a risk that we could lose a big chunk of the capital and have to go back to work after some years of idling.

I could, of course top up my income by writing, *ahem* literature for discerning adults.

 Three options remain.

 We could invest the capital and not touch the income and retire in about ten years.

 One of us could give up work.

We could keep working, buy a big house on Gray Street, invite my mum to live in the granny flat and have several more Captains.

Personally, I’d probably vote for door number 3.

£10 Million

Now this is retiring in affluent luxury.  Post tax and inflation income about £300-400k. That’s proper house in the city, house in the country, flat in Barcelona terratory.

So, taking Door Number 3 as a given (That’s safe, you’ve won that and it’s yours to keep what ever happens) what would I do with myself with such a handsome living and plenty of time.

I’d go travelling. I’m very aware that apart from living in Australia I’ve not seen too much of the world. So I might pack up the Captain and the rest of his Crew, MLW and the au pair and take a turn around the world.

I would certainly spend some time in Australia reconnecting with my family out there.

I’d help my sister out financially over the long term as she’s not well.

Then once I’d returned I’d need to find something to do. 

Options would include .

Doing a PhD in something really intersting. Probably to do with low carbon economies.

Offering my services as a person of some small intellect to one of two politcal parties, one of two constitutional reform societies and / or a handful of environmental charities with the added advantage that I could buy in some admin help of my own.

£100 Million.

 See above for Door Number 3 (with the possibility of having two crews and two au pairs).

 I think with £100 Million one could just about buy an election. Not the next one or the one after. The election I would buy would be a Referendum on adopting the Single Transferable  Vote. This assumes that by the time I come into this fortune the Scottish Independence referendum had been and been lost.

 If I came into it tomorrow I’d set up a think tank to critically evaluate the case for independence from a broadly supportive point of view i.e. assuming that the whole thing is a not a grade A cluster fuck from start to finish how does an independent Scotland feed and clothe itself.  Naturally I would be CEO of this august body and I would hire a really good executive assistant to make sure I turned up and a really good coach to make sure I worked well.

 £1,000 Million

 See £100 Million but I’d buy the STV election early.  I’d buy a couple of newspapers and rent a load of bloggers and get cracking on installing democracy in the UK.

 I would also bank roll substantial educational initiatives in Scotland. I’d try and fund each of the 11 universities in Scotland up to the standard of the Russell Group and I’d pick Aberdeen and Edinburgh to begin with and try and lift them up to Oxbridge standards.

 As an alternative I might create a large number of generous bursaries so Scottish students could pick the domestic courses and institutions that suited them and therefore only those Scottish universities that supported a good student experience would get hold of my cash.

 I’d want the focus to be on science and engineering and business and economics. It’s not that I don’t think the Arts and Humanities are worth studying. I think Scotland has a business creation problem and improving the number of economically investable spin-offs from universities in Scotland along with the business tool-kit of Scots I think would give us a long term and self re-enforcing boost.

 I’d be tempted to create a charitable trust to send working class teenagers to Eton so large that 51% of Etonians were working class. Then I’d promise / threaten to do the same to all the other public schools in the UK. Just for laughs.