Norfolk ( ) is a rural county in the East of England. Knowledge of prehistoric Norfolk is limited by a lack of evidence – although the earliest finds are from the end of the Lower Paleolithic period. Communities have existed in Norfolk since the last Ice Age and tools, coins and hoards such as those found at Snettisham indicate the presence of an extensive and industrious population.
The Iceni tribe inhabited the region prior to the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD, after which they built roads, forts, villas and towns. Boudica's rebellion in 60 AD, caused by the imposition of direct rule by the Romans, was followed by order and peace, which lasted until the Roman armies left Britain in 410 AD. The subsequent arrival of the Anglo-Saxons caused the loss of much Roman and British culture in Norfolk. It is known from external evidence from excavations and place-names that by c. 800 AD all Norfolk had been settled and the first towns had emerged. Norfolk was the northern half of the Kingdom of East Anglia and was ruled by the Anglo-Saxon Wuffing dynasty. Our knowledge of several Wuffings is scant, as few historical documents of the period have survived.
Under the Normans, Norwich emerged as the hub of the region. With steady growth and strong overseas links it became an important mediaeval city, but it suffered from internal tensions, unsanitary conditions and disastrous fires. Mediaeval Norfolk was the mostly densely populated and the most productive agricultural region in the country. Land was cultivated intensively and the wool trade was sustained by huge flocks. Other industries such as peat extraction were important. Norfolk was a prosperous county and possessed a wealth of monastic establishments and parish churches.
Etymology The name "Norfolk" derives from terms which meant "the northern people". It is first mentioned in Anglo-Saxon wills dating from 1043 to 1045 and later as Norðfolc in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle (the entry for 1075) and as Nordfolc in the Domesday Book.Ekwall, p. 343
Prehistoric Norfolk
Paleolithic to Chalcolithic Lower Paleolithic (2,500,000 to 300,000 BC)
In 2005 it was discovered that Norfolk contained one of the earliest finds of European man. The find revealed flint tools, similar to those found on the Suffolk coast at Pakefield which were dated at around 668,000 BC and a find at Happisburgh in the "Cromer Forest Bed" has been dated as being approximately 900,000 years old and has given us flints, footprints and the oldest hand axe to be found in north-west Europe.
Middle Paleolithic (300,000 to 30,000 BC) In 2002 there was a major discovery of one of the most important sites of Neanderthal man, dated to around 58,000 BC, in the Thetford Forest at Lynford. David Miles the chief archaeologist at English Heritage said: "It is extremely rare to find any evidence of Neanderthals and even rarer to find it in association with mammoth remains. We may have discovered a butchery site, or what would be even more exciting, first evidence in Britain of a Neanderthal hunting site which would tell us much about their organisational and social abilities."
The site was found to contain organic material and a Mousterian hand axe was found in a good state of preservation. A further 30 Mousterian hand axes were found along with reindeer bones covered in cut marks. The animal remains have revealed the presence of woolly mammoths, woolly rhinoceros, brown bears, spotted hyenas and other smaller remains such as fish jaws, frog bones and several types of mollusc. Although the site contains such exotic animals the temperatures were still below those felt today as Norfolk was still in the clutches of the remnants of an Ice-Age. The average temperature in July has been estimated as 13 °C and the area would have been below freezing for most of the winter months. From plant and insect remains it has been deduced that the area was marshy and covered with small areas of open still water similar to the modern day broads.
Upper Paleolithic (40,000 to 10,000 BC) During the last Ice age, reaching its greatest extent between 22,000 and 17,000 years ago, the so-called Last Glacial Maximum (LGM), the whole of Britain was either ice sheet or polar desert thus wiping out the entire gene pool. The return of pioneer groups, evidenced by the so-called Creswellian culture, began about 15,000 years ago.Oppenheimer p. 120
Neolithic and Chalcolithic (9500 to 3000 BC)
This period covers the stages of change from the pottery of the stoneage into the age of metals. The Chalcolithic Age is the start of the Copper Age and marks the end of the time when people could only work mainly single element metals such as silver, tin, copper and gold. The Copper Age precedes the Bronze Age when metallurgy developed into a science capable of amalgamating metals into bronze and other compounds.
Bronze Age (3000 to 600 BC)
Norfolk was a centre of metalworking and by the Late Bronze Age northern Norfolk had developed into a major area of production. There were also throwbacks to the earlier ages and one such type were the monuments. A significant find was discovered in 1998 between the high and low tidal limits off the north west coast of Norfolk at Holme-next-the-Sea. A ring of timbers was found and within it an upturned tree stump with its roots above the sand. The remains were excavated in 1999 and the samples taken dated it to 2049 BC.
A find at Sutton (near Stalham) on 7 July 1875 revealed a copper alloy shield buried under peat lying on, and covered by, white sand. There have been numerous finds from all periods of the Bronze Age but amongst the most notable were a find of 141 axes heads at Foulsham and pottery including collared urns from the Witton Wood barrow.
Grimes Graves is a large and well-preserved group of Neolithic flint mines at a site near Brandon, consisting of 400 pits. It was first named Grim's Graves by the Anglo-Saxons and was first excavated in 1870 when the pits were first identified as mines dug over 5,000 years ago.English Heritage website 'Grime's Graves – Prehistoric Flint Mine'
Iron Age There is evidence that much of Norfolk was intensively farmed by people during the Late Iron Age. The Cenimagni tribe who submitted to Caesar in 54 BC were settled in both lowland and upland Norfolk by this time. They may have been centred in north-west Norfolk, where hoards of coins and torcs have been discovered such as that found at Snettisham. Coins found in the south of the county indicate that the Iceni tribe may have been centred around Thetford by the mid-1st century AD.An Historical Atlas of Norfolk, pp. 22–32
Roman Norfolk
Norfolk's coastline is markedly different from the coastline that existed when the Romans first occupied what is now the county of Norfolk. The northern coast of Norfolk has eroded over the last two millennia, parts of it perhaps having retreated by up to . The eastern coast was dominated by an enormous estuary, the island of Flegg and a peninsula (modern Lothingland). The Wash was much larger in size and the area now known as the Fens was impenetrable marsh containing isolated islands surrounded by water. The River Waveney between Norfolk and Suffolk was at that time a substantial feature.The Land of Boudica
After the Romans conquered Britain in 43 AD, forts and roads were constructed around Norfolk as the Roman army became established. Major Roman roads in the county included the Peddars Way and Pye Road. After a minor rebellion by the Iceni in 47 AD king Prasutagus was allowed to rule independently as a client king. On his death in 60 AD Roman rule was imposed on the territory and his widow Boudica was not allowed to succeed him as Roman law only allowed male heirs to claim a client king's title. After Boudica was humiliated and her daughters raped she led a rebellion in which the towns of Colchester (Camulodunum), London (Londinium) and St. Albans (Verulamium) were sacked.
Following the defeat of Boudicca the Romans restored order on the region by establishing an administrative centre at Venta Icenorum (the present Caistor St. Edmund), a small town built at Brampton and other settlements which were developed at river crossings or road junctions. The mostly rural population lived in scattered homesteads, villages or more affluent Roman villas. The level of the sea fell during Roman times and the swamps in the west of Norfolk slowly dried out. The land was then able to be converted into fertile farmland where sheep-rearing and salt production could be established.
The Saxon Shore forts were built by the Romans in the 3rd century AD as a defence against overseas raiders. In Norfolk the ruins of the forts built at Burgh Castle (Roman Gariannonum), guarding the estuary across from the island of Flegg, still exist, but there is now little remaining of the forts at Brancaster (Branodunum) built on the north coast, and at Caister-on-Sea, on the east coast and near Burgh Castle. After the last of the armies of Rome had left in 410 AD most of the visible remains of Roman Britain slowly disappeared.An Historical Atlas of Norfolk
Anglo-Saxon Norfolk
Occupation and settlement
The area experienced a depopulation during the fourth century, possibly due to raids from Saxons and Picts. Around 410 AD, Germanic-speaking settlers began to arrive from north-west Europe, thus placing the first phases of the Anglo-Saxon settlement of Norfolk before the supposed landing of Hengist and Horsa in Kent in 449. The migration here likely occurred on a very large scale; however, archaeologist Toby Martin has stressed that the settlers did not arrive as part of a coherent tribal group, and that the self-identification of the people of the region as Angles seems to have emerged from a later period of ethnogenesis.Toby F. Martin, The Cruciform Brooch and Anglo-Saxon England, Boydell and Brewer Press (2015), pp. 174–178
The new culture of the Anglo-Saxons replaced the culture of the Romans and ancient Britons. The number of Brittonic place names in this area is extremely low. Though the first written record of most of the place names in the county is the 11th-century Domesday Book, most were coined at a much earlier date. Places with names ending in -ham in Norfolk (but not those ending -ingham) are generally sited favourably by rivers or near fertile soil and grew in importance from large vills into the county's modern market towns. Comparatively less important settlements tended to end with the suffixes -ton, -wick or -stead.An historical atlas of Norfolk, pp. 36–45 Excavations and place-name evidence indicates that the early Anglo-Saxons (pre-800 AD) seem to have occupied the south and south-west of Norfolk most densely, with settlements concentrated along river systems. A settlement and a cemetery at Spong Hill, containing both graves and inhumation pots, is an example of one of the earliest Anglo-Saxon sites to have been found in Norfolk. During the 7th century East Anglia adopted Christianity and the custom of burying grave goods, found at numerous sites, eventually ceased. Evidence of early Anglo-Saxon settlement exists in the form of Ipswich ware pottery and coins (sceattas) that are unique to the period.