On the Edge of the World

Historically Speaking * September 2002 On the Edge of the World Barry Cunliffe In a few days' time1 1 hope to be excavating at the Iron Age settlement of Le Yaudet on the north coast ofBrittany. It is an idyllic place, a granite headland with stunningviews out to sea across the estuary ofthe river Léguer. The air is clear and there are always present the inexorable rhythms ofthe sea underscoringdie timelessness ofit all. For die excavation team it's a welcome contrast to tourist-clogged Oxford choking in its Midlands rivervalley. Butour seasonal translation is more dian just a change ofair; it's a major shift in our cognitive geography. From Le Yaudet we can begin to share the experience ofthe hundreds ofgenerationswho have used the headland: die sense ofbeing in a liminal place between land and sea—diewooded environment ofland behind, difficult and intricate, die open sea in front, deceptivelyinviting, and die zone ofour existence widi its reassuring arrayofresources diere forthe garneringfrom die wide littoral, the woodland fringes, die river, and die ocean. For archaeologists and historians it is important to try to understand die cognitive geographies ofpeople in die past Greekgeographers like Hecataeus and Herodotus held very distinctviews ofdie world. Understandably , die Mediterranean occupied die center. Around it were land masses stretching to die unknown and encirclingitall, die Ocean. The Graeco-Roman view was a very simple coreperiphery model. And so strongwas diis view, reinforced bygenerations ofschoolteachers in die 19di and 2Odi centuries, diat it still pervades even today. There is, of course, good reason for diis. Much of die Mediterranean littoral was a benign environmentwhere communities could flourish, and die sea itself— Mare Nostrum—provided an easy means of communication. Those favored locations diat grew into majorports-of-call, places likeMiletus , soon became information nodes where ideas flourished and fermented. Fernand Braudel summed it up widi his characteristic verve in The Mediterranean in theAncient World when he wrote: The best witness to the Mediterranean's age-old past is die sea itself. This has to be said again and again: and die sea has to be seen and seen again .... So we find that our sea was from the very dawn ofits prehistory a witness to those imbalances productive of change which would set the rhydim ofits enure life. "Imbalances productive of change" Ue at the very heart ofwhat prehistory and history are about. Since resources, populations, and ideas are scattered unevenly, diere is a constant flow from one region to another. Where diere is access to the sea, die intensity offlow is all die greater. And so itwas diat for a briefperiod of2000years orso dieMediterranean became a hodiouse for cultural development. Butto place such emphasison dieMediterranean is to introduce an imbalance. There were other ocean fringes, rich in resources, widi dieirdifferentrhydims ofinteraction creating quite distinctive, and often brilliantly inventive, cultures oftheir own. One ofdiese is die longAdantic fringe ofEurope stretching from Morocco in the soudi to Iceland in die north. Far from being a raggle-taggle of benighted barbarians deprived by geography from enjoying the benefits ofMediterranean civilization, the Adantic arc was a world ofits own and well able to make a unique contribution to European history. Until die 15th century A.D., the Adantic communities conceived ofthemselves as being on die edge ofdie world. What was out diere in die ocean layin die realmsofmydi: dieHesperides , Atlantis, the Isles ofthe Blessed. Even afterthevoyagesofdiscoveryofthe 16dicentury, mysterious but non-existent islands constandy appeared on charts. Indeed, itwas not until as lateas 1865 diatdiemythicalislandofHyBrazil, supposed tolieoffthewestcoastofIreland,was finallyremoved from official naval charts. This sense ofbeingatdieverylimit, where land and sea met, cannot have failed to create a particularmindset, while the rhythms ofthe monthly tidal cycles and the inevitability of the daily ebb and flow ofthe sea would have given thosewhoviewed itan intimate sense of die passage oftime and the associated significance ofcelestial movements. In otherwords, the cognitive geography of those racing the ocean would have been quite different from matofan inland dweller or those hardlynoticing die sluggish movements ofthe Mediterranean . That die coastal communities built oceangoingships and mastered the essentials ofnavigation is beyond dispute, butwhen sea-going first became a way offife is more difficult to say. However, bythe 6th...