The Tribe of Witches

The Tribe of Witches: The Religion of the Dobunni and Hwicce

The first edition cover of the book, depicting Cleeve Hill in the background, with a relief of Mercury and his consort found in Gloucester in the foreground.
Author	Stephen J. Yeates
Country	England
Language	English
Subject	English Iron Age archaeology, Anglo-Saxon archaeology
Publisher	Oxbow Books
Publication date	2008
Media type	Print (Paperback)
Pages	195
ISBN
Followed by	A Dreaming for the Witches (2009)

The Tribe of Witches: The Religion of the Dobunni and Hwicce is a historical and archaeological study of pre-Christian religion among the Iron Age Dobunni and the Early Medieval Hwicce, two tribal groups who lived in central England. It was written by the archaeologist Stephen J. Yeates and published by Oxbow Books in 2008. Yeates had previously published his theories in a three-volume British Archaeological Report monograph entitled Religion, Community and Territory: Defining Religion in the Severn Valley and Adjacent Hills from the Iron Age to the Early Medieval Period (2006).

Throughout the book, Yeates explores a number of different archaeological and geographical features located in the region of Dobunni and Hwicce, looking at how the landscape evolved throughout the Iron Age, Romano-British period and Early Middle Ages. These include the temples built in the area, sacred rivers, mines and defensive features.

The Tribe of Witches was reviewed in both peer-reviewed academic journals and by a number of practicing Pagans. The former were predominantly negative, arguing that Yeates' arguments were farfetched, lacking sufficient evidence and that he suffered from a poor grasp of onomastics; in contrast, many also praised his writing style and his extensive use of references and images. Yeates expanded on the theories put forward in The Tribe of Witches in his later book, A Dreaming for the Witches: The Recreation of the Dobunni Primal Myth (2009).

The book was the result of research carried out by Yeates at Oxford University as part of a D.Phil. project from 2001–05. The supervisors of the study were Prof. Martin Henig and Prof. Barry Cunliffe, and the assessors Dr. Ray Howell and Prof. Chris Gosden. Though certain ideas, such as that concerning Cuda, had already been formulated before this period.

Several of Yeates' arguments and theories had seen publication prior to the release of The Tribe of Witches. His theories regarding the goddess Cuda had been published in peer assessed academic journals both locally, and internationally. A review of the 2006 publication Religion, Community, and Territory from a linguist Baker stated that we should now recognise Cuda and that she is the root of place-names using *Cod. Some of the Cotswold river-names have been discussed in an article in the Journal of the English Place-name Society. His arguments for cultural continuity in the region were also published in a peer assessed paper in Lewis and Semple (2010) Perspectives in Landscape Archaeology: Papers presented at Oxford 2003–05.