Summary
A major writing and research project currently nearing completion, exploring nearly a million years of human history in Britain from the earliest known human presence to the early medieval world. Combining archaeology, landscape, mythology and ancient sources, the book is now approaching publication.
Before England is a major manuscript by Matthew Armitage examining nearly a million years of human presence on the British Isles, from the earliest known footsteps at Happisburgh to the complex societies emerging in the early medieval period.
The project traces a long and unbroken human story of migration, adaptation, settlement and cultural transformation across changing landscapes and climates. Drawing together archaeology, landscape history, environmental science, mythology, early historical sources and the latest discoveries in genetics, the manuscript explores how people shaped, and were shaped by, Britain’s land across thousands of generations.
The book follows the first pioneering hominids who reached these shores, the hunter-gatherer communities who survived dramatic climate change, the arrival of farming and metalworking, and the development of the cultures and identities that existed long before the idea of “Britain” itself emerged.
Combining scientific evidence with accessible narrative history, the manuscript seeks to make Britain’s distant past understandable, engaging and connected to the landscapes people still experience today.
Rather than presenting history as distant or abstract, Before England explores continuity and survival through rivers, landscapes, settlements, place names and traditions that still preserve traces of earlier Britain.
Ultimately, the project asks a simple but profound question:
What does nearly a million years of human history look like when we follow the footprints across the land itself?
The manuscript is now nearing completion, with publication plans currently being developed.