The Light Comes From The North
“Revolutionary though the ability to give such dates was, the effects of radio carbon went deeper still; it undermined the very thinking behind what was then the accepted view of the pre-history of Western Europe. This is not the place to trace the development of the latter, but as the change has vital bearing on the subject, it would be as well to outline the assumptions that had been involved. In contrast to our scanty knowledge of the pre-Roman history of Western Europe, the antiquity of the civilizations of the Orient was known about with a certain precision. The King Lists of Egypt, for example, went back to about 3100 b.c. and identifiable export from that country could be used to date other civilizations around the Mediterranean, most notably the Minoan and Mycenaean. The known chronology of the East was used to date the emerging framework for the prehistory of the West.
The fundamental thesis behind this was that developments in the one area had spread to the other by a process known as diffusion, such cultural transmission involving the passage of ideas without without the actual migration. The theme of European prehistory was, in Childe’s words, ‘irradiation of European barbarians by Oriental civilization.’ One had only to identify the effects of the ideas Europe in order to get a date link with their source in the Mediterranean. There were of course, refinements, one of which was the idea of typological development or regression, as ideas moved further in time and space from their point of origin. Further, there was the concept of material cultures by which groups of people were identified by, or with, the objects they made and used—there artefactual assemblage—and through which change and influences were observed. Prehistory was seen as a giant board game and the business of the prehistorian was to identify ‘cultures,’ construct typologies, trace influences, and, ultimately, obtain dates through links which spanned a continent.
Thus, the various types of chambered tombs of the British Neolithic, while elements of local cultures, were also part of a general phenomenon which originated in the east Mediterranean. Early Minoan examples on Crete could be dated to around 2700 b.c. and, allowing a certain time for dissolution and typological development via Iberia, it was thought that idea came to the south of Britain around 2400 b.c. Tombs as far north as Orkney would have been later and even more typologically removed. Similarly, the ‘Wessex Culture’—the rich Early Bronze Age of the south of Britain—was thought to have been inspired Mycenaean Greece and theretofore to have begun around 1400 b.c. The stone circles of Orkney and the large barrows around them would therefore have been put slightly later still.
The immediate effect of radio carbon dating can be seen if we take just these two examples and look at them from our particular viewpoint. We now know the Neolithic period in Orkney to have started by 3500 b.c. with the Early Bronze Age having started around 2000 b.c. The tombs there are older than the pyramids, let alone those on Crete, and are supposedly ‘Mycenaean -inspired monuments’ were erected half a millennium before that city started to rise. The links with the east were, quite simply, broken and suddenly the prehistory of Europe had to be seen its own light rather than in reflected light. There was no longer any point looking to the Mediterranean for inspiration for that whole way of thinking had to be cast aside.European prehistorians had no choice but to start afresh and it was perhaps an opportune moment for thinking about the true meaning of the elucidation of prehistory. “
-John W. Hedges excerpted from Tomb of Eagles: Death and Life in a Stone Age Tribe (1998)