- Chapter Thirty-Five -
successive timber settlements of the seventh to ninth centuries Be (Whittle 1989).
More remarkable still is the waterlogged complex at Caldicot Castle Lake (Mon.)
with its worked timbers and wide artefactual range, including the remains of plank-
built boats and a Wilburton chape incorporated in deposits of the eighth century Be
(Parry 1988; Parry and Parkhouse 1989, 1990) (Figure 35-1). In south Pembrokeshire
a middle to late bronze age (MBA-LBA) multifocus agricultural settlement at
Stackpole was abandoned to sanding in the eighth century Be (Benson et al. 1990).
All were apparently unenclosed. In this respect Meyllteyrn Uchaf (Caerns.), a
concentric enclosure with two timber round-houses dated c. 1950-1380 Be (Kelly
1990, 1991a, 1992), is an exciting new discovery. None continued in occupation
beyond the onset of the climatic deterioration of the sub-Atlantic phase.
THE LATE BRONZE AGE CRISISMuch has been written on the issue of climatic deterioration beginning just before
1250 b.c. accelerating after 850 and reaching its coolest and wettest about 650, with
a period of climatic amelioration from c. 450 (Lamb 1981; Harding 1982). The impact
will have been most severe in areas of high precipitation, especially the exposed
western hills and classic uplands where vegetational coupled with anthropogenic
changes led to leaching and podsolization, and at worst to extensive peat formation.
Though the effects are thought to have been less severe in the rain-shadow zone of
eastern Wales, overall a massive loss of exploitable land and a dramatic curtailment
of agricultural potential is envisaged, precipitating a protracted crisis which can only
have led to a primitive economic recession and certainly pressure on population, if
not a demographic decline in some areas (Burgess 1985).
It is thought that one response to the crisis was a retreat from the uplands and
the realignment of settlement in favour of more sheltered locations. However,
pollen sequences from the Brenig valley (Denbs.) seem to conflict with the general
hypothesis that the Welsh uplands were wholly abandoned soon after 800 b.c. (Lynch
1993: 167). What is significant is the wholesale failure of many LBA settlements- even those in lowlands - to continue in occupation into the EPRIA, clearly
indicating dislocation and thus far-reaching socio-economic change. The starkness
of climatic variation between the Welsh regions - broadly eastern and western - eventually led to different subsistence systems and social frameworks which are
manifest in the settlement archaeology of the LBA/EPRIA transition.
One response, perhaps universal but better represented in eastern Wales, was
conflict leading to a growing investment in the physical security of groups of families
and their chattels by the construction of fortified villages. The relationship
between climatic deterioration, the process of nucleation and fortification is complex.
In a Welsh dimension the eastern bias is perhaps explicable by the fact that this
interface between upland and lowland supported a habitually larger population,
but one which suffered proportionally greater stress because of a reduction in
agricultural yields which could not be remedied through normal expansion; and if,
as is suggested, there was a switch of emphasis to pastoralism, which demands
proportionately even more land, sources of conflict would have multiplied.