Bloody Welsh History: Swansea
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Bloody Welsh History - Geoff Brookes
27,000 BC
THE RED LADY
OF PAVILAND
Gender Bender
IT IS APPROPRIATE, I think, that this skeleton history of Swansea should itself begin with a skeleton – and what a skeleton it is, the best-known prehistoric burial in Britain and the first human fossil ever found. But let’s get one thing straight before we start. The Red Lady of Paviland was no lady. She was a man, and his discovery was initially littered with such misunderstandings.
Bones, believed to be those of elephants, had been found in Gower in December 1822. The discovery brought William Buckland, Professor of Geology at Oxford University, to the site at Goat’s Hole in January 1823 and he unearthed the remains of an incomplete skeleton, stained red. It was bones from the right side of the body. The area around the body was also stained red, as were the items buried with the body – mammoth ivory bracelet fragments and perforated periwinkle shells. Small limestone blocks were uncovered, which might have been placed at the head and feet. The skull of a mammoth found nearby may also have been part of the burial ritual. Sadly, the skull has since been lost.
Strangely, Buckland chose to ignore all this evidence. His first assumption was that this was a customs officer murdered by smugglers – perhaps not that unreasonable, given the amount of smuggling that had taken place so recently. A decayed red jacket might explain the stains, too. His friend Lewis W. Dillwyn, later Lord Mayor of Swansea, moved the argument on when he wrote that ‘these caves had once been places of concealment for a manufacturer of Celtic arrow heads and spears’.
When Buckland published his findings later in the year though, he had changed the story. Now he had decided that the ochre-stained skeleton was a ‘painted lady’, who entertained the Roman soldiers garrisoned in the camp on the hill above the cave. Alternatively, she could have been a witch.
The bones of the Red Lady of Paviland. (© Oxford University Museum of Natural History)
Goat’s Hole is difficult and dangerous to reach. It is only really accessible at low tide and then only with extreme care. Formed by wave action, when the sea level was up to 8m higher than today, the cave entrance is pear-shaped. It leads on to a passage which extends for about 30m into the limestone cliff.
A pendant and tusk fragment found with the bones. (© Oxford University Museum of Natural History)
The problem was that Buckland was entirely wrong. The burial was male, and the mammoth products were original and Palaeolithic and not manufactured at a later date as decorations. The camp was Iron Age, not Roman. Buckland’s difficulty was that the historical record rather contradicted his own firmly held beliefs. He was a creationist and could not accommodate the idea that anything could pre-date the notional date of the Great Flood. Thus the body could not have been that old. It was on such a basis, neither scientific nor evidential, that he drew his conclusions. But the bits of bones that he found were very old indeed.
We now believe that the Red Lady was a ceremonial Palaeolithic burial dating from about 27,000 BC. Other examples have since been found across Europe. The head of the Red Lady has never been found, though it was possibly removed as part of the burial. There are examples of this in similar graves from the period.
‘Dem bones dem bones gonna walk around.’ (© Oxford University Museum of Natural History)
The Red Lady was a healthy young adult male, aged twenty-five to thirty, about 5ft 6in tall and weighing about 11 stone. The people he belonged to probably lived in a cold environment, appearing possibly like North American Indians or Inuit.
His world was different to ours. Gower was an impressive plateau, looking out over a vast plain of grassland which we now call the Bristol Channel. Herds of migrating animals would have followed age-old routes below the cliffs. So whilst the cave is now dangerously placed above the sea, at the time of the burial it would have been about 70 miles inland. Analysis indicates that the Red Lady lived on a diet that contained a significant proportion of fish, which, together with the distance from the sea, suggests that his people may have been semi-nomadic, or that the tribe had brought the body from the coast for burial in an important place. Naturally all this is complete guesswork. But it is a perfect example of the mysteries that lie beneath our feet, the residue from ancient alien times that is there if we look closely enough.
There have been earlier finds in the area. A stone axe, which may be 100,000 years old, was found at Rhossili. There are possibly more to be found. Gower has many caves which show evidence of our oldest ancestors. Indeed, the area has been constantly inhabited and you will find relics from every age: Stone Age, Iron Age, Bronze Age, Industrial Age. But nothing quite as important as the Red Lady has been found since.
And whilst she does go out on tour now and again and has been semi-permanently on display in the National Museum in Cardiff, her official home is in the University Museum in Oxford. You can see a replica of her in Swansea Museum but perhaps that is not quite enough. Perhaps she should come home. Druids want the remains returned to Swansea in order to ‘balance the spiritual energies’. A good idea if you ask me.
Today you can paintball in Gower and cover yourself in red if you wish. The ‘Red Lady’ was a young adult male: an ideal paintballing client. Today he might pay to get covered in red paint, but never to such long-lasting effect as he did as the Red Lady of Paviland.
AD 43–74
DEATH ALONG
THE BORDER!
Iron Age Battles and Roman Assaults
SWANSEA’S EARLY HISTORY was violent. Take nearby Hardings Down: a hump in the landscape at Llanmadoc, 500ft high, with prominent Iron Age earthworks. There are stories of a fierce battle there between local tribes, when Chief Tonkin was killed and the blood rose above the boots of the warriors. Mind you, the Welsh seem to have said that about every minor skirmish and battle, as we will see in another bloody encounter at Garngoch.
Iron Age Swansea was never a huge population. There were small tribes and families of nomads who came to Wales and left as the ice cap advanced. When it receded, farms and settlements were established during the Neolithic period. Their remnants are still there for us to see in Gower, in burial chambers like Parc le Breos.
The population increased with continental immigration in the Bronze Age (around 2000 BC). These ancestors spread more widely – there is evidence, for example, of a small settlement on Kilvey Hill. You can see slow progress towards greater sophistication in the Iron Age relics we have found. Easily accessible satellite images make the shadows they have left behind on the landscape available to us all. Look and you will see hill forts at Hardings Down or the Knave in Gower. As time went on, these small groups expanded and adopted greater social organisation and structure.
The burial chamber at Parc le Breos, Gower. (Author’s collection)
By the time the Romans came, the predominant tribe was a Celtic one called the Silures. The Romans described them as having a dark complexion and curly hair, and seemed to believe that they were recent immigrants from Spain. Wherever they came from, they certainly didn’t like the Romans.
What did the Romans do for us? Well, not a great deal to be honest. They left a fine road running to Loughor and Carmarthen, a couple of small villas, and the occasional pile of coins here and there. But Swansea was never at the forefront of the Roman mind. They would march from Neath to Loughor and barely glance to the left as they did so. The estuary of the river Tawe had no importance at all. They were more interested in subduing a population.
When Emperor Claudius invaded Britain in AD 43, the tribes united under Togodumnus and his brother Caratacus, but they were quickly defeated by a highly experienced army. Caratacus fled to the west, where he found support from the tribes in Wales: the Ordovices and the Silures.
The Silures fought fairly constantly against the invaders. The Roman historian Tacitus described them as ‘inferior in numbers but superior in cunning and knowledge of the country’. This knowledge was exploited by the tribe and was a constant irritant to the Romans. The Silures would pick off small groups, like cavalry detachments, without confronting the invaders in a pitched battle that they were always going to lose. Sensible tactics, but not ones the Romans appreciated. As far as they were concerned, they believed quite firmly that the Silures should be completely exterminated. Caratacus was eventually defeated at the Battle of Caer Caradoc on the Welsh border in AD 50, and his wife, daughter and brother were captured.
It was when Caratacus was banging on about cheese on toast that a senator looked at the piazza and had a really interesting idea.
Caratacus fled again but Cartimandua, the Queen of the Brigantes, betrayed him and he was taken to Rome for celebratory execution. However, he gave a speech which persuaded the Emperor to spare him and his family, in which he is said to have remarked, ‘Why do you, with all these grand possessions, still covet our poor huts?’ An opinion which summarised a world view that has been a constant theme throughout history.
By AD 74 the Silures were finally subdued by the governor Julius Frontinus. Whether they had been defeated in battle or reached a peaceful compromise isn’t known, but the south of Wales settled down to a period of peace.
As they did everywhere, the Romans imposed themselves on the landscape. They built roads and forts across the region from their base in Caerleon. The remains of military structures have been found in Neath and Loughor, along the road that ran to Moridunum (Carmarthen). Forts were mostly found at regular intervals, separated by a day’s march, so it is unlikely that there was anything of great significance in the Swansea area, although there may have been a Roman camp on Garngoch Common.