| GUERNSEY PARISHES/TOWNS* | |||||
| West | Middle | East | |||
| 01 | St Saviour | 04 | Castel | 07 | Vale |
| 02 | St Pierre du Bois | 05 | St Andrew | 08 | St Sampson* |
| 03 | Toreval | 06 | Forest | 09 | St Peter Port* |
| 10 | St Martin | ||||
| JERSEY PARISHES/VILLAGES1 AND TOWNS | |||||
| West | Middle | East | |||
| 01 | Saint Mary1 | 05 | Saint John1 | 09 | Trinity |
| 02 | Saint Ouen1 | 06 | Saint Lawrence | 10 | Saint Martin |
| 03 | Saint Peter1 | 07 | Saint Helier2 | 11 | Saint Grouville |
| 04 | Saint Brelade2 | 08 | Saint Saviour | 12 | Saint Clement |
The Channel Islands lie in the Normanno-Breton Gulf, west of the Brittany and Cotentin peninsulas. These islands, seven of which are permanently occupied, were divided into two bailiwicks (‘bailiff’s villages’): the Bailiwick of Jersey and the Bailiwick of Guernsey which incorporates Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, Jethou, Brecqhou, Lihou (unoccupied) and Crevichon (unoccupied). Included within each group are many uninhabited islands and islets.
During the Pleistocene Ice Age (2580-11.7 kya) sea-levels were lower because more of Earth’s water was locked in the ice. All the area now occupied by the Irish Sea, North Sea and the English Channel was dry land, a frozen tundra landscape, crisscrossed by small rivers.
Around 450 kya (MIS 12) the rising water forced the Dover Strait and created the Pleistocene Channel River carrying the waters of the Rhine, Meuse, Scheldt, Somme, Seine, Thames and Palaeo-Solent southwestwards into the Atlantic.
During the Late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic, the seafloor between England and continental Europe was progressively flooded by the rising seas. The Channel Islands were gradually transformed from small hills lying off the French coast, to peninsulas of northern France and finally islands.
The rising seas separated Guernsey, Herm, and Sark from France by 9000 BC, Alderney from 7000 BC, while to the south the land bridge between Jersey and Normandy formed an inter-tidal causeway (an area above water level at low tide and underwater at high tide) that persisted past 4000 BC.
The earliest evidence of occupation of the Channel Islands by humans is from the Middle Palaeolithic (300-50 kya) site, La Cotte de St Brelade, Jersey. It was occupied by Neolithic hunter-gatherers during a period spanning at least 240,000 to 40,000 years ago, who used it as a base for hunting mammoth and woolly rhinoceros.
A site of similar age is La Cotte à la Chèvre in St Ouen, Jersey, where flints and hominid teeth (including some typical of Neanderthals) and the remains of mammoth and reindeer accompanied by examples of the Levallois prepared core technology have been found.
Excavations of a 15,000-year-old campsite at Les Varines, St Saviour, Jersey, revealed ten stone plaquettes fragments with a series of complex multi-layered incisions that probably date to the Magdalenian period (21-14 kya). In the shallows between Jethou/Crevichon, Bailiwick of Guernsey, evidence of flint manufacture confirms occupation around 10,000 BC.
Evidence of the presence of hunter gatherers during Early Mesolithic (9700-8000 BC) has been derived from charred hazelnut shells found in association with fragments of worked flint at the burial mound at Les Fouaillages, Vale, Guernsey, and similarly, from charred hazelnut shells from a hearth at a Mesolithic flint scatter site on Lihou, Bailiwick of Guernsey,
In the parish of St Ouen, Jersey, the remains of an ancient stream, the Canal du Squez that existed during the Middle Mesolithic, have produced the largest number of Mesolithic artefacts in the Channel Islands.
For the Early Neolithic Period on the islands, archaeological evidence of buildings is almost entirely absent and the record is dominated by artefacts, post holes, pits, etc.
| EARLY NEOLITHIC PERIOD (5000-4250 BC) | |||
| Delancey Park | artefacts | Guernsey | 5000-4500 |
| Guernsey airport | artefacts | Guernsey | 5000-4500 |
| Herm (island | artefacts | Guernsey | 5000-4500 |
| L’Erée | artefacts | Guernsey | 5000-4500 |
| Le Dehus | artefacts | Guernsey | 5000-4500 |
| Les Fouaillages | artefacts | Guernsey | 5000-4500 |
| Savoy Hotel | artefacts | Guernsey | 5000-4500 |
| L’Ouzière | occupation | Jersey | 4900-4700 |
| Les Fouaillages | turf barrow | Guernsey | 4900-4700 |
| Mont Orgueil | occupation | Jersey | 4700-4600 |
| Royal Hotel | buildings | Guernsey | 4700-4600 |
| Herm (island) | buildings | Guernsey | 4600-4300 |
| La Hougue Boëte | pottery | Jersey | 4600-4300 |
| La Hougue des Grosnez | pottery | Jersey | 4600-4300 |
| La Motte | occupation | Jersey | 4600-4300 |
| Le Pinacle | occupation | Jersey | 4600-4300 |
| Les Blanches Banques | pottery | Jersey | 4600-4300 |
| Les Fouaillages | passage tomb | Guernsey | 4500-4300 |
| La Sergenté | passage tomb | Jersey | 4500-4250 |
During the rest of the Neolithic period (4250 to 1750 BC) people built megalithic monuments of which there are several types: menhirs/orthostats (single upright standing stone of unknown but presumably of Neolithic date); passage tombs (burial chamber with narrow passage leading to the exterior), Middle Neolithic; gallery tombs (long chamber divided into compartments), Late Neolithic, cist (stone lined grave), and cist-in-circles (central cist surrounded by a circle of stones), Final Neolithic, traditionally placed in the Chalcolithic. The tombs were originally covered by a mound of earth (barrow), which in many cases has long since disappeared.
| MIDDLE NEOLITHIC (4250-3250 BC) | ||
| Beauport | passage tomb | St Brelade, Jersey |
| La Hougue Bie | passage tomb | Grouville, Jersey |
| La Hougue des Géonnais | passage tomb | St Ouen, Jersey |
| La Pouquelaye de Faldouet | passage tomb | St Martin, Jersey |
| La Varde | passage tomb | Vale, Guernsey |
| Le Creux ès Faïes | passage tomb | St Pierre, Guernsey |
| Le Déhus | passage tomb | Vale, Guernsey |
| Le Trépied | passage tomb | St Saviour, Guernsey |
| Les Monts de Grantez | passage tomb | St Ouen, Jersey |
| Mont Ubé | passage tomb | St Clement, Jersey |
| LATE NEOLITHIC (3250-2850 BC) | ||
| Le Couperon | gallery tomb | St Martin, Jersey |
| Ville-ès-Nouaux | gallery tomb | St Helier, Jersey |
| FINAL NEOLITHIC (2850-1750 BC) | ||
| Castel Church | statue-menhir | Castel, Guernsey |
| La Gran’mère deChimquière | statue-menhir | St Martin, Guernsey |
| La Longue Rocque | menhir | St Pierre, Guernsey |
| The Broken Menhir | menhir | St Brelade, Jersey |
| The Great Menhir | menhir | St Brelade, Jersey |
| The Little Menhir | menhir | St Brelade, Jersey |
| CHALCOLITHIC PERIOD (2300-1750 BC) | ||
| La Hougue Boëte | cist | St John, Jersey |
| La Hougue des Platons | cist-in-circle | Trinity, Jersey |
| La Platte Mare | cist-in-circle | Vale, Guernsey |
| Mare-ès-Mauves | cist-in-circle | Vale, Guernsey |
| Ossuary | cist | St Brelade, Jersey |
| Sandy Hook | cist-in-circle | Vale, Guernsey |
| Ville-ès-Nouaux | cist-in-circle | St Helier, Jersey |
The dating of menhirs can be problematic since in most cases there is no associated material. In the Channel Islands the undated menhirs are placed in the Late Neolithic together with the stylised female figure statue-menhirs of Castel Church, Castel, and La Gran’mère de Chimquière, St Martins, both in Guernsey and dated to 2500-1800 BC.
The Chalcolithic is characterised by the first appearance of objects of copper and gold, the indigenous Jersey Bowl pottery and the Bell Beaker culture (2450-1800 BC). Sark and Herm have copper bearing ores but there is no direct evidence of metal exploitation in the Channel Islands during prehistory.
The Bronze Age saw the abandonment of the Neolithic/ Chalcolithic megalithic monuments and the introduction of alternative monument types, primarily tumuli.
Some Neolithic monuments, however, continued to be used into the Bronze Age and the later periods. The monument at Ville-ès-Nouaux, St Helier, Jersey, comprised a Late Neolithic gallery tomb, a Final Neolithic cist-in-circle and a Bronze Age and Iron Age cremation cemetery. Inside the passage tomb, Beakers, Jersey Bowls and an archer’s schist (metamorphic rock) wristguard were recovered.
Le Pinacle, St Ouen, Jersey, is a protruding pinnacle of rock with remains and ruins at its base which include two earth and rubble ramparts attributed to the Neolithic and a third to the Bronze Age. Iron Age occupation is attributed to six pieces of iron. There is also evidence of a Gallo-Roman temple.
The cist known as the Ossuary (3000-2000 BC), St Brelade, Jersey, on the Les Blanches Banques, produced two Jersey Bowls associated with disarticulated remains (mainly skulls and long bones) of at least twenty individuals
Much of the Bronze Age evidence for the Channel Islands is hard to distinguish from other periods. Current evidence from the Channel Islands does not support clear changes from the Early to Middle Bronze Ages, although fortified sites are a key indicator of the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age.
The decline in the use of funerary structures during the Late Bronze Age occurred at the same time as the rise in the number of hoards on Jersey and Alderney, but not on Guernsey where no hoards have yet been found.
| BRONZE AGE (1740-800 BC) *9th century BC |
| Cadoret Hoard, 178 bronze items, St Mary, Jersey |
| La Blanche Pierre Hd, 114 bronze items, St Lawrence Jersey |
| Mainlands Hoard, bronze items, St Lawrence Jersey |
| *Longy Hoard, 200 bronze items, Longy Common, Alderney |
| St Ouen’s Hoard, 200 bronze items, St Ouen Jersey |
| Town Mill Hoard, 88 bronze axes, St Helier Jersey |
| Trinity Hoard, 23 bronze axe heads, Trinity Jersey |
| PRE-ROMAN IRON AGE (800-00-43) 1st century BC |
| Grouville Hoard, silver coins+, Grouville, Jersey |
| La Marquanderie Hoard, Armorican coins, St Brélade, Jersey |
| Le Câtillon Hoard, Armorican coins+, Grouville, Jersey |
| Rozel (1820) Hoard, Armorican staters, St Martin, Jersey |
| Rozel (1875) Hoard, 700 coins, St Martin, Jersey |
The Channel Islands have a number of Pre-Roman Iron Age headland fortifications. On the neck of the Jerbourg peninsula in St Martin in the southeast corner of Guernsey, Iron Age earthworks comprising a triple line of banks and ditches were built on the site of earlier defences.
Le Câtel de Rozel, Trinity, on a headland above Rozel Harbour, with a 6 metre high bank extending approximately 300 metres, forms the largest of the Jersey Iron Age forts.
At Le Câtel de Lecq, St Mary, Guernsey, a hill dominating the headland to the east of Greve de Lecq, two concentric banks and ditches suggest the site of an Iron Age fort.
In Longy/Longis Common, Alderney, set above an Iron Age graveyard dating back to around 200 BC, a small Roman fort, known locally as the ‘Nunnery’, dates back to the fourth century AD. Skeletons dating back to the first and second centuries BC were found beneath the Roman masonry.
Isle of Man, Bailiwick of Jersey and Bailiwick of Guernsey are all British Crown Dependencies. They are not part of the United Kingdom or the European Union and are independent states except for the conduct of foreign policy and defence – these responsibilities rest formally with the Crown (the House of Windsor) but are in fact acquitted by the UK government at Westminster.
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