Pagan Britain by Ronald Hutton is an examination of what archaeological evidence can tell us about the spiritual beliefs of prehistoric peoples in Britain.

A good 50% of the book is devoted to exploring the evidence and categorizing it into time periods, so far as is possible with the dating technology available. This forensic examination of what we actually have in terms of material and the limitations on our ability to interpret and understand it is important. Alongside this categorization is a critical analysis of the history of interpretation of the evidence. Hutton shows how that interpretation changed over time more in response to contemporary pressures than to anything to do with facts. Older interpretations from the 19th and early 20th centuries reflect religious and colonial views and beliefs, those from the 1960s and 1970s reflect the cultural dominance of economic theories and feminism. This is a relatively recent book (published in 2013) and so the considerable advances in archaeological technology and processes in the 1990s and 2000s are captured. Those advances have increased our level of factual understanding of the evidence which has, in turn, challenged the interpretation of it.

Essentially, this is 400 pages of telling us that the material evidence says very little about what prehistoric, pagan Britain was like. We can assume, based on what we do know and comparison with knowledge from anthropology, that it was animist, concerned with place and time, and contained beliefs about the power of human action to influence the natural forces around them. What specifically was said and done and what the specific personifications of the entities that those human actions were directed at were, we cannot know. I found the honesty of that position refreshing. I enjoyed Hutton’s rigour in sticking to facts and avoiding the very human tendency to tell stories and create explanations.

I found myself surprised by my realization of what it means that prehistory is not a fixed time period but is the absence of written evidence. Some parts of the world were in prehistory at the same time as other parts of the world had moved into history. This is very clear in Hutton’s treatment of Roman Britain. For the core of the Roman Empire and the Mediterranean world, there had been history for a long time and we have written evidence of what people thought about things to illuminate the material evidence. There are Roman writings about Britain, but so little of it that is contemporary or informed by those living in Britain that it provides no insight.

Hutton’s treatment of modern attempts to re-create pagan beliefs such as druidry and witchcraft is empathetic and generous. While acknowledging that none of these movements have any factual basis (the available evidence just can’t tell us), he recognizes a desire to interact with our environment in a way that has been common to peoples all around the world and is free of the constraints of organized religion.

This is a lovely book. It’s hard work (those 400 pages are in a small font and densely written) but it’s worth it.