One of the earliest attempts to chronicle, clarify and make sense of British Prehistory before the arrival of Rome came from the pen of 12th century cleric Geoffrey of Monmouth. Geoffrey's magnum opus, the Historia Regum Britanniae (A History of the Kings of Britain) chronicles the rulers of Britain from the earliest times until the 7th century AD. Along the way, it explains how the Britons were descended from refuges escaping the Trojan War, how they battled against giants, Scythians and later Saxons and how Stonehenge was built from a circle shipped directly from Ireland (using magic). It was also the first major work to discuss the life of King Arthur (and as a consequence became a Medieval best-seller) and also Kings Lear and Cymbeline (both later immortalised by Shakespeare) as well as less-well known monarchs Brutus, Cole, Bladud and the impressively named Rud Hud Hudibras. It also contains dragons.
Understandably, perhaps, in the cold light of the modern scientific world, Geoffrey's book has either been completely ignored or cast as a work of utter make-believe. Yet, once you look beyond the tales of sorcery, mythological creatures and general weirdness, what you have left is something rather more intriguing. A detailed re-examination of the Historia, as part of the Lost Voices Project, has shown that elements of Geoffrey's book do indeed appear to originate from a very specific part of Britain in the late first century BC. If the Historia does therefore contain fragments of a 'lost voice', recording the distant past from the perspective of the ancient Britons themselves (and not something filtered through the militaristic world-view of Rome), then how does it change our understanding of the Iron Age? If the Geoffrey’s book is not (completely) a work of Medieval fiction, can it throw any light on a period that we still mistakenly call pre-history?
Miles Russell, University of Bournemouth
