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In this chapter I introduce the archaeology of the Isle of Man from 3000-1500 cal BC, this chapter presents the sites as they were known prior to my own research, all new radiocarbon dates and re-interpretations are presented in Chapters 5, 6 and 7. This chapter builds on the general introduction to the Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age given in Chapter 2. I first discuss the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic, detailing the history of the term ‘Ronaldsway Late Neolithic’ before considering the associated material culture and sites. Following this, I introduce the Early Bronze Age archaeology. I consider the metalwork assemblage from the island and arguments about the exploitation of copper ores. I provide an introduction to the burial, ceramic and settlement evidence. I seek to highlight the similarities and differences between the material from Britain, Ireland and the Isle of Man. Finally, I consider the way in which the changes between the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age on the Isle of Man have been interpreted. This forms the basis for a critique of our approaches to change more broadly in Chapter 4.

Discovering the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic

“The culture appears to be a new one… In the absence of good parallels in Britain and Ireland one can only suggest that the pottery is the characteristic product of the Isle of Man during a period of isolation, an outstanding example of that insular development of which there have been traces at earlier stages of prehistory.”

Clark, 1935: 91 In the first scholarly article on Manx prehistory to reach a wider British audience, Clark (1935) summarises the prehistory of the Isle of Man, following a visit to the island and the Manx Museum. Clark (1935: 85-91) assigns what we would now consider to be the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic material to a period he refers to as the “Ultimate Bronze Age”. This categorisation comes about for a number of reasons. Clark had never before seen pottery like that of the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic in Britain. He inspected the material from Glencrutchery, Ballacross, Ballahott, Ballquayle, Colby and Knocksharry (discussed below). This pottery was coarse, with large inclusions, leading Clark (1935: 89) to describe it as having a “plum pudding” texture

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(Figure 3-1). Complete vessels cover a wide range of sizes from approximately 40cm-100cm high (see Figure 3-2). This new pottery clearly belonged to a period unlike any he had ever studied before. At this time the island was lacking in settlement evidence for the Iron Age and Roman periods⁷ and as this new pottery could not be associated with any kind of megalithic structure, nor did it show evidence of cord impression, he failed to see how it could be from the Neolithic or the Earlier Bronze Age. This combination of factors led Clark (1935:89) to assign the pottery to a later prehistoric period and to place it in the gap in the Manx sequence, suggesting it was parallel to the Early Iron Age elsewhere in Britain.

Figure 3-1: Ronaldsway pottery with the characteristic “plum pudding” texture, large inclusions and rough appearance

7 Exploration of the Iron Age archaeology on the Isle of Man begins with Bersu’s excavations during World War II of the roundhouses at Ballacagen and Ballanorris (Bersu, 1977)

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Figure 3-2: Colby Mooar Ronaldsway Earthfast Jar – vessel is approximately 50cm tall. Image, Manx National Heritage.

I argue that terming the material “Ultimate Bronze Age” rather than, for example, the “Manx Early Iron Age” set a precedent that the material, and the people who had made it, were to be considered insular and ‘backward’, a precedent that continues to haunt some explanations today. For example, rather than accepting the material on its own terms, authors such as Woodcock (2004) and Burrow (1999) continue to suggest that the material results from an inability to ‘compete’ in wider Late Neolithic networks, a theme I return to later. As the opening quote suggests, the explanation for this ‘cultural difference’ from the rest of Britain and Ireland, lay for Clark, in isolation resulting in an insular form of material culture. As I will show, the island should not be considered isolated during the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic (or indeed any prehistoric period), therefore our understandings of the period need to be reconsidered.

The material from these sites continued to be assigned to the Ultimate Bronze Age for the next ten years. During World War II, construction of a new airstrip on the island resulted in the discovery of the enigmatic Ronaldsway ‘house’ site. At the same time the German archaeologist Gerhard Bersu was interned on the Isle of Man; Bersu had been removed from his job as director of the German Archaeological Institute at Frankfurt-am-Main by the Nazi

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government in 1935 and left Germany with his wife thanks to the help of archaeologists such as Childe and Crawford (Current Archaeology, 1971: 81; Evans, 1998; Green, 1981: 88). On the island Bersu’s status as an archaeologist eventually resulted in him excavating several Manx sites including Ballateare, Ballanorris and Ballacaighen (for a recent historiography of these excavations see Chapman and Mytum, 2013). Bersu’s excavations at the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic cremation cemetery of Ballateare are of particular note to this thesis. The discovery of the Ronaldsway ‘house’ site as well as Ballateare was to result in the realisation that the material dated to the Late Neolithic. This re-dating is first published in Basil Megaw’s (then director of the Manx Museum) landmark article on the Ronaldsway material (Bruce et al., 1947⁸) that appeared in the same volume of the Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society as the report on the Ronaldsway excavations and Bersu’s paper on Ballateare (1947: 161-169).

The Ronaldsway ‘house’ site was excavated by Megaw’s wife, Eleanor, whilst he was away on military service with the RAF. Eleanor had read archaeology and anthropology at Cambridge University and was well trained in prehistory and excavation. During the discovery and excavation of the Ronaldsway site she wrote daily letters to Basil Megaw (Manx National Heritage Archive: Megaw Papers) which provide a proxy site diary. The Ronaldsway ‘house’ site allowed the kind of pottery that Clark had inspected to be associated firmly with a lithic assemblage that included polished stone axeheads, hump-backed scrapers and five slate plaques, two of which were decorated in a style reminiscent of Grooved Ware (Bruce et al., 1947). Whilst there was a lithic assemblage associated with the material Clark had inspected from Glencrutchery he had been unsure as to whether they related directly to the pottery and believed them to potentially be intrusive.

Bersu was not allowed to excavate or even visit the Ronaldsway sites as it was deemed too dangerous to let an internee visit a military aircraft site. Bersu (1947) was, however, excavating a Viking burial mound at Ballateare in the northwest of the island. Underneath the Viking mound Bersu found a preserved flat cemetery of the same period as the Ronaldsway material.

At Ballateare the same Ronaldsway Late Neolithic vessels that would come to be known as

‘Ronaldsway jars’ or ‘earthfast jars’ were discovered buried up to their rims with flat slates covering their mouths. In addition the earthfast jars were associated with numerous

8 The article is in two halves. The first section was written by J.R. Bruce and E.M. Megaw and details the excavation of the Ronaldsway ‘house’. The second section summarises the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic of the Isle of Man as it was known at that date and is by B.R.S. Megaw.

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cremations and three dark filled hollows with charcoal and burnt bone that Bersu (1947: 167) was to describe as ustrinae; ustrinae refers to holes dug in the ground over which pyres would be placed to cremate bodies during the Urnfield period in Germany.

Bruce et al. (1947: 159) placed the Ronaldsway material firmly in the Late Neolithic. They drew comparisons between polished flint knives and Grooved Ware from the Ronaldsway ‘house’

and similar material found at Rinyo and Skara Brae. They suggest that the ‘culture’ shows no evidence of “external trade” and suggests that the communities were self-sufficient, living in isolated and permanent homesteads such as that found at Ronaldsway (Bruce, et al., 1947:

159). This paper formed the foundation of our knowledge and understanding of the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic. It was on the basis of this paper that Piggott (1954) was to name the Ronaldsway as one of his five secondary Neolithic cultures, alongside the Peterborough, Rinyo-Clacton, Sandhills and Dorchester Cultures (see Chapter 2).

Piggott (1954: 351) described the Ronaldsway as “…recognizably a member of the Secondary Neolithic group of cultures in Britain”. Bounded by island shores and the Irish Sea. the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic appeared clearly defined and divergent from the rest of the British Isles to Piggott in the 1950s and arguably remains so today. The geographical distributions of Piggott’s other cultures have not been borne out in the material culture, but the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic continues to have a clear distribution. Despite the general move to abandon Piggott’s other cultures the Ronaldsway Neolithic of the Isle of Man is still studied as a ‘culture’

(see, Burrow, 1997a; 1997b; Burrow and Darvill, 1997). Fowler (1999: 11-12) reacts strongly against the uncritical acceptance of the existence of the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic Culture. I argue that despite his attempts to disrupt the term the clearly different practices and material culture that exists on the Isle of Man in the Late Neolithic continue to appear in all but name, in his account, as the only one of Piggott’s cultures to stand the test of time.

Defining the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic

Numerous authors (Burrow, 1999; Darvill, 2000a; Moffat 1978) suggest that the reason the Ronaldsway material is so ill-known and poorly researched is partly due to the lack of chronology and secure radiocarbon dates for the period. As part of the Billown Neolithic

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Landscape Project and Stephen Burrow’s PhD (1997a) a series of new dates were commissioned that have given a more secure, although still not particularly high resolution, chronology for the period (further new radiocarbon dates are presented in Chapter 6) . Burrow and Darvill (1997) date the material to 3000-2200 cal BC. Their dating programme offers a range of dates over the period showing the material to be long-lived covering much of the third millennium BC and to be contemporary with many of the British Late Neolithic pottery styles (Burrow and Darvill, 1997: 415). Dating the end of the period to 2200 cal BC effectively suggests that there is no ‘Beaker period’ or ‘Chalcolithic’ on the island (see Chapter 2 for discussion of the chronology of the British Isles and Ireland).

The Ronaldsway ‘culture’ is defined by a mixture of presences and absences. The lack of known henges, (although this is disputed by Darvill, 2004a; 2004b; 2003a; 2003b; 2002; 2001a; 2001b;

2000a; 2000b; 1999a; 1999b; 1998; 1997) or indeed any kind of monumental construction, the small amount of Grooved Ware and the single Beaker burial, set the island apart from the rest of the British Isles and Ireland. Secondly, the distinctive types of material culture found only on the island, such as Ronaldsway Earthfast Jars, Ronaldsway pottery, Roughened Truncated Butt axes (hereafter RTB axes), hump-backed scrapers and engraved slate plaques serve to further set the period apart from the rest of the British Isles and Ireland. Whilst early authors such as Clark (1935) and Bruce et al. (1947), and later authors such as Woodcock (2004; 2001) suggest isolation for the period, this is not strictly true as there is evidence of contact with the rest of the British Isles and Ireland and some examples of RTBs found on mainland Britain (Barrs, 2010), as will be discussed below.

The pottery of the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic was first described by Clark in his 1935 paper, where he broke the pottery down into three types, a distinction that is not used today. The most thorough treatise on the pottery comes from Burrow (1997a) whose PhD focuses on the Neolithic pottery of the Isle of Man in its regional context; this work forms the basis of his exhaustive, well-illustrated catalogue of Neolithic pottery (Burrow, 1997b). The most commonly known pottery type is the large Ronaldsway Earthfast Jar (Figure 3-2), however there are also smaller bowls (see for example Figure 3-3, other examples include B’co12;

B’va8; Gui1⁹) (Burrow, 1997b: 24). At present there are no clear middle sized vessels known from the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic – whether such vessels existed in an organic form, or whether there is a change in food preparation and consumption remains an open question.

9 All pottery references refer to the catalogue and numbers given in Burrow, 1997b

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The construction and form of Ronaldsway vessels seems crude when compared to the Middle Neolithic pottery; indeed Burrow describes it as having “little of the finesse” apparent in the Middle Neolithic assemblage. Sherds are generally far thicker and the inclusions are far larger, with a preference for basic igneous rocks inclusions amongst the Late Neolithic pottery and a preference for a more finely crushed granitic inclusion in the Middle Neolithic pottery. Unlike the Middle Neolithic ware, the Late Neolithic pottery is unburnished. Burrow suggests that part of the reason for the coarseness of the Late Neolithic pottery may have lain in the far larger vessel size. At least 24 of the known Ronaldsway Earthfast Jars have been found empty, buried up to their mouths in the earth, sometimes with the mouth of the vessel covered with a slate (Figure 3-4 and Table 3.1). At such sites, referred to as Ronaldsway Earthfast Jar Sites in this thesis, little other evidence of activity has been recovered. Sites with this kind of vessel deposition are discussed in detail in Chapter 7. Sherds of Ronaldsway Earthfast Jars have also been found in pits and scatters as well as at some burial sites.

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Figure 3-3: – Small Ronaldsway Late Neolithic Bowl from Glencrutchery (Gle 1 in Burrow, 1997b)

Figure 3-4: Images from the MNH NMHER (1869) of the discovery and excavation of the Earthfast Jar Site, Colby Mooar in 1947. Note the stones placed to support the base of the jar.

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Ballakeigh 1 (possibly 2) None noted

Cleigh Rooar 1 None noted

Table 3.1: List of Ronaldsway Jar Sites (excludes burial sites where the vessels have also been found).

Burrow’s (1997b) thorough analysis of the pottery assemblage shows that rather than being completely isolated from other Late Neolithic pottery traditions it has much in common. This is substantiated by the presence of Grooved Ware (Figure 3-5) at three sites on the island, (Glencrutchery, Ronaldsway ‘house’ and Ballacottier). Grooved Ware never occurs in assemblages by itself but always alongside Ronaldsway pottery; it is also of note that the three sites that Grooved Ware has been found on all have unusually large assemblages of material culture. Burrow (1997b: 24) suggests the same potters could have made both vessels types;

there is no different ‘recipe’ for the pottery, grit types and sizes are the same. In terms of design the two pottery assemblages clearly differ in shape given, the flat base of the Grooved Ware and the rounded base of the Ronaldsway pottery, Grooved Ware vessels do not have the overhanging rims of Earthfast Jars and their sides also tend to be angled whereas Ronaldsway Earthfast Jars often have straight sides down to their rounded bases. Burrow (1997b: 24) comments that it can be difficult to attribute plain body sherds from Late Neolithic contexts to either the Grooved Ware or Ronaldsway repertoire. For Burrow (1997b: 24), the clear morphological differences between the two vessel styles are indicative of different social uses;

in particular he suggests Grooved Ware may have been “employed in ostentatious displays”. I highlight the different functions of the two vessels; Grooved Ware vessels have not been found buried in the ground in the same way as the Ronaldsway Earthfast Jars.

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Figure 3-5: Sherds of Grooved Ware. Clockwise from top left, RonH4; RonH2; Gle23; Gle25.

In searching for an origin (and explanation) for the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic most authors start to look for comparisons to the Ronaldsway pottery. Bruce et al. (1947) (see also Megaw and Simpson 1984) suggested similarities with Peterborough ware on the basis of the overhanging rims. Burrow (1997b: 25) disputes this, arguing that Peterborough wares are typically cord impressed or stabbed whereas Ronaldsway vessels are very clearly incised.

Piggott (1954) also made comparisons with vessels from Eilean an Tighe in North Uist and Nether Largie South in Argyllshire and Rudh’an Dunain on the Isle of Skye. Burrow (1997b: 25) disputes every one of these similarities arguing that they are often made on the basis of specific vessels that do not fit well within the broader regional assemblages of which they are a part. Furthermore, the comparisons are often made with sherds from Ballateare which are atypical of the Ronaldsway assemblage as they bear cross-hatched decorations. For Burrow these kinds of coincidental similarities are just that: coincidental. There are, in Burrow’s (1997b: 26) opinion, no antecedents of the Ronaldsway pottery in the Manx Middle Neolithic and little evidence that they were strongly influenced by Late Neolithic styles from elsewhere

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either. The pottery production, and crucially, use-practices, stand apart as a distinct material assemblage - the result of specific choices by potters of the period.

After the Ronaldsway pottery, the RTB axes are probably the best known class of material culture from the Ronaldsway Late Neolithic (Figure 3-6). These axes were originally identified and associated with the pottery assemblage during the excavation of the Ronaldsway ‘house’

site (Bruce, et al., 1947). Bruce et al. (1947: 146-7) described the axes as “deliberately roughened and truncated at the butt…with a portly…almost pear-shaped” appearance. These axes are essentially polished stone axes but with an unpolished butt and also show deliberate pecking, grinding and roughening. This means they lack the purity of form and shape for which traditional examples are so well known. Moffatt (1978: 184) suggests that the axe form “…no doubt reflect[s] some local idiosyncrasy of hafting”, an explanation that I suggest is too simplistic and places too much emphasis on functionality. The unusual axes have attracted some research with a recent synthesis and analysis by Kate Barrs (2010) currently being expanded into a PhD thesis. Initially, in 1951, seven RTB axes from the Isle of Man were sent to Birmingham for thin section analysis by Frank Shotton (see Stone and Wallis, 1951). Two of the seven were revealed to have their origins in the Cumbrian Langdale Group VI (Barrs, 2010: 7).

This initial investigation sparked an additional study in 1976 where a further forty axes were sent for analysis and as a result a new rock type was identified: Group XXV, from which 43% of the known collection are thought to have been sourced (Barrs, 2010: 41). This newly identified Group was rather tentatively identified as a Manx source rock by Coope and Garrad (1988: 67-9). They suggested that the rock group may have existed at Ballapaddag or Oatland where basic igneous rocks outcrop (but see, Barrs, 2010).

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Figure 3-6: RTB axes from the Ronaldsway ‘house’. Note varying the degrees of roughening on the axes.

If 43% of the known RTB axes studied by Barrs are from Group XXV, (Barrs, 2010: 41) then 57%

of the known RTB axes have a geological origin outside of the Isle of Man. Axes have been identified with sources in Langdale Group VI, the Cornish group I and the Welsh Group VII (Barrs, 2010: 36). This suggests the axes may have been brought to the island and then re-shaped, though this remains an open question since six RTB axes have been identified outside

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of the Isle of Man (Barrs, 2010: 41). These axes have been found in locations as diverse as

of the Isle of Man (Barrs, 2010: 41). These axes have been found in locations as diverse as