- Chapter Nine -
It is often suggested that the collapse of the Roman Empire led to large-scale wood-
land regeneration. There is late and post-Roman expansion of beech in regenerated
woodland in many parts of Europe (Behre 1988). In Brittany a reduction in agriculture
occurs in the third century, apparently as a result of Roman-inspired population
movements (Marguerie 1990). In the British Isles some sites show post-Roman
regeneration, but sometimes centuries after the collapse of Rome (Turner 1979).
Generally, however, the extent of regeneration has been exaggerated, partly because,
where dating evidence is poor, there is a temptation to make simplistic correlations
between vegetation changes and the inferred cultural sequence in an area. There is a
surprising number of sites with pollen evidence of continuity of agricultural activity,
indeed sometimes continuity in the growing of specific crops, from Roman to post-
Roman times (Bell 1989).
CELTIC PERCEPTION OF NATURE
Increasingly archaeologists have the technical ability to reconstruct the environment
of the Celtic world, but there remains the more difficult, and largely unaddressed,
question of how the Celtic communities perceived their environment and how
and why they reacted to aspects of its changing nature. Their reaction was not to
the environment which we can reconstruct, with more or less accuracy, from the
palaeoenvironmental record. They were reacting to the perceived environment, itself
reflecting their own lived world of experience. Our own perception inevitably
impinges: do we see the Celtic world as the beginning of an essentially familiar
Europe, as implied by the 1991 Venice exhibition entitled 'The Celts, the Origins of
Europe' (Moscati et al. 1991)? In support of this view we can point to the emergence
of an increasingly familiar agricultural landscape. On the other hand, a conflicting
view is put by Hill (1989), who contends that it was 'a very different past from
the one which our common sense expects or allows'. Particular aspects of the
environment do seem to have been perceived in what, to us, are unfamiliar ways. Bog
bodies are an example. Many are ritual killings. Some were inserted into remaining
natural places within an increasingly controlled cultural landscape. Lindow Man
was deposited in a shallow bog pool at the beginning of a phase which, on the
neighbouring dry ground, was marked by forest disturbance and cereal cultivation
(Stead et al. 1986). There is a great deal of other evidence for ritual iron age and
Romano-Gallic deposition in bogs, lakes and rivers, for example the deposition of
weaponry at La Tene (Dunning 1991) and the numerous wooden figures of people
and animals from the Sources de la Seine (Deyts 1983). Such ritual deposition does
seem to be a unifying theme across much of Celtic Europe and north into Germania.
An example is the Gundestrup Cauldron from Denmark (Bergquist and Taylor
1987), the decoration on which includes Celtic motifs. It was deposited in a dis-
mantled state on the relatively dry surface of a small bog. Glimpses of the particular
significance of some aspects of the botanical world are provided by classical
references to the significance of oak trees for the druids and the excavation of a model
tree at Manching (Maier 199 I).
Evidence of ritual deposition involving human and articulated animal bone occurs