This blog is #2 in the ‘Landscape & Mammary’ series, focusing on exploring the Cudlip landscape and its dairying history.
The most prominent and well-known part of Cudlip is White Tor. Labelled as a fort on maps, White Tor – or Whittor as it was historically known – is more properly considered a ‘tor enclosure’ (Davies, 2010). It is arguably the most important early Neolithic site in Devon, but until recently, this place has seen limited investigation (Basell & Bray, 2022). I want to share the story of White Tor, as it is so far understood, because of its powerful presence at the heart of the Cudlip landscape, and the link of this special place to a later transhumant and dairying history.
My particular interest in Cudlip started with references to Saxon ‘maids’ making butter on Smeardon, a part of Cudlip, by Fox (2012) . But, if I truly want to understand the relationship between people, dairy and Cudlip, I need to go back to the beginning; to look at how dairying first started here, what this meant to our Neolithic dairying ancestors, and the consequences of this landscape legacy.
However, in trying to understand the significance of Cudlip as a place of cattle and dairying at the birth of agriculture, the very first thing I feel we need to do – before we can even get to the milk and the cows – is look at the Mesolithic. In Britain the Mesolithic spans the period of time from the end of the last ice age approximately 11,600 years ago, to the beginning of the Neolithic period, about 4000 years BC. This was a time of hunter-foragers; a time before domesticated animals and crops; a time before monuments. How might these people have been living within, and experiencing, this landscape that led to White Tor and Cudlip becoming such an important early Neolithic site, where cattle chewed the cud and were milked at the beginnings of pastoral farming on our island?
In telling this story I am going to draw predominantly on the thesis by Davies (2010) who wrote about the tor enclosures of the south-west, including White Tor. I am also going to use Ray and Thomas’s book on Neolithic Britain (2018), particularly their chapter on the Mesolithic to Neolithic threshold.
I have divided this blog into two parts. In this first part, after briefly explaining some characteristics of the Mesolithic, I am going to use the work of Davies to explore why a site like White Tor is topographically a good candidate for having been significant before the Neolithic. In the second part I am going to concentrate on exploring the dolerite geology of White Tor, and how this, when added to its topographic prowess, might have been a major draw for our hunter-forager ancestors.
Let’s start with the briefest of introductions to the Mesolithic …
How did Mesolithic Brits Live?
Mesolithic people were hunters and fishers and gatherers. Being peripatetic, their material culture was portable and included leather goods, flint arrows and stone axes. Whilst exceptionally rare in the archaeological record, late Mesolithic people were also known to occasionally build timber halls, erect carved timber and stone posts, and dig pits. In some cases, Mesolithic pits seem to have been used to trap game. Other pits suggest refuse disposal, purposeful deposition of objects, storage and burial. Mesolithic pits are found at Salisbury plain below the Neolithic monumental landscape and have also been found at the dolerite tor outcrops of the Preseli Hills, the source of the Stonehenge bluestones.
In Part 2 of this blog I will be picking up this geological thread in more detail, seeing as White Tor is also composed of dolerite. Is White Tor’s geology relevant to it’s exceptional past?
Why is the Mesolithic Relevant to White Tor?
From sites across Britain, including the south-west (such as Carn Brea), traces of Mesolithic activity are being found under sites of early Neolithic use, in what Ray and Thomas describe as a ‘coincidence of activity’. This is one of the reasons why archaeologists think that the transition between the late-Mesolithic to the early Neolithic was a soft one, with people using, moving around, and valuing the landscape in broadly similar ways.
White Tor has only recently been subject to a modern archaeological investigation; the first since the Dartmoor Exploration Committee excavated sections of White Tor camp in 1898 and 1899 (HER). So far, no datable evidence exists for Mesolithic activity at White Tor, but the Dartmoor Tor Enclosures project team (DATES) are yet to publish their results; these are imminent. Given the association elsewhere between early Neolithic sites and Mesolithic activity, I am really looking forward to seeing if they find Mesolithic evidence. Indications from elsewhere suggest this is a strong possibility.
“what seems undeniable is that these locations were identified as places of enduring ancestral significance, which were memorialised, revered, and venerated over many generations”
Ray and Thomas, 2018, p59
Now let’s explore further why this might be the case …
What was Dartmoor and the South-West Like in the Mesolithic?
In the Mesolithic, most of the British Isles were covered in endless forest. There is some evidence that, at least by the late Mesolithic, people were controlling their environment to make clearings, using fire and stone axes (Topping, 2022). Pollen studies of past vegetation indicates that deforestation at this time was minimal, with hints of small clearings being used to nibble away, to enlarge already tree-free places. There are suggestions from vegetation reconstructions that they were also beginning to coppice hazel in order to force the trees into producing more nuts. Dartmoor, at this time, was therefore mostly forested (see Caseldine and Hatton, 1994; Fyfe & Woodbridge, 2012). Very few places in Devon and Cornwall were not wooded. Beaches, coastal and inland cliffs, rivers, and tors – these would have been the main places with few or no trees.
The rocky-topped White Tor, and a relatively small number of other places, would have had a rarity value, and a functional premium for views and hunting, setting it apart from the rest of the landscape and its ubiquitous woodland.
Why did Mesolithic People Move Around?
Mesolithic people led nomadic or semi-nomadic lifestyles, moving about, probably in seasonal patterns, not necessarily randomly, and within known tribal territories. They would have done this to follow resources, such as autumnal salmon runs, and summer deer hunting. People probably didn’t stay together as one tribe but broke apart and came back together, with sub-groups and individuals foraying off on hunting trips.
Artefact evidence, such as stone tools, shows that these objects, if not people, were highly mobile. Stone axes, for example, with different geologies, indicate trade or cultural exchange on regional and even continental scales. Isotopic and genetic studies from bones are also revealing more about the complexities of significant movements of people and cattle within Britain (e.g. Preston and Kador, 2018).
It is likely that Mesolithic people would have visited White Tor and other Dartmoor tors, in seasonal patterns, drawn to the breaks in tree cover and the lure for grazing game these clearings provided. Perhaps they gathered at White Tor with other people to trade objects like the polished axes that were increasingly being made and exchanged as the Mesolithic progressed?
How did Mesolithic People Move Around? – The Role of Rivers
If Mesolithic hunter-foragers were coming to White Tor, how did they get there? Virgin forest is not easy to walk through. Apart from the fact that forests have understory vegetation that inhibits access, forests are bewildering and disorientating places because of their restricted field of view. The answer probably lies in our river network (Haughey, 2016). Unlike a forest, the beginning, middle and end of a river, its linear form, and the direction of water flow, make rivers easy to interpret and orientate by.
On large rivers, running through lowland landscape, rivers would have enabled travel by boat. The topography of the south-west means that rivers in this region are only navigable to just above their tidal limits. Mesolithic people, at some point up-river, would have to get out of their canoes, and continue, on foot. Perhaps they gradually cleared pathways close to river margins, using rivers as arteries into the interior of the forest. However, it ought to be born in mind that Mesolithic rivers were not quite the same to those we see today. Because river valleys at this time were not sitting under thick floodplain silts, released from deforestation and agriculture, they would have had low banks and been wider and more braided. River flow would also have been lower because wooded catchments with their un-eroded soils would help to retain rainfall. It may therefore have been possible to wade through their shallow water, moving from gravel bar to gravel bar (see Lewin, 2014 and A Fluvial History of the Tavy from Late-glacial to Medieval).
In the case of White Tor, Mesolithic people may have used the Tavy valley as a main route of access. They would have been able to use canoes up until around the Denham Bridge/Hatch Mill location. At this point the valley constricts and, probably necessitating clearing a path. However, a little further up-stream the valley widens and stays open through to Peter Tavy. The Mesolithic Tavy as this point was probably wide, shallow and braided. Perhaps Mesolithic hunters traversed the gravelly valley floor from near this place, upstream, until they were within striking distance of White Tor?
A Good View
Just as rivers were incredibly important to Mesolithic people in orienteering, so were tors. Tors offered a lofty position, looking down over landscape. Tors are not like hills. Their rocky tops would have meant that their summits would have been relatively tree free. Not all tors were equal in this regard:
- tors with more clitter would be topped with fewer trees than others – the strewn rock inhibiting tree growth;
- tors on the edge of the moor had an advantage over more central tors because they allowed the best view of lowland territory;
- and tors with steep, more concave slopes, would have been better than round topped tors because this slope form better abled looking over the nearby tree-line.
These high, tree-free places therefore had a very powerful place in the lives of our ancestors, shaping the cultural and spiritual dimensions of their lives. Being able to emerge from the forest into the open, and look down on the world, allowed people a rare perspective, showing how places fitted together. From this position they were placed, as if a god or spirit, with an omniscient eye.
Ethnographies from around the world show culture after culture valuing high places and associating them with the sky and with spirits. From these places, people would gather and recount knowledge and stories about the places in the land below. In this way, ancestral history and identity was built, but importantly, done so from a position of vantage, identifying where these things happened. In the talking of histories and spirits, creation myths were developed. Tors were thus central to ideas of who we are, and where we come from.
Was White Tor used in this way, by Mesolithic people, gathering to orientate themselves in their world, physically, historically and spiritually?
A Liminal and Sensory Place
Liminality is recognised as being profoundly important for people across time and cultures. Whether this is a physical boundary such as a threshold of a building, a rite of passage such as becoming an adult, or perhaps a seasonal transition with the turning of the seasons to summer and back to winter.
“the journeys up to the higher ground would have been notable undertakings, and movement between the worlds of the lowland and highland would have represented some of the most extreme changes in the way that people experienced the world, and therefore acted“
Davies, 2010, p179
Tor sites that became early Neolithic tor enclosures are imbued with a multitude of liminal experiences and encounters (Davies, 2010). Their properties, their seasonal usage, and what they meant to Mesolithic people, meant that these locations were places of sensory and spiritual transition. Some of the boundary properties they possess include:
- Lowland to upland
- Forest to clearing
- Winter to Summer
- Short days to long days
- Food scarcity to food abundance
- Cold to warmth
- Shade to light
- Shelter to exposure
- Earth to sky
- Obstructed views to wide vistas
- Muffled sounds to clear, far-carrying acoustics
In imagining White Tor in the Mesolithic, it is not too difficult to imagine how utterly different, rare and therefore spiritually valuable a place like this was. In a world that was so monotonously shrouded by wood, the sensations and emotions attached to a liminal place like White Tor, must have been profound.
Getting Together
We have seen that rocky edge-land tors, close to significant rivers, were prominent and accessible islands, poking from the forest, easy to navigate to, and offering valuable views and hunting clearings. Because they were places to which people were functionally, spiritually and culturally drawn, certain tors became places where significant gatherings occurred.
“people living in diverse locations across Britain well before 4000 BCE had repeatedly met at particular places to share collective meals, and to make an exchange objects including flint tools and (sometimes) axes”
Ray and Thomas, 2018, p57
These gatherings, where various groups would converge, would serve many purposes. They would be a time for mixing the gene pool with marital bonds, sharing news and ideas, trading objects, renewing oaths, displays of status, celebrations, rites of passage, ritual, worship (perhaps guided by shamans), feasting, music, dancing, and singing. Importantly, but involving social danger, these gatherings would have involved the giving of dowries, renegotiations of relationships, loyalty tensions, and power plays.
Evidence of Mesolithic gatherings is being revealed within the Stonehenge landscape from a place called Blick Mead. Current Archaeology Magazine (2017) reports on evidence of ‘extravagant feasts’, held beside a spring. Bones have shown that large numbers of auroch, a kind of large prehistoric cattle, were slaughtered, to feed large assemblies of people, with these activities being dated to 6650-4722 BC. What is significant about this is that people seem to be rallying and feasting on wild cattle at a time far before the introduction of domesticated agriculture.
Thinking about these throngs, and their various purposes, they must have involved complex and socially fraught behaviours and actions. Mustering at an ancestrally and spiritually important place would have helped control and contain gatherings, stopping them from spilling over into chaos or aggression. People would be aware of the spirits inhabiting the tor, its rocks and the sky. They would have felt their presence, keeping an ominous watch over proceedings. Their thoughts and actions would be guided by tradition and cultural norms. All of this would be made more powerful by being near to the ancestor-spirit-creators.
Conclusions
It is fascinating to speculate about how Mesolithic people interacted with White Tor and with each other at White Tor. Did they gather here to view, hunt, socialise, trade, worship and negotiate? From how far might people have travelled to meet at this remarkable place? What did they believe about the spirits that inhabited the tor and how did this guide their behaviours? If they were here, did they dig pits to deposit waste and make offerings? Did they erect carved posts in nascent monumental acts?
The Mesolithic, a time before most structural archaeology, is a period that leaves the faintest of clues. The Dartmoor Tor Enclosures project team (DATES) are currently writing up their work, awaiting dating results. They have indicated that at some of their sites (White Tor, Dewerstone and Knowle Wood) there is evidence that activity might extend back into the Mesolithic (Basell and Bray, 2022). I wonder what this evidence might be and what it might reveal about landscape change, trading or rituals?
Earlier in this blog I mentioned that White Tor is dissimilar to most other Dartmoor tors in that it is composed of dolerite, not granite. Dolerite is a stone that seems to have played a special role in the stone ages. In my next blog I am going to focus on White Tor’s geology, and use it to speculate as to whether the composition of its rocks also have play a significant part in White Tor becoming an early Neolithic landmark.
| The Landscape and Mammary Approach For the Landscape and Mammary series, I am working with Sarah Boreham. Sarah uses a creative embodied processes of movement and sound as a tool for research and self-development. She works with ecological embodied phenomenology as a methodology to understand the hidden voices and movements of marginalised individuals, groups and species. She brings her ‘Eco Sound Movement’ approach which uses a multi-modal method including: dance/movement; improvisation; sound/song; film/photography; creative writing: and composition/decomposition. I approach the subject differently. I come from an academic science background. I draw on landscape, archaeological, historical literature and place-names to develop my understandings. I spend time within landscapes to develop my experiential conceptions and complement this with an obsessive love of map and aerial imagery data. Between Sarah’s embodied and creative approach and my natural and social sciences approach there is a place where we can help inform and be informed by each other’s way of experiencing, researching and discovering. |
References
Basell, L. and Bray, L., 2022. Dartmoor Tor Enclosures Survey: ‘DATES’. Dartmoor Magazine. Issue 146, pp23-24.
Caseldine, C. and Hatton, J., 1993. The development of high moorland on Dartmoor: fire and the influence of Mesolithic activity on vegetation change. In Climate change and human impact on the landscape, pp. 119-131. Springer, Dordrecht.
Current Archaeology Magazine. 2017. Blick Mead. Current Archaeology, 424, February 1, 2017.
Darvill, T. and Wainwright, G., 2014. Stonehenge and Preseli. Exploring the Meaning of the bluestones. Current Archaeology, (287), pp.18-25.
Davies, S., 2010. The Early Neolithic Tor Enclosures of Southwest Britain. PhD Thesis, University of Birmingham.
Floyd, P.A. 2009. Aspects of the Petrology and Geochemistry of Greenstones: with special reference to SW England and Wales. Internet Archaeology. Issue 26.
Fyfe, R.M. and Woodbridge, J., 2012. Differences in time and space in vegetation patterning: analysis of pollen data from Dartmoor, UK. Landscape Ecology, 27(5), pp.745-760.
Haughey, F. 2016. Routeways of the Neolithic. In: Leary, J. and Kador, T., (Eds.). Moving on in Neolithic studies: Understanding mobile lives. Neolithic Studies Group Seminar Papers 14.Oxbow Books.
HER, Undated. White Tor Camp, Peter Tavy, MDV4101.
Lewin, J., 2014. The English Floodplain. The Geographical Journal, 180(4), pp317-325.
Preston, P.R. and Kador, T., 2018. Approaches to interpreting Mesolithic mobility and settlement in Britain and Ireland. Journal of World Prehistory, 31(3), pp.321-345.
Ray, K. and Thomas, J., 2018. Neolithic Britain: The Transformation of Social Worlds. Oxford University Press.
Topping, P. (2022). Quarrying clues: exploring the symbolism of Neolithic stone extraction. Current Archaeology, Jan 30, 2022. [There is no author attributed to this article but seeing as it is all about Topping’s research I decided that it was fair to attach his name to it]
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