Llyn Fawr in the Cynon Valley, and Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey, seem to be two entirely unremarkable ponds. And today, they certainly are.
In later prehistory however, in the first millennium BC, they seem to have been anything but unremarkable. It can be argued that they are two of the most important places for Welsh (pre-) History.
While certainly significant places in parts of the first millennium BC, this does not mean that they were particularly outstanding even in their heyday.
It is indeed very likely that, back then, there were many other sites quite like the two discussed in this article.
And some of these other sites may have been much more important than the two selected here.
However, we know nothing of these other, perhaps even more important sites, since they have not survived into the present, or at least as yet have not been discovered. Llyn Fawr and Llyn Cerrig Bach thus are even more important as representatives of a category of places than in their own right.
What connects Llyn Fawr and Llyn Cerrig Bach, located far apart in the south and north of the country, is the way there were used by later prehistoric populations.
They were used as places to permanently deposit objects, out of the reach of human hands, presumably as offerings to the gods.
And not just any objects. Rather, the objects were seemingly carefully selected: those chosen were mostly such that were valuable, or demonstrated power, or status, and wealth.
And it is both some of these objects, as well as the practice of depositing them in lakes itself, that connects both with an even wider world, the ‘Celtic world’ of Antiquity.
Llyn Fawr and ‘Hallstatt’ Europe
Llyn Fawr is located in the upper Cynon Valley. Originally a smaller lake than today, it was expanded and converted into a reservoir in the early years of the 20th century.
It was during these works that the Llyn Fawr hoard was found. The hoard has given its name to the transition phase between the latest Bronze Age and the early Iron Age, dated to roughly the eighth century BC, because it contains some of the earliest iron objects to be discovered in Britain.
Yet, it also represents the culmination of a practice that became increasingly important during the late Bronze Age (which in Wales started, roughly, in the 12th century BC), the deposition of metalwork, particularly in lakes and other watery places.
And it is both this practice, as well as some of the finds made in the lake, that connect Wales with a much wider world: depositing wealth, particularly high-status metal objects, is a phenomenon that can be observed across wide areas of late Bronze Age and Iron Age Europe: the ancient ‘Celtic world’.
The Llyn Fawr hoard itself consists of a mix of different items. Some of them, particularly the remains of an iron sword, are heralding the adoption of the new metal defining the following age.
These were exciting new things, only having come into circulation quite recently at the time they were deposited. Others, like two bronze cauldrons, were certainly old already when they were deposited in the lake, and of a type that had a long history.
Cauldrons of this type seem to have started to circulate as early as the 11th century BC, perhaps even somewhat earlier than that.
But whether fancy new sword or cherished old cauldron, the objects themselves point at increasingly wide-ranging links that the prehistoric Welsh had established during the previous centuries. Links with the so-called ‘Hallstatt’ cultures on the European continent.
The bronze cauldrons were made from riveted bronze sheet metal, a technique requiring exceptional skills in bronze working.
The skills to produce these types of vessels, and the earliest types of vessels created in this technology, had been developed in far distant central Europe, by bronze smiths living in the Hungarian plains and Transylvania.
But while the earliest examples of these types of vessels known from Wales, the Arthog bucket, is thought to be an imported piece, the cauldrons in the Llyn Fawr hoard were made somewhere in Britain, perhaps even quite locally. Clearly associated with feasting, these cauldrons reference a culture of hospitality and gift-exchange between late Bronze Age elites on a previously unprecedented scale.
The iron sword also shows ‘continental’ links. First of all, the very fact that it is one of the earliest iron finds in Britain, with the technology of iron working adopted from the continent, constitutes such a connection.
Moreover, the sword itself is of a type called Gündlingen, after a German find; the sword type that marks the Bronze to Iron Age transition: about half of the known Gündlingen swords were still cast in bronze, while the other half was made from iron.
Making swords from iron at this time is so new that not even the continental metalworkers had fully understood ironworking: the design of this sword type is suited much more to casting in bronze than iron smithing. In Britain, the Llyn Fawr sword is unique in this respect: it is the only iron Gündlingen type sword known from this islands, though there are many bronze ones known. Rather, the next known iron examples of Gündlingen swords do come from central France, with the centre of their distribution found in southern Germany.
Yet, there is little reason to believe that the iron sword from Llyn Fawr was an imported piece. After all, there are two other iron objects in the hoard, a spear and a socketed sickle, which seem to be local products. Iron smithing was being adopted locally, and thus, the sword could equally well have been made locally. Again, the hoard shows that new, complex metalworking technologies had been adopted and were being adapted locally – with production at the cutting edge of technology of its time.
Next page: Llyn Cerrig Bach and 'La Tène' Europe
Llyn Cerrig Bach and ‘La Tène’ Europe
Llyn Cerrig Bach is located on Anglesey, right outside the end of the runway of RAF Valley airbase. In fact, the finds here were made when peat was extracted from the boggy shores of Llyn Cerrig Bach to prepare the landing ground for Valley airbase in 1942. In what is perhaps the most remarkable element of the story of its discovery, an iron chain discovered during the peat extraction works was used and found to be useful for dragging lorries that had got stuck onto firm ground with a tractor. This chain, under later examination, turned out to be a late Iron Age slave gang-chain.
While today, Llyn Cerrig Bach is a small lake, in the late Iron Age, it may very well have been a tidal inlet. Llyn Cerrig Bach stands in the same tradition of depositing high-status objects in watery contexts as the Llyn Fawr hoard, though this practice had become somewhat less prevalent during the time that had passed since the depositions at Llyn Fawr.
Dating roughly to the period between the second century BC and the first century AD, the finds at Llyn Cerrig Bach come from the very end of the Iron Age.
Depositions may well have been ongoing throughout this period, and there is a distinct possibility that deposition at this spot came to an end in the context of the Roman conquest of Ynys Môn. Again, it is the depositional practices, as well as the objects, that link this site with wider ‘Celtic’ Europe.
Much like the Llyn Fawr hoard, the Llyn Cerrig Bach assemblage consists of a sizeable number of objects (144 preserved objects or fragments of objects), though due to the method of its discovery, it is likely that many more were lost.
Most of these items can be assigned to a social elite: there are numerous swords, some still in ornately decorated scabbards, spears, decorated shield bosses, parts of chariots, cauldrons, and of course the already mentioned slave gang-chain.
And also, once again, there are sickles. Many of the objects also are strongly decorated in the art style characteristic for much of the later European Iron Age, the so-called La Tène style.
Thus, the objects found at Llyn Cerrig Bach, particularly through their decoration, link North Wales with a wider European information exchange network, a network in which complex methods of constructing art and decorative motives seem to have flowed freely over long distances.
But again, it is not only the art style that connects Llyn Cerrig Bach with wider Europe: it is also the selection of objects, and the way of depositing them, that links this particular site with many similar sites on the European continent. And it is not least the site of La Tène itself with which there is a particularly close link.
La Tène, which gave its name to this art style, is a site in Switzerland, at the shores of – and in – Lake Neuchâtel.
Discovered in 1857, when water levels were particularly low, numerous finds were first dredged and, in later decades, excavated, from the lake bed and lake shore: mostly weapons and other high-status equipment, mostly dating to the third and early second century, but continuing into the first century BC.
Again, there are numerous swords, often still in scabbards, spearheads, shields, but also parts of chariots, cauldrons, and even sickles. Similar depositions have since become known from several other Swiss river and lakeshore sites, including Bern Tiefenau, Port Nidau, and Corneaux.
Equally significantly, similar selections of objects are also known from other depositions in continental Europe; most importantly the so-called ‘Gaulish sanctuaries’. These sites are mostly known from North-Western France, though similar examples have more recently been discovered as far East as Austria.
Characterised by square enclosures and, frequently, evidence for rather peculiar practices of treating dead human bodies, these sites have frequently and quite directly been associated with the druids, mentioned in sources from classical antiquity; and also later on in medieval Irish and Welsh literature. Again, depositions of high-status objects abound at these sites, with weapons, chariot parts and similar items found in large numbers.
Next page: Depositions, druids, and higher education in Wales
Depositions, druids, and higher education in Wales
Depositions like the ones found in Llyn Fawr and Llyn Cerrig Bach can thus, quite clearly, be interpreted in a religious context. And not just in any religious context, but a very specific one: that of the druids and ‘ancient Celtic religion’.
Though not writing about Wales, classical authors like Strabo report that ‘the Celts’ offer up wealth to the gods, not least by depositing it in lakes.
Quite frequently, this may have been spoils of war, including, perhaps, the remains of some of the vanquished, as may be evident in the ‘Gaulish sanctuaries’.
And writing about Wales, and Anglesey in 61 AD specifically, Tacitus in his Annals reports of Suetonius Paulinus conquering Anglesey and destroying the ‘groves consecrated to their (the druids’) savage cults’ – the time when, roughly, deposition of artefacts at Llyn Cerrig Bach seems to have ended.
Of course, the link between the druids and Llyn Fawr is much more tenuous; after all, there are about 700 years between the depositions at Llyn Fawr and the first historical reports about British druids.
Yet, the similarities in the depositional practices make it likely that a group of religious practitioners with beliefs not all too unlike those of the much later attested druids was responsible for the creation of the Llyn Fawr hoard.
Thus, both Llyn Fawr and Llyn Cerrig Bach provide material evidence for druids in Wales, which in itself makes them very important sites in Welsh History.
But there is even more to them than that. Through their link with the druids, and also their exceptional finds, the two sites also provide us with the first evidence for higher education in Wales.
Caesar, in his commentaries on the Gaulish Wars, writes an excursus about the Gauls. In this excursus, he devotes some paragraphs on the druids, and on their education.
He writes that to become a druid, a student would have had to learn great many verses, so that some would remain 20 years in training.
According to Caesar and other classical authors, the druids are theologians and philosophers, historians, mathematicians and scientists, healers and physicians, and are also trained in law.
In other words, the druids are the graduates of the European Iron Age, those who went through higher education and trained in highly specialised, in academic skills.
And it is Caesar who informs us that druidism had started in Britain, and only later been transferred to the Continent. And he also reports that those Gauls who would study it most diligently, as a rule, would journey to Britain to learn it.
But where would these foreign students learn druidism, if not in some sacred groves of British druids like we find them in Llyn Fawr and Llyn Cerrig Bach?
Thus, those two seemingly unremarkable ponds are probably part of the first higher education we can find in Wales. This makes these two particular places even more significant in Welsh History.
And it is not just higher education that those two small lakes tell us about: the objects found within them also tell us about education in craft and industry.
Objects like the bronze cauldrons and the iron sword in the Llyn Fawr hoard, and much of the La Tène artwork in the Llyn Cerrig Bach hoard, tell us about technological information that spread very quickly, and was picked up and developed equally quickly, by local craftsmen and artists.
But the highly specialised, highly trained skills required for much of these works could not simply be picked up by word of mouth, or by looking at the finished object.
Rather, these also need to be taught and learned, need to be trained, perhaps in some earlier form of apprenticeships.
And the fact that several of the techniques and skills seem to have been picked up very quickly, shortly after they had been developed in places as far away as east Central Europe, tells us that the later prehistoric Welsh craftsmen were also exceptionally well connected. Whether they went abroad to learn their craft, or at least train in new skills, or learnt from such craftsmen than came to Britain, perhaps to also train as druids, is of course unknown.
Llyn Fawr and Llyn Cerrig Bach thus are extremely important places in Welsh History.
They are places that show us how well, and how widely, the later prehistoric Welsh were already connected.
They also show us that keeping at the cutting edge of technological and intellectual development is dependent on having a good higher education system, and on the free flow of ideas, both into and out of the country.
Next page: Author profile - Professor Raimund Karl
Who are you, Professor Raimund Karl?
As a heritage professional working in higher education, with a major research interest in later prehistory and the early medieval period, I was always particularly keen on learning more about (higher) education in the past.
Reading in Caesar that the ancient Gaulish druids, to get the best possible education, would go to Britain to study, provided me with one additional reason to come from my native Austria to North Wales.
After all, this is where Tacitus tells us that one of the centres of British Druidism was.
And indeed, in the Mabinogi, it is Dinas Dinlle, just south of Caernarfon, where Gwydion educated Llew Llaw Gyffes; and Llyn Cerrig Bach provides some evidence for the existence of such centres of educational excellence in prehistoric Wales.
The link between archaeology, history, and higher education makes these two places my favourites in Welsh history.