Word: celtics
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...hippie commune, but volunteers for an experiment in Iron Age living, sponsored and filmed by the BBC and now on English television as a twelve-part series. Isolated deep in the Wiltshire woods, they have spent nearly a year trying to re-create the lives of their Celtic ancestors of 2,200 years...
...Producer John Percival, an archaeology buff, conceived the project after a visit to a re constructed Iron Age settlement in Lejre, Denmark. From 1,000 volunteers, Percival selected six couples and trained them in Celtic crafts and culture. One couple, with the commune's only children, three boys, braved it for much of the year but quit the experiment several months ago. The others have stayed on, raising crops and livestock, making pottery, cooking Iron Age food and spinning and weaving wool sheared from their own sheep...
...coped gracefully with primitive life. Building the communal hut took more than two months. Using ancient tools, the group chopped wood for 72 rafters, fashioned a conical thatched roof and sides out of wattle (interwoven hazel branches) and daub (mud and animal hair). Making a loaf of bread the Celtic way took nearly a day. Fashioning clay storage pots took longer, and the early pottery tended to crack over the fire-until the novices got the hang of their craft. Says Helen Elphick: "We were all very frustrated...
...year of communal living with scant privacy produced close friendships, a good deal of casual nudity, and a strong taboo against swapping sexual partners. The group talked and moved more slowly and became more superstitious, although members found it hard to sustain an interest in the Celtic religion. "I still can't pray to their gods and goddesses," says John Rockcliff. "It takes more than a year to leave this century...
...thinking time," she says. Still, she misses the animals and the plants, and the continuing story about trees that she told the children at nighttime around the fire. "It developed into a saga, and now that's gone." The children are less nostalgic. They now refer to the Celtic experience as a "silly time...