Sub-Roman Britain (Cavalry etc)

[Carvettia]

I missed the connection between the Picts and Britons, other than occupying the same island. I was under the impression that the Picts were a distinctive people (as much as any tribal group could be different from its neighbors) distinguished from both the Briton tribes to their south, who became Romanized under the Empire, and the Dalriada Scots, who began to invade/settle/whatever to their west about AD 600. Is that not true?

Horses widespread in Britain before the Roman invasions (pulling chariots, if nothing else), weren't they?

Yes. They'd existed in Britain before the last ice age, probably moved south ahead of the glaciation, & were probably on the continent of Europe when the ice melted and the English Channel formed. Part of Robin Bendrey's research (University of Winchester Dept of Archaeology) is into the identification of horse use by studying wear on bones and teeth. Bendrey wrote to me (in answer to a query) last year.: "the [archaeological] evidence at the moment indicates domestic horses were probably introduced in the Late Neolithic or Early Bronze Age ..." and he sent me his chapter of a book then currently in press (Sykes N and O’Connor T (eds.), Extinctions and Invasions: A Social History of British Fauna. Windgather Press.):

there is a clear difference between the representation of horses at Bronze Age and Iron Age sites (Figure 1; Bendrey, 2007b). In the Bronze Age the horse contributes a relatively small proportion of individual assemblages (typically less than five percent of the horse and cattle bones). ... In the Iron Age, horse is not only present in all but the smallest assemblages, as in the Late Bronze Age, but often makes a more significant contribution to assemblages (Figure 1). This could reflect a mix of phenomena, related to changing attitudes to horses, such as horses being eaten more regularly, access to greater numbers of horses or horses being more commonly deposited as ritual acts. ...it was not a regular part of the diet, and ... the earliest use of the horse was not primarily as a food animal (Bendrey, 2007b). ...By the Late Bronze Age, horses appear to have had a critical impact on human society. They then entered widespread use, harness fittings and chapes were first used and largely complete horse skeletons began to appear in what are interpreted as ritual contexts (Bendrey, 2007b). ...

Antler cheekpieces, parts of the horse’s harness, first appear in the archaeological record in the Late Bronze Age (Britnell, 1976). The presence of chapes in the early first millennium BC suggests a role for horse riding in warfare (Darvill, 1987). These winged chapes, from the end of sword scabbards, developed so that a sword could be drawn while on horseback (by hooking the chape under the foot) (ibid., 128). The date at which wheeled vehicles came into use in Britain is also uncertain (ibid., 128). Cunliffe (2005, 538-539) states that although vehicles are known from the Hallstatt period on the continent there is no evidence for their use in Britain at this time (the Late Bronze Age) and suggests that the light two-wheeled vehicle was probably introduced to Britain during the La Tène I period in the late fifth or early fourth century BC. Presumably, therefore, functional use of the horse before this, without wheeled vehicles, would have consisted of riding, pulling loads without wheels, or pack-use. It is probably the case that the importance of riding in the Iron Age has previously been under-represented in the literature (e.g. Cunliffe, 2005), largely due to the archaeological visibility of vehicles and vehicle fittings and relative invisibility of riding (Bendrey, 2007c).

So - by the time the Roman legions arrived, the uses of the horse in Britain were already pretty broad.