Facing the Ocean: The Atlantic and its Peoples, 8000 BC - AD 1500

by Barry Cunliffe

The Bretons are not French, the Celts are not English, and the Galicians are not Spanish, writes Barry Cunliffe. These maritime communities have long looked north and south along the coast, not inland, to claim a common bond. Even today, the Bretons see themselves as distinct from the French, but refer to the Irish, Welsh, and Galicians as their brothers and cousins.

In Facing the Ocean, Barry Cunliffe, one of the world's most highly regarded authorities on prehistoric Europe, offers an utterly original way of looking at that continent. He argues that the peoples of the Atlantic rim--of Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Spain, Portugal, and Gibraltar--all share a cultural identity shaped by the Atlantic Ocean, an identity which stretches back almost ten thousand years. These peoples lived at the edge of the world, in places called Land's End, Finistere, and Finisterra, and looked out on a bountiful but terrifying expanse of ocean, a roiling, merciless infinity beyond which there was nothing. Their profound relationship with the ocean set these communities apart from their inland countryman, creating a distinct Atlantic culture. Cunliffe culls the archaeological evidence to illuminate the bonds that developed and intensified between these isolated communities and helped to maintain a shared and distinctive Atlantic identity.

Attractively designed and vibrantly written, Facing the Ocean offers a striking reassessment of a people who have usually been regarded as peripheral to European history. It will send shock waves through the history world and will radically change our view of the European past.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Archaeology, Ancient History, Prehistory, Anthropology, Reference

608 pages, Hardcover

First published June 28, 2001

About the author

Sir Barrington Windsor Cunliffe taught archaeology in the Universities of Bristol and Southampton and was Professor of European Archaeology at the University of Oxford from 1972 to 2008, thereafter becoming Emeritus Professor. He has excavated widely in Britain (Fishbourne, Bath, Danebury, Hengistbury Head, Brading) and in the Channel Islands, Brittany, and Spain, and has been President of the Council for British Archaeology and of the Society of Antiquaries, Governor of the Museum of London, and a Trustee of the British Museum. He is currently a Commissioner of English Heritage.

Reviews

[Deb Omnivorous Reader · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is about the Atlantic ocean and how the peoples living on its coast line developed distinct identities based on the ocean and its influence of their culture. The time period it covers is 8000 BC to 1500 AD and generally, it makes fascinating reading. It begins with a description of the coastal zones facing the Atlantic, it then covers the basics of; tides, shipping sailors and prehistoric changes in geographic contours.

That said, I can always find something to critique:

Around about the second chapter I had developed a strong suspicion that this book was designed as a text book. It has certain strong elements of undergraduate reading matter. This can be positive in that it introduces you to a great deal of information in a structured manner, it can be negative in that the writing style becomes formulaic and unengaging and also that the amount of information is unsatisfying. What happens in a few of the early chapters is that the level of information is slightly more than a semi-informed bystander (such as myself) knows, so I couldn’t skip sections, but a major quantity of information was stuff I did already know, which made for a slightly tedious combination. A good writing style will engage you even if you already know the information, the early chapters of this book struggled with this.

I thoroughly enjoyed the archaeological, burial and prehistory chapters, there were interesting descriptions of ‘Celtic identity’ and how they came to be formed and academically described. The major strengths of this book are in archaeology and prehistory, descriptions of burial mounds and early cultures around the Atlantic. The chapters on early trade routes, and early cultural contact are really, really good and will be useful for historical recreations.

I found the chapters on Roman and Byzantine a bit less impressive and the Viking timelines, well, they do not really agree with a lot of other stuff I have read on the topic, so I am ambivalent about them. This book does deliver the first rational explanation for how the Dane and Norwegian ‘Viking’ raids began (that I have ever read at least). The last chapters dealing with more recent history are the most fragmented, and I guess that is because there is so much information on the ears and so little space.

One problem that I had reading was that all too often when discussing something with reference to a map, the map in question did not list all the places being discussed. For example map 11.9 pg 496 while being discussed they talk about ‘Wiltshire’ which does not appear on the map at all, I guess someone familiar with the area would be fine, but I found it frustrating and it happened quite a lot, in many other places.

Overall a good book, an interesting read with a lot of potential to be used as a historical resource. I might even buy it if I get the chance.

[U. Cronin · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book of huge scope that takes us from the Palaeolithic to the Renaissance. It is well written, sober, keeps speculation to a minimum and accessible to the non-archaeologist. If you are curious as to why a Celtic language is spoken in Ireland, why we have so much in common with Iberians and French, this book is for you. Ditto, if standing stones, wedge tombs, La Tene art and the fall of the Roman Empire float your boat. Its thesis is that for millennia the sea has linked the side of Europe that faces the Atlantic and that from the Shetland Isles to the north of Morocco we share very deep, common cultural roots. The Celtic languages developed as a lingua franca between traders and the shared culture spread not through conquest or huge movements of people, but close trade and cultural contacts over the millennia. There was no great Iron Age sweeping of Celts from Austria to the British Isles, but a trickle going back to the earliest days of metalworking from Spain up to Scotland.
I very much enjoyed this book and will treasure the insights it gave me into the past.

[Liam · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read this in the library a few years ago and am reminded of Bob Quinn's book Atlantean and recent genetic research that links Ireland to Northern Spain. Must read it again

[Alex Telander · Rating 3 out of 5]

“Stretching from Iceland and North Africa, the peoples who live long the thousands of miles of the Atlantic seaboard have one vista – the seeming infinity of the ocean.”

In this wonderful tome, spanning from 8000 BC to AD 1500, Barry Cunliffe has brought a masterpiece to light. Having spent years in research and study, the world now has a definitive edition on the ancient Atlantic peoples. Iceland, Scotland, Ireland, Brittany, Spain, Portugal and Gibraltar; all are linked together by one fact: each day they look out at the great Atlantic Ocean. It is a detail that brings these people, the Celts, Bretons, Galicians, closer together – kith and kin.

The reader is taken on a most unique journey through many words and details, with beautiful photos and drawings from an ancient past that we never knew existed, along with a hefty index, should one get lost along the way.

Originally published on November 12th 2001.

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[Cristobo De · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well, it was high time the British actually discovered that they are not isolated in the middle of the universe! The book explores the history of the Atlantic façade of Europe, from the Mesolithic to the end of the Middle Ages. Perhaps the most interesting part of the book is the idea that Atlantic peoples of Europe, during the Bronce Age, came to be so tightly close that eventually they spoke a common language, later known as Celtic, from the Strait of Gibraltar to the furthest isles of Scotland. This theory of "Western Celts" had never been presented in English before, as far as I know.
The book has plenty of photographs and makes an excellent work of putting together plenty of data from isolated archeologists in several European countries, usually reluctant to rise from the local, reassuring certainties into a wider picture.

[Mandy Haggith · Rating 4 out of 5]

A big, fascinating compendium of archaeology and analysis about the history of the people of the Atlantic coast. It puts the story of Atlantic people firmly in context with other European developments and shows that 'the sea joined, and the land divided'.

[Travis · Rating 4 out of 5]

A unique approach to history of human travel around the European continent, this book fills in some of the holes left after traditional historical education programs.

[Nancy Ann · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's a big, heavy book, ambitious in scope, yet so carefully organized and clearly-written as to be remarkably persuasive. In the first sentence, the author admits that it's a book he'd always wanted to write, even before he realised it. That's entirely plausible. We can readily imagine that he'd wanted to find a coherence in cultural patterns among those diverse people that live in those diverse lands that "face the ocean," that is, the Atlantic Ocean. For decades, he conducted original research, sifted through evidence, built arguments, identified relevant works by other scholars, located wonderful maps and illustrative charts and drawings and photographs to support the idea, assembling material from Greenland, Iceland, the Faroes, Scotland, Ireland, Wales and England, France, Spain and the west coast of Africa. The study brings evidence to bear dating from about 8000 BC to AD 1500 ad. In short, it's vast. I'd contend that it tests the boundaries of what a monograph -- a book on a single subject -- can be.

And yet it almost has to have such weight and scope in order to make this kind of argument. The idea of a coherence among certain cultures also demands some attention to the "edges" of that culture, the differences from other neighbouring or related cultures. The simplifying image comes, again, at the very beginning of the book: ancient poetic images in ancient literature of the Mediterranean area conjure up a space "beyond the sea," beyond what is, or can be known, an imagined place. These are the waters beyond the Pillars of Hercules -- or in contemporary parlance, the strait of Gibraltar. And in some very complex way, the tension between Mediterranean civilization and the lands that face the Atlantic persists through the book. A reader might be forgiven for supposing it to be a longer, larger history of Europe, one that asks how a complex of continents and islands forged its own identity, quite distinct from the civilizations of the Middle East. The designation "Celtic" comes up fairly often, and is treated here with caution -- not because it's wrong, but because it has enough different meanings at this point that it can become very confusing.

Was there, or was there not an "Atlantic identity? It is not the kind of question that can really be settled. Rather it's the kind of question that builds a possible context around a tremendous amount of diverse information, proposes unsuspected connections and opens up new questions -- How did that beautiful Latin inscription come to rest in a site in northern Cornwall datable -- securely -- to the late 5th century ad? Whatever happened, it clearly did not happen in isolation, in any case. The entire book concerns movement -- travel, trade, exploration and adaptation. Nor is there very much about armed conquest. Change seems invariably to have been coupled with exchange -- of materials, objects, technologies and ideas.

A reader determined to plough through page by page, in order, is likely to find it daunting. It switches, say, from details of shipbuilding to data from archaeological digs, reconstructions of ancient sites to estimates of geological change, all pinned in some way to the idea of an emerging cultural identity. On almost any given page, though, a reader will find something familiar -- the shape of a shoreline, the name of the city or river -- positioned in a very unfamiliar and thought-provoking context. This is history that isn't very tidy or finished, but wonderfully speculative, open, adept at finding its way into a reader's present.

[Smoothfin · Rating 4 out of 5]

hugely informative, slow reading but well worth the effort if you have an interest in European/Mediterranean history and culture. could probably be a college textbook for a course in archeology, anthropology,history, and even geography of Europe and the Med region.

[Bob · Rating 3 out of 5]

Too deep on archeology. I prefer Britain Begins for a more expansive view

[Davis · Rating 4 out of 5]

Ranging from prehistory up to the early 1500s, and communities from Northern Africa to Iceland, this book takes on a grand scope. And, honestly, it handles it pretty well. It briefly details the state of Europe at the time, then goes into considerable detail about how certain Atlantic communities changed and interacted with each other and the Continent. All of this is shown in an overarching theme of an 'Atlantic mentality' that exists among those communities on the ocean.

This book is basically an introductory level textbook to the subject, and honestly would not be recommended to anyone who is searching for in-depth detail on one particular Atlantic culture. However, if you are looking for a broad entry into the topic, as well as information on further reading, I would recommend this book for you. Overall it was a very interesting and enlightening read.

[Jenifer Hanen · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good. Long. Interesting. New information that I did not know before.

I particularly like the section of 8000BC to about 1000BC. After that Cunliffe takes a few different tacks on well know historical info.

[Maya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Please see my review at : Celtic Scholar