Iron Age Britain

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For a long time, Iron Age Britain has been misunderstood. In the past, this centuries long period of British prehistory, just before the Roman conquest, has been portrayed as a shadowy world, dominated by warriors in blue paint. A land of so-called barbarians, living rudimentary lives on the edge of the known world. But we now know. And that's not quite right. Across Britain, objects have been pulled from rivers and earth that tell a different story.

Objects so intricate and so deliberate, crafted by highly sophisticated pre-Roman societies, each with their own traditions. It is archaeology that has started to shine an incredible light on who these Iron Age Britons actually were. And how they live. New discoveries are being unearthed and revealed to the world for the first time. in more than two thousand years. We are in a golden age for Iron Age archaeology. It is archaeology that is revealing a world of striking elites, both men and women.

Of complex settlements, beautiful metalwork, long distance trade, and of profound beliefs that shaped entire landscapes. It's this archaeology that we're going to delve into today. Welcome to the Ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is an introduction to the exciting yet still very mysterious world of. Our guest is Durham University's Professor Tom Moore, one of the leading experts on Iron Age Britain. Tom, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast.

Lovely to see you again, Tristan. Too long since we last chatted. We chatted all things that amazing discovery, the Males and Bee Horde, which I gather is going on display very, very soon. Yep, there's gonna be the first exhibition in Yorkshire Museum on the fifteenth of May. So excited to kind of see that the public's reaction to it.

And so people understand the Melsonby Horde, we did a whole uh film on it with you and other key people involved in the project, but this is one of the largest, the most significant iron age discoveries in the north of England in recent years. Yeah, I mean one of the largest discoveries for the Iron Age in the whole of Britain I would say. Yeah, probably the largest order of Iron Age metalwork ever encountered in a huge number of artifacts, particularly really exciting bits of vehicles.

Chariots, but also ch possibly wagons, which we haven't seen before, which sounds a bit nerdy but it's really interesting for INA specialists'cause we've never seen four wheeled wagons in Britain before, so very exciting. Well Nerdy is

what we want beyond the ancients. At any way we're going to be doing much more of that nitty gritty detail in our NAH Britain. But of course, Iron Age Britain, it's a large topic, so we're going to hop from topic to topic within our chat and seeing how much we can get through. But first off, with the background, when someone says Iron Age Britain today, how large a period of time are we talking about?

So the Iron Age starts around about eight hundred BC. You know, it depends when you define the Iron Age, all the way through to the Roman conquest really, so A D forty three in the southeast of England, obviously slightly later, in northern England and then parts of Scotland are never conquered by Rome.

That's a little bit of an artificial cut off for the end of it because of course that you know, that's just uh the conquest but actually much of Iron Age life in many parts of Britain carries on for a long period into the Roman period. But that's what we define as the Iron Age.

a huge period, isn't it? It's like from today all the way back to the time of the Crusades. So when talking about R and Age Britain, I guess we're going to uh need to get our head around straight away that there's a lot of development, a lot of evolution that you can see in these societies over that period.

Definitely. And uh you know, in the past sometimes we've kind of tended to kind of think of Iron Age life and society and settlement as all being one thing. But like you say, there's a huge change between the end of the Bronze Age, the late Bronze Age, all the way through to the Roman period.

And also it's worth remembering there's huge diversity just in Britain in terms of the way people lived, the societies they lived in, the settlements they lived in. So sometimes it's quite hard to kind of just generalise and say this is what the Iron Age was like. There used to be a tendency to think with the coming of Rome that was the coming of civilization as it was, and what was in Britain before, it was mysterious, but it was the land of backward barbarians almost.

Yeah, definitely. That was kind of the old way of looking at it. I mean, much of What was happening in the Late Iron Age was a precursor to what happened in the Roman Empire. I mean, if we think about how farming was in the Late Iron Age, most of those developments had already happened under Iron Age societies. It wasn't you know, Rome brought innovations of urbanism for instance, but much of the rest of society was already highly developed and complex. Before Rome ever turned up.

And this is where archaeology is it really shines a light on Iron Age Britain unlike anything else. Yes, because of course you've got to remember that Iron Age Societies didn't leave any written records. Interestingly, you know, some of them in the very late Iron Age could probably read and write Latin, but that's very few people. And the only written evidence we have is a few

sources from Greek and Roman writers which suffer from their own problems of propaganda and so on. So it's only archaeology that can really tell us about INA societies. What I have here, I wanted to bring this because it was discovered deep in an attic quite recently, but it's the history book from I think it's the eighteen fifties or eighteen forties. So it's quite an artifact in itself.

But it has like the first page kind of gives you an insight into how they viewed the Iron Age back then and how different we can and we can like dissect it all and go through the archaeology today. But it's interesting how it like that this book

No, four kids more than a hundred and fifty years ago. It starts basically with the Romans, and a quick explanation of what was there before, what they thought. And so it it starts it talks about Caesar's arrival in Britain and talks about the the people of Britain. Uh its inhabitants, who were then thinly scattered over the island, were not civilized at all. Like they resembled barbarians, barbarous tribes.

In old tombs or fields of battle, specimens of their arms and tools are still dug up. These consist of spear and arrowheads, hatchets and knives ingeniously made of flint. They were not acquainted with the use of lime in building, but lived mostly in subterranean dwellings covered with large slabs of stone.

With the same rude material they erected many remarkable monuments which astonish and confuse the modern architects, such are the druidic circles of Stonehenge and other places, consisting of huge upright masses of rock. surmounted by transverse blocks of immense size, and it kind of goes on and on. It's like the soil was poorly cultivated, and many districts which are now fruitful cornfields, were then barren, wastes or impassable morasses.

It would seem at the present day but a poor boast for a powerful and civilized empire like Rome to gain victories over such tribes. Immediate thoughts on that, Tom? Yes. Well obviously archaeology has changed. I mean when you look at something like that, obviously it's written in a time before archaeology was really a

uh full discipline and really understood that. So you could see from that little quote you read there that there's a sort of conflation of flints and Neolithic and with the Iron Age. So they're not really they haven't got that understanding of deep time that we now understand in the Iron Age. And of course w when we think about the sources they were using, like Julius Caesar's account of the conquest or his invasions of Britain.

You know, that's what they're using to understand periods like the Iron Age. Archaeology now in the lot you know, since throughout the twentieth century and now you know allows us to have a much better understanding of those societies. Better understanding, better dating.

more insights into how they lived. Still, presumably many mysteries still abound, but we are learning through new discoveries in the north and south of Britain more about how they lived and, yeah, how sophisticated they were, how they communicated, exchanged with each other, and so much more.

Yeah, I mean it's a really exciting time for NA studies, as you say. I mean, you know, they're exciting discoveries, not least Melson B, but but also huge advances in scientific analysis. So ancient DNA studies telling us about relationships between people, perhaps where they came from, isotope studies.

also telling us about diet and also perhaps the origins of individuals. And I have to say, and it sort of perhaps doesn't grab the headlines so much, but also what we would call developer led archaeology. So You know, most people perhaps don't realise that n over ninety percent of archaeology in Britain happens before development, before road schemes and building. And that's constantly providing new Iron Age settlements so that we can chart

the kind of houses they live in, the str the settlements they live in, and and even perhaps, you know, the the the increase in numbers of settlements over time. So it's a really exciting time to be able to bring all that together to try and sort of understand Iron Age societies as a whole.

So we'll get to these settlements very quickly, keywords like roundhouses, hill forts, and so on. But first of all, the arrival of the Iron Age in Britain, what should we be thinking? So in terms of people think of the Iron Age and we think of iron obviously as being defining that. In many ways, iron doesn't necessarily define the Iron Age. The the Late Bronze Age ends with the kind of i people might know that in the Bronze Age, and particularly the Late Bronze Age, there's large

hoarding of bronze objects and then depositing them in wet places or in hordes on land. And that ceases around eight hundred, seven hundred BC, which is kind of the end of the Bronze Age. But iron technology doesn't come in Straight away. In fact, iron technology is actually there's some evidence that it's been around for a few hundred years, before the end of the Bronze Age, confusingly. So there is iron technology in the Bronze Age. Okay.

Yes, I uh oddly but yes, or at least hint hints at it. So there's a site in Berkshire which has smithing. So that's when you're s you're you're smithing objects, so you're not actually smelting the ore, but dates from about nine hundred B C. So very early, when we're firmly in the Bronze Age. Iron technology then smelting, so that's actually taking the ore. Doesn't happen till about maybe eight hundred, seven hundred B C.

But actually the iron technology when we get it for example traded in l in sort of ingots for instance doesn't really happen until about four hundred BC. So iron technology kind of is there in the background and emerges through the early part of the Iron Age. Yeah. So it's a little bit now in the past people used to think that there was these people called the Celts who brought iron technology or so perhaps brought Celtic art. We know from particularly things like DNA studies that

That's certainly not true. The influx of peoples is more perhaps in the Bronze Age than it is in the Iron Age. It's just so-called the beaker people. Yeah. Yeah, so that's when we have we can see more evidence of an influx of people coming from the continent. So in terms of how the Iron Age adopts, it's more of an insular development and perhaps a relationship between changes in the economy, society and ritual in the end of the Bronze Age.

and new technology coming in. So the idea that there is a new group of people coming in is is not is not the case. It's more of a change in society.

To add to the complexity there, it's also worth remembering that there is almost certainly a change in the climate between about eight hundred and four hundred BC, so it gets a bit colder and wetter. So all of these things are happening concurrent with each other and societies are changing. So That's why when you say when does the iron age start, it sounds like a really easy question, but actually it's not quite so easy.

You see well at a time when Britain gets a bit more miserable then it sounds like a reversal climate as well. As an archeologist, I would never say it gets miserable, it just changes. Uh but it's interesting that gradual process, which I'm hearing again and again now with so many ancient episodes and that when new technology comes in.

how long it takes people over generations realizing or being able to get their hands on, you know, these new tools, this new metal that they now realize in their new settlements is more valuable, is more useful than let's say bronze and so on.

Yes. I mean one of the things you've got to think about with iron technology compared to bronze, it's very different t kind of technology. So with bronze objects you're casting them. Iron has to be smelted and then smithed. You know, you th there's a different process there. They're not the same technological process.

It's worth thinking that people don't necessarily see the advantages of iron or or per ta perhaps even need the advantages of iron. If you built an entire economy on bronze working and obtaining bronze or the the the materials like tin and copper to make bronze, and you build a whole society on that. Iron technology is not necessarily something you want or need to adopt straight away. So

We can be a little bit kind of assuming that as soon as people find iron technology, it's better that it's actually w when you first make iron, it's not necessarily better than bronze for the things you need it to do. So there is a long period where people are

Playing with that technology, they're they're imitating it. So there's a there's a wonderful site in Wales where you've got an import of a sword which is made from iron from the continent, and then there are objects made in iron but copying bronze types. So people are clearly kind of Playing around with this technology, but perhaps not seeing the advantages of it or needing the advantages straight away. Have a look at the the backbone almost of Iron Age society and how these people live. live.

Is it fair though this time? I mean agriculture, that's at the forefront. For people living in our and age Britain, an everyday figure, they're living in an agricultural type of settlement. Yes, I mean throughout the Iron Age, almost everybody is a farmer, even right up into the late Iron Age, you know, that we don't

have really specialists perhaps until the very end of the Iron Age. Most people are farming most of the time. And they are mostly subsistence farmers, in other words, you know, growing enough to feed them uh and their families, you know, perhaps a little bit of surplus, but they're not creating for, you know, a broader economy.

And what's the everyday settlement of one of these Iron Age farmers? I know it's a huge period, it's several centuries, but there is one type of settlement that you you tend to associate with an Iron Age farmer. There are, you know, a lot of people that l lived in small farmsteads. I mean I would

hesitate to say as y as we say, the Iron Age is a long period and incredibly diverse. I mean, one of the things we are very aware of now is the diversity of the kind of settlements you lived in. I mean, you can contrast it from the the big stone brocks of Yes. Of northern and western Scotland down to the courtyard house settlements of Cornwall, to the unenclosed settlements, so these are scatters of roundhouses that you find in in the East Midlands. You know.

Yn, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw, yw. So there's a huge diversity. Perhaps most people will think Iron Age hill forts. And we kind of think hill forts are the typical Iron Age settlement. But even then, hill forts are incredibly varied. So that's interesting. I would have actually thought straight away get to the Hill Forks in a bit, but the roundhouse like surely the a small farm.

The roundhouse. I mean you mentioned Brocks and all these things. I mean the kidding, they're always round. Well, the the roundhouse is the kind of standard structure that people live in throughout the Iron Age, although they're in themselves are also incredibly diverse from you know, quite monumental structures. I mean, you know, i uh that we see in the late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, really big timber built roundhouses to to smaller structures.

such as stonewalled roundhouses in in northern England in the later period. So but yes, the roundhouse is the kind of the standard structure. I mean, that is in itself interesting as why there's that kind of tendency to build around houses, which tells us something about how those households worked, for instance, perhaps even about the way they understood their space in a kind of more uh symbolic way.

So what do we know about the function of roundhouses and was like the house of an everyday person in the Iron Age? So yeah, I mean that it was the main habitation for probably a household as communal living. There's very little evidence that they were divided into sort of different rooms or any spaces like that. So and it's where most of the activities would have taken place, within perhaps the doorways, through the lights, you know. So that

where everything is going on. One of the interesting things that's always been fascinating, if somewhat controversial, is this sort of orientation of the doors of houses because they faced east or southeast a lot of the time. So there's big discussion about whether that To avoid wind direction coming from the southwest. So it keeps you your house less windy and cold, but also the light is coming from the east.

But also there's a kind of that tendency towards the southeast might be having something to do with symbolic orientation between towards the sunrise, for instance. And can we imagine these smaller settlements?

I've been to Butser Ancient Farm before, I I always think of that. But we'll get to the Hill Forts and the larger settlements in a bit, but with these kind of farmsteads, with these roundhouses, generally speaking, do we think from archaeology that You would probably see maybe like three, four, or five roundhouses in one of these settlements in like kind of a very small, tight knit community.

Yes, again, you know, i w it's a little bit difficult to generalize, but certainly f I mean there is actually quite a change over much of particularly southern Britain from the early Iron Age. That's ter period from about eight hundred BC through to about four hundred BC where we have more unenclosed settlements. Just a scatter of roundhouses, so perhaps just a few households. So you're talking very small populations. And then as we move into the period after about four hundred BC, people

live in what we would call small enclosed farmsteads. So they're digging ditches round their settlements. And again, those are perhaps just one or two roundhouses, so small households. So most of those communities are pretty small. They're the extended household rather than There are very few sort of villages, if you like, large numbers of households together. Livestock And the building of the the roundhouse itself, is this where we get the word Wasseland Orb quite a lot?

Certainly most of those w would have been mottle and door constructed. Yes, there are a few where we have s uh stone footings for roundhouses, particularly in sort of northern England, for instance, in Northumberland. But yes, most of them are kind of timber built structures.

It's worth remembering, I mean, particularly if you I mean if you've been to Butsa, you can think of some of the particular actually the late Bronze Age or early Iron Age roundhouses. These are pretty impressive structures, you know, big use of timber. They're not you know, the idea that these are kind of mud huts. Is as you're kind of earlier, reference was talking about the other. Exactly. We're kind of already displacing that straight.

These are these are these are complex structures, big structures. And of course when when we're talking about Brochs and big monumental structures in in Scotland, these are incredibly Highly architectural built.

Don't get me started on the bro, because that's another episode in the set. But hopefully we'll have some pictures, some shots of Butts Range and Farm. We filmed there in the past and you you and the with Wassel and Daub it it's kind of the the binding together of lots of lots of sticks and then the painting over with the kind of Yeah, so you're weaving. Yeah, together and then i covering it in clay. It's clay. Yes, I mean we had to. Yeah.

Okay, so that's kind of the everyday farming assessment of the Iron Age that we think of. You mentioned the word hill force. So Tom, when we're talking about the British Iron Age, when should we be thinking with Hill Force and what should we be thinking? So again Hillforts is uh

Of one of those terms we use all the time, but actually hill forts are very varied. You know, we can think of really large hill forts, you know, people perhaps be aware of Maiden Castle or can endorse it. To quite small hill forts, like those in Northumberland, the Cheviot Hills. is covered in hill forts. But those are probably only you know, including a couple of households. They're incredibly uh well constructed monuments with with with quite substantial ramparts, but they're not big.

And again, another thing with Hillforts is we think of it as the Iron Age, but we now know that Hillforts start in the Late Bronze Age. So they're one of these things that that continues and develops and changes and they change over time in terms of their roles as well. So some of the early Iron Age Hill forts. So again, thinking about sort of eight hundred to six hundred B C.

somewhere like Uffington in Berkshire. It's probably most people are not living in that hill fort. It's probably a central focus for a wider community. It's probably a storage place for food resources, perhaps for some surplus. But they're probably not actually living there. But then we think of Dambury in the Middle Iron Age. So when I mean that, I mean about sort of four hundred to two hundred and fifty BC, there's quite a lot of people living in there. And Liding Castle as well.

Yeah, there's you know there's a few hundred people living in in those in those hill forts. So hill forts are very varied. And I guess also you also think about the big ramparts. If you visit one of these places today, one of the stunning things is getting through those ramparts and then being in there at that

open plain in the middle, for instance if you're in Maiden Castle and seeing the sheep and all of that. But but it is the ramparts and how deep they are even today that like you can't help but think about when you visit one of those sites. Yes, and I mean if you think of the the size and the entrances as way, the complex entrances, if anybody's been to Maiden Castle or Danebury of kind of getting into these things, there's a huge amount of labour expended on

those sites. I mean one of the big questions for archaeologists is who's constructing them? You know, so is it that there is sort of vassal peoples who are constructing them or is it the inhabitants? I think we're

Most archaeologists now for the Iron Age would assume that there is kind of it's it's largely done by the inhabitants or as part of the community. This is not sort of Hillfoots are not necessarily at the top of a settlement hierarchy where there are lots of other people who are kind of dependent on these Th these sites. Because when these hill forts are being built in like the Middle Iron Age, this is still centuries before the Romans arrive, is there very much a feeling that there's not

Written literature down about these people, that we we can't label them with the tribal names that we have later from the Romans. It's just too far back. No, very much so. I mean I think trying to kind of identify them to the

to the tribal names we can talk more about those in the late iron age i i is quite problematic. These are much smaller uh sized communities than the than those larger entities. So so no, I think that's you know these are not they don't work in the same way. I mean if you look at

Dane at Danebury, for instance, in Hampshire, the hillfort there is not the sort of residence of an elite. It's more like a large Village, if you like, or a large group of roundhouses and communities together, but it doesn't seem to be of any higher status really than many of the other settlements around it.

And you said elites there because we I guess we can't know whether it was a king or a or warlord. Uh or as you mentioned, if there even was one for those Yeah, I mean that's been a big discussion in Iron Age studies for well, for forty, fifty years really. The idea of whether there is a leap. We always assume and this comes back to sort of things like classical sources, you know, Roman writers, because Caesar describes

Iron Age society in Gaul as being elite and having kings and and druids. We kind of think that that must be how the Iron Age in Britain was, for all of the Iron Age. But actually, archaeologically there's very little evidence for an elite. You know, the things that you might think of as an elite

burial practices of grave goods, that there would be a larger house or more rich material goods at somewhere like Damebury, that doesn't exist in the archaeological record. If you look at Damebury, for instance, the kind of things that happened at Dambury, the kind of goods they were using, these kinds of objects they were using, are very similar to the smaller farmsteads we were talking about earlier. So it's very hard to distinguish any obvious elite. That doesn't mean that it wasn't

It doesn't mean there wasn't difference in status between people. And status can be measured in things like number of cattle you have, the number of sheep you have. But I think to think of it as sort of a hierarchy with a king or a chief I think most iron age specialists would suggest that's probably a little bit simplistic. Is it fair to say they probably had a defensive function, or at least some of them would have had a defensive function?

Again, you know, you know, y you're getting these controversial topics here. That's what I do. Absolutely. No, uh that's right too. Uh in terms of those ramparts, yes. The key distinction there is thinking were hill forts attacked all the time? Were they meant to to to be defended from? Or to deter or to impress people, I guess I think. I think both those things. I mean, we know that some hill forts had violence take place at them. Uh Walbury, for instance, and Somerset, Breedon Hill.

in in South Worcestershire, you know, there's evidence of what we might call massacres. You know, people were killed at hill forts and they probably were attacked from time to time. I think you know, we kinda get away from that. But those ramparts also, as you just intimated, have a function just showing the amount of labor that you can consume. It is a demonstration of your power, but it's also a demonstration of how important your community is, perhaps.

So I think you know, the idea that they're always fighting from hill forts is perhaps Yeah, not quite right. No, fair enough. I always think back to Maiden Castle and hearing from Dr. Miles Russell how back then, actually, with the chalk beneath the grass.

You don't realise it, but back then gleaming whites would have been visible for miles around. And you know, that is a a statement in itself. Yeah. So just remembering that and also what mentioned earlier with the roundhouses and the colour that would have been visible, you know.

Yes, okay, chalk is white, but it's not just black and white almost in the RNA back then, you know, full of technicolor, full of wanting to impress and stand out, whether it's with the monumental hill forts or with probably an everyday round. Yes, definitely. I mean I think you know there were I mean i if you wanted to talk about colour in the Iron Age you perhaps want to talk about some of the objects they're using in the in the Middle and Late Iron Age, which are of course

You know, some of them bronze, shining bronze, and then adorned with with with glass and coral and so on, you know, d as we were mentioning with Melsonby and so on. So I mean colour is definitely used to to intimate various different identities and attitudes. So yeah, I think uh it's good to kind of remind people that the Iron Age is not a not a black and world or a green and brown world completely. Um

Well, let's move on then to this other key type of assessment and one that I know you've done a lot of work around that seems so tied to the the later story of Britain's iron age. So what are these things called opida? Right. So Opada are these range of monuments that emerge at the very end of the Iron Age, really. F so about the end of towards the end of the first century BC. We call them Oppada because that's a term that was used on the continent.

particularly by Julius Caesar to refer to sites he encountered in Gaul and the things that we see in Britain emerge around the symmets of these sites in Gaul. So we've kind of transferred the term and it means From Latin you can translate it as enclosed settlement or town. The confusing thing for the British sites is they are not towns, not towns as we would understand it. So the classic Opera in Britain, places like Camilladine and Modern Colchester.

Colchester. Yeah, underneath underneath Colchester, underneath the r the medieval and Roman town is an Iron Age centre, also underneath modern St Albans. site near uh Melsonby, Stanick. These are the the sort of classic Opera. They're characterized by these huge, enormous ramparts. I mean one of the things, you know, we talked about hill forts, but these things have huge earthwork.

For many of them, like Colchester, confusingly these earthworks don't define a nice enclosed area like our hill forts like Damebury. they often define huge areas of landscape. So I worked at Bajenden, for instance, encompasses about two hundred hectares. So you can quite yeah, and to get people's heads around that, you can quite easily plonk a Roman town within that quite happily and still have space.

But they don't define a nice sort of enclosed area. So one of the things that we've been working on I've been interested in is how do they what are they doing? How do they use that space? So it's more about defining landscape. um for activities. Uh and and that's probably telling us about the change in society. So By this time, hill forts in many parts of Britain had sort of fallen out of use.

probably some time before Operada really kind of emerged, actually. So society is changing in the late first century BC. This is the first time that we can start to identify individuals who are there are new types of burial rites are emerging. So there are graves with grave goods, something we haven't really seen across the British Iron Age. So society is changing and the Opida are the places where those kind of things are manifest.

And this is the time when you're starting to get interactions with Rome. So accounts like Julius Caesar, mentions of tribal names and tribal kings and so on, you mentioned the arrival of coinage as well as well. This is when that becomes another interesting source. Which you can then use alongside the archaeology to learn more.

Definitely. And that is I mean, it's i it is at the Oppada that we see much of the interaction with the Roman world. You know, we see we see imports from the Roman world at sites like Colchester, even at Stanek in the in the north of England. And one of the interesting things there is what that relationship is like. And one of the things I'm really interested in is because we used to some time ago think it was about sort of

economics, if you like. You know, the Roman Empire expands and this is a place that you sort of iron age societies are trading with. And certainly that was happening to some extent, but a lot of the items we have In some of the burials at places like um Lexton at Colchester are probably more like diplomatic goods. So there's more of a kind of political relationship, you know, as the as the empire expands and has these kingdoms on its peripheries, which it's kind of managing as a political thing.

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Suppose is it fair to say that it's almost I know you mentioned that there seems to be a little bit of a break between them, but almost the mid Iron Age, the bigger centres in Iron Age Britain at least are defined by the Great Hill forts and activity there. And then the later Iron Age, that's replaced with the emergence of these opida instead, but maybe they they have similarish functions?

N I would probably say no. They don't have they have quite different functions in many ways. Many of those hill forts I mean, again, you know, it d it depends where you are. You know, in the southwest, so Maiden Castles is kind of slightly different organisation there. But many of the hill forts in in Hampshire, for instance, and up the Welsh marches, ha uh are different kinds of settlements. They're more like small villages, communities. The Yopada mark a very different kind of

social organization. They're probably central places for a much larger the emergence of much larger groups of people. So Stanick, for instance, that's probably the central place for a whole confederacy of people across, you know, much of what is now northern England. The the people that

referred to in by classical writers as the Brigantes, that's very different from the roles of Hillforts had, you know, on a much larger scale. So this is the emergence probably of larger social entities that we only see really towards the end of the Iron Age, things that we can think of as much larger politicians. And people going still from their like kind of roundhouse farmsteads and maybe like communal gathering places inside these earthworks at these operator sites?

Yeah, well that's one of the things that really interests me about the Opera because one of the things that we're seeing in that period is the movement from, you know, very, very quite localized societies based on perhaps networks of a few farmsteads. you know, exchanging material between themselves, but not perhaps, you know, large social entities. The late Iron Age with the Opera is the formation of those larger entities. But you've got to have places where you negotiate that.

You know, how do you negotiate those relationships? And the opera and that those big empty spaces is perhaps the place you do it for assembling. I mean, one of the things that if we can believe some of the things that people like Caesar say, is that late Iron Age society is is about negotiated power.

The elites have to kind of forge assemblies. He talks about this happening in Gaul, where they have to decide as a group, a collective, you know, are we going to go to war? Are we having an alliance with these people?

It's the opposite of where those spaces happen. And you can imagine the empty areas that we have in these sites, because much of the interior of them is not full of settlements, it's open. That's where they're gathering those people together. One of the things that fascinates me is that There's also the impact from the ex expanding Roman Empire, but you've got to also remember that this is

There's been a large increase in the number of settlements over the later Iron Age. So from about three hundred BC, you just see an increase pretty much everywhere of settlements across Britain. There's more people in the landscape, there's more people you've got to negotiate access to land. So there has to be places where that takes place. And I think to some extent maybe Opera are the kind of culmination of that. How do we negotiate who owns what land? How do we negotiate between those?

I'm trying to think is if it's almost the Iron Age equivalent to an extent of something like Glastonbury, you know, but if you know what I mean, lots of people in an area together, probably very smelly as well, after several days there. But for an important event, of course, we can use the word ceremonial, but of course big decisions for the larger polity that they're part of, maybe they'll see the figure at the top of the you know, a king or a queen and and so on there too. I mean, you know...

I like I like your analogy with Glastonbury, but you know, assembly places. So uh you know, anybody who's sort of looked to early medieval world, you can think of assembly places there being somewhere where even if you have a king, that king has to negotiate their power. They have to come and they have to have

uh the other members of those communities come together and negotiate their authority, you know, make that decision as a collective. And again, this is a rural community, so people are most of the time in their farmstead still. They're perhaps sending one member to come up to come to those assemblies, represent them, make those decisions as a collective. So this is a really exciting time because it's that idea that we have.

Kings, but these are not kings as you might think from the high medieval period. This is more about a negotiated power structure. So operar are perhaps and why I find them exciting is that those societies are trying to work out how do you do that? You know, how do you negotiate power in a different way that That hasn't really existed before.

Do you think this is a good place? I think we can bring in chariots here and go back to the Mells and Bee Hoard because processions we can be thinking about maybe happening there, a display of power, a display of wealth. you know, happening at places like Opida, and of course one of the big vehicles we associate with RNA Britain is the chariot or is waggons elaborate vehicles.

Rydyn ni'n ymwneud â chariots. Yn ymwneud â chariots. Yn ymwneud â chariots. Yn ymwneud â chariots. Yn ymwneud â chariots from burials really f from East Yorkshire in the Middle Iron Age, but in the late Iron Age we know they existed from the the parts we find and even Caesar mentions how important chariots are in in warfare for the Britons. Yeah, I mean one of the exciting things about Melsonby is the idea that we have some other vehicles as well. These four wheeled wagons, you know, w

if we compare them to what's happening on the continent, where they're thought of as being sort of ceremonial vehicles, as you say, either for the funerary event or for display. Yes, you can imagine people kind of processing round in these vehicles, you know, perhaps being taken to the funerary uh rite on these vehicles. Yeah, I mean one of the other exciting things from Melson being we kind of get

a bit obsessed by the vehicles and the chariots, which are exciting, don't get me wrong. But is the kind of is the cauldron, is the wine mixing vessel that we have there from the earlier horde that was discovered there a a large bucket for drinking beer. So there's communal feasting going on. And you can again imagine that if your authority is about trying to negotiate with other people.

throw feasts to perhaps sing uh you know uh show to get support from those individuals. You know, that's that's the way power is manifest. And in time as well, it maybe even places like Yorkshire in in Stannock doing think that You know, they're bringing things like Amphora, they're bringing in Roman goods as well. They're they're very much adopting those those ideas, those objects, those luxuries from beyond the borders of Britain.

Certainly in the Opera by the Late Iron Age, some of the the elite, if you like, that are emerging are adopting items from the Roman world, drinking vessels, beakers, or from Gaul as well, as that's now part of the R you know, the Roman Empire, and drinking wine. So yes, they are. And I mean that's another interesting thing because there's clearly an i an imitation of Roman but also Gallic.

in a Gallic elites they're imitating as as well at the time of conquest, to imitate their kind of th th their partner elites on the continent, if you like, in a different way. I mean one of the things that's really fascinating in a sense That's also changing identity. One of the things that you see for much of the early and middle Iron Age, it's quite hard to see the individual for most of the Iron Age. You know, you don't

We don't have burials of grave goods, there are exceptions like East Yorkshire, but for most of the time that's the case in Britain. It's hard to see, and people are not well, not many people are using things like brooches and stuff. So it's quite hard to see the individual in the archaeological record. Once we get to the end of the Iron Age,

with the s the burials and so on associated with Opera, you can start to see individuals, but also through the way they're eating. If you we have beakers and platters, you know, this is this is about individual drinking. It's your cup, it's your plate.

You know, that's doesn't exist before. So clearly the individual is becoming more important. So there's a change in some people's identity to to sort of express the individual identity, which is perhaps again related to how power changes, you know, it's more about you than the collective.

And what is a let's say a high ranking individual of the late Iron Age What do you think? What are they supposed to be in the eyes of the community? What skills are they supposed to have? What can we gather from that, you know, with the surviving archaeology? What insights can we get into late on age community from those burials and and things like that?

That's a really good question. Uh and one one possibility is that they are to sort of negotiate, you know, that community, perhaps negotiate with external groups. to offer also power. I mean, in terms of of of support in warfare, you know, to to lead that group when warfare is being consulted, to consult

uh the interaction with the Roman Empire. So I think that's one of the roles that they have is that kind of they are the sort of I mean, often, you know, you can think of them as leaders, you know, the negotiating with with with the outside world, if you like. And it's not just men we should be thinking about in these positions of power in our and age Britain, is it, Tom?

No, so I mean, you know, we've known from Roman historians like Tacitus that there were powerful women in Iron Age Britain, Boudicca, but also Queen Carta Mandua, who's in North Yorkshire. What's exciting is that the archaeological evidence is really kind of emphasizing that. In the past, you know, historians have sort of struggled, is this is uh the Romans making a point of this'cause it's exceptional. Two queens in that sits.

And it's it this is and th and they make a big thing of it because perhaps it's it's unusual. But actually it's probably not unusual. So there's fantastic evidence from ancient DNA evidence now or which is showing

uh b particularly in the South West, but also in East Yorkshire, of the sort of the relatedness of of of females so that their power seems to be going through the female line. So there might be that women sort of s also women stay in the same place. They m have maybe more power over land. and that men come into those communities and perhaps they do other things in societies.

But there is th th th th there's also been, you know, we we've known for some time, if we go back to East Yorkshire, burials and you mentioned chariots with chariots and and wonderful grave goods from Wetpang Slack in Yorkshire, for instance, where we have fantastic iron mirror. It's very enigmatic being so that you know, high status grave goods, which indicate that women are getting the same kind of treatment as some men. So

Women so some of those graves in East Yorkshire with with chariots in them also belong to women? Yes. Oh yes. Yes. And they have, you know, wonderful grave goods. You know, I mean Iron Mirror, this is the uh wonderful one which has this kind of what's called a beam counter, which does underplays it but is this very enigmatic um

uh copper alloy object, you know, which we don't really know what it's for. Well th so that's always hinted to us that that th that that women have, you know, can have status and have status. I think the DNA evidence is really exciting because it's kind of it's emphasizing that that Uh you know, th th there's clear evidence for that, you know, and the relatedness. And and also that it's not just Dorset, that it's probably happening in other parts of Britain. So

So when we have the individuals that Tastus mentions like Queen Cartamandia, we we shouldn't be so surprised and that perhaps we only know about them because Roman historic no they came into contact with the Roman world but there were other Those are the high status women you know that they're interacting with, but that you know, that evidence from graves in East Yorkshire but also in Dorset is kind of the two main areas where we find a lot of human remains from. Right.

The body going into the ground and in both areas, sometimes with grave goods, so things buried buried with people. Of course, that's really useful because then you've got the bodies, you can associate with the grave goods, you can do things like DNA evident analysis, isotope analysis, and so on. For much of Britain throughout much of the Iron Age, that's not what happens to the dead. Yeah.

it's it's incredibly buried what happens to the dead. You do have inhumation burials, in hill forts, in farmsteads, for instance, but often just it's obviously clearly just a small proportion of the population who lived there. what happened to the rest of the population is is is quite a complicated story. We don't know. But I mean, you know, if you dig any Iron Age site really across Britain, you will often find fragments of human remains in

Stitches in roundhouse, post holes and so on, bits of leg bones, bits of skull. So Relative bed buried under the floorboard sometimes? Well, I mean that's a yeah, maybe not quite that. But I mean there is a there is an interesting question there because uh w we are still sort of trying to establish what happened to the dead. For a long time we suspected there was excarnation, so in other words

placed in on platforms or in trees and sort of, you know, left out to sort of rot and to be picked up by animal uh yeah, animals and birds and so on. And then the remains went into archaeological features. Sometimes bodies went in the ground and then were dug up again.

and moved around and sometimes bodies were probably mummified, they were probably kept above ground. Wow. And then deposited. So what's interesting there are I mean some wonderful examples of it's a skull which have holes drilled in them. And so people are, you know, hanging bits of bodies up. So I mean it's really interesting because I think, you know, the attitudes towards the dead are probably much more

Varied, fluid. And this is I think, you know, you can sometimes think, Oh, isn't that disrespectful? But perhaps not. You know, it's more about actually the dead being part of the community. Well, once again and like we've done Ice Age examples of cannibalism where actually it's actually a part of the ritual. I'm not saying that for Iron Age stuff at all, but once again getting our mind around different ways that they honour the dead. Yeah, it's

Yeah, you know, of their family and so on. Um and there's some bulbody examples, aren't there? Quite a few from RNA. I mean the famous one is Lindell Man, obviously. Again, the bog bodies perhaps are part of that sort of continuum, if you like. You know, the bog bodies are there. and certainly treated in special ways. Wet places are are almost certainly have significance in the Iron Age. But in a sense the bog bodies are perhaps part of the continuum that we see in other forms.

which are now skeletons, if you like, not preserved, but actually part of this way of treating the dead in different ways. And and one of the things that interests me is that that might also relate to what you did in life. Did you die in battle? Therefore you get one treatment. Perhaps you're interred, you're in you you're inhumation perhaps somewhere on the settlement site. You know, if you died in a different way, you get treated in a different way. So

We're gonna explore a bit one particularly grim other way of dying in a bit if we're gonna explore human sacrifice. But Before we get there, you mentioned fighting in battle. Is this a clear part of Iron Age British society? Because in the past we always uh you look at the Great Hill forts, you look at the ramparts, the chariots and so on.

And you think warrior society. How far Can we say that, you know, the people, like the men of our and age Britain, that they were warrior societies, that they were expected to fight? Certainly violence is part of Iron Age society. You know, we have individuals who have swordcut Yeah, we were talking about Stanik earlier. You go, Stanick, there's a wonderful example with a skull with a sword cut. It is obviously a sword cut to the head buried in the ditch. Yeah. Cut into the sky.

Yeah. So I mean th these and then we have many examples of that. I guess one of the interesting things is when we then take that to say about is it a warrior society? So when we talked about Hill Forts, you know, it's very hard to see a warrior elite living at Hill Forts. In many ways it's hard to see a warrior elite. So we have some burials of what you might call warriors. There's a wonderful one at Millhill in Kent, where you have an individual buried with shield, sword.

And so you can say this individual's a warrior but but most people are not treated like that with the Iron Age, you know, so they're they're actually relatively unusual. If if it was a warrior society, wouldn't we find more of those? You know, if we think of East Yorkshire. There are individuals who are buried with weapons.

But not all of those people and not most of those people. So and when we look at the evidence of trauma, so violence on bodies, you know, it's only about eight percent of the remains from somewhere like Damebury have trauma on it. Now

It's a question of what proportion you'd expect. But what I mean by that is that violence is a part of those societies, but there's a big difference from a being a warrior elite. You know, I always love there's a great quote by uh an Iron Age specialist who said it's you know, farmers who fight

You know, they are farmers most of the time who do fight. As I said before, you know, if you think of there are massacres. There's Woolbury, there's Breden Hill where you have violence. You know, people who were clearly killed probably massacred at the site.

So there is interpersonal violence, but I think it's i it's from the evidence we have from the human remains that I think it's unlikely that this is happening all the time. Everybody and For some people you may get status through through warfare, through violence, but I think this is probably not always the case, and perhaps not often the case.

'Cause you might want to think of somewhere like an opera like Stanick or so or somewhere similar, Colchester, Camaludnum, where you mentioned how the gathering of people all together I guess could there be a theory that maybe once in a while, if they'd had a disagreement with a nearby people, the elites, they gather there in their chariots. The farmers are expected to gather with their spears and slings and that's the kind of th the classic and then off they go for a quick fight.

I mean I think uh it's certainly and certainly in the late Iron Age, those kind of m you know, battles between groups uh Iron Age people certainly happened and throughout the Iron Age, um I uh you know, certainly violence was part of society, there was warfare. I think what where I'm sort of distinguishing, I guess, is from the kind of assumption that

status is always gained through violence. I mean we were just talking here about female power and that's probably more through ownership of land. And so and it's probably land that's most important. So

Is that kinda is that uh difference between saying is violence part of society or is it a warrior elite? And I think Th that might sound like, you know, nitpicking, but actually I think it's really important to think how do you gain status and um and and violence is probably one way, but it's perhaps not common all the time. Are you looking for the perfect podcast to hunker down with during the longer, colder, darker nights?

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So let's talk about religion. Does Iron Age religion ought For most of the Iron Age period in Britain, is it quite invisible to see examples of ritual and religion? So, for much of the Iron Age, there is little in the way of temples or sanctuaries. They appear at the very end of the Iron Age. Where we see belief is through things like uh remains buried on settlement sites, both human remains, but also animal remains.

structured sometimes, so arranged in in i in unusual ways, which are probably some kind of ritual activity, offerings on settlement sites. Even the structure of the way the settlements are organized, mentioning about the way roundhouses that can be orientated towards the rising sun. So the way you structure your space of your settlement is also about reflecting ritual and belief.

Um, but it's not, you know, there's not a place probably where you go and do ritual for much of the iron edge. It's in your everyday experience. And so But is there an importance of the natural landscape? Can we gather that? I mean, I might also think of Objects like the Battersea Shield or the Waterloo helmet, which you can go and see in the British Museum today, do we get a sense that? There is a r a real attachment to wooded areas, to rivers, and so on throughout the Iron Age.

Y certainly certain places in the landscape have symbolic significance. So you're right. So some of the We we have less metalwork deposition in rivers than we had in the Bronze Age, but it's still happening and it's interesting. So

Uh you mentioned the the uh some of the shields, something like the Witham Shield from Lincolnshire, where there are places where people go and deposit material. There's a great place called Fiskerton, where there's a kind of platform that goes into the river and they're clearly depositing valuable objects.

probably sometimes human remains. Yeah. So some some of the dead you know, and that's another enigma of what happens to some of the dead. Maybe they go into to rivers and there are special places where that happens.

Again, what's interesting about some of that is those objects, you know, like the Witham Shield, you know, this is perhaps again a communal act, you know, it's a community coming together. The fact that you put it into a wet place, you don't bury it with your warrior, is perhaps saying this is about the communal act. So let's talk about druids. What do we know about druids in Iron Age Britain?

So we know about druids really from Roman writers, particularly Julius Caesar mentions druids when he's in Gaul and he mentions the fact that druids existed in i in in Britain and they were important. Archaeologically, it's very difficult to see the existence of Druids. So there are exceptional burials. We have these kind of little b bronze spoons which divide into quarters, which are kind of weird objects. And there's you know, there's a burial in Scotland which has one of them.

And these could be kind of ritual items. But actually trying to identify druids in the archaeological record is is very difficult for the Iron Age and we don't see them in burials, we don't see them. So it's hard to know how significant they were. Certainly for much of the Iron Age and perhaps if they were significant it's only towards the late Iron Age. Gosh, Bedouina, can we say anything about them at all?

I mean with the the thing with the druids is archaeologic it is hard to see them. So uh one of the burials associated with Colchester at Stanway, people which has um around medical equipment in it, people saying, Oh is this Is this for divination? Is that but it's it's it's really hard to make that that leap archaeologically to these individuals. So and as I say, for most of most of the Iron Age, for most of the time, ritual practice seems to be something that's done perhaps

more biome within the community and to try to identify those ritual specialists is quite is quite difficult. And and a and as you can tell, something that's gonna quite controversial really. Fair enough. I mean one thing I will then ask though is is the the human sacrifice question is archaeologically, is it more clear to see evidence of human sacrifice in Iron Age remains? Certainly individuals died violently. So, you know, in terms of uh and perhaps some people were

sacrificed, but again, you know, how how and why they were killed is often quite hard to see archaeologically. And I think we have to be a bit kind of careful of this all comes from sort of trying to take the classical sources and say, can we see that in the archaeological record? And I think that

That's always a little bit difficult to sort of interpret it with through the lens of the classical writers rather than thinking, how did these people die? W why was that? And certainly, you know, some of those bog bodies, you know, are are treated in ways which suggest they they they were they were sacrificed. Um but

why and what that means, I think is is really interesting. I mean I think I mean I'll give you an example, there's uh a burial that I excavated at Magendon. So it's a so it's a female burial, uh buried in the ditch. And she's buried in a very unusual way, so she was she was placed in the ditch so that she sort of was on her knees and she fell back.

Now, she was an elderly female, so we can't archaeologically you can't say how old, but she was certainly over fifty. And she we know from her isotopes that she'd come from long distance.

Now, it looks we couldn't find any evidence that she'd sort of had a throat cut, any kind of nicks on the on the throat or anything, but the burial is kind of you know, might interpret as being kind of sacrifice all she's based in the ditch and it's a very unusual. It looks like she didn't want to go in. It's not

But I actually if you think of her being an elderly female and the fact that she's come from long distance to the site in her childhood, she's probably somebody who's really important in society.

So, you know, how what does her treatment in death denote something that she was sacrificed or does it denote actually something that was really she was really important member of society? So I think that's where the the archaeology you know, we have to l be a little bit nuanced about how we interpret it.

Understood. You mentioned earlier Uffington and that being a prime RNA centre. Now when someone mentions Uffington, I do think of the the beautiful white horse, the chalk horse on the side of the hill there. And like Iron Age routes, do we believe, to that white horse? Early Iron Age. Early Iron Age. Which leads me to the question of horses in general in the Iron Age. How symbolic, how important do we think horses became to Iron Age society?

Horses are really kind of intriguing when we think about the Iron Age. And certainly throughout much of the Iron Age, i in the Middle Iron Age, for instance, they're clearly treated differently. So when we're talking about ritual Bits of horse remains are deposited on sightseeing. There's great you know, examples from Dambury, you know, the leg of a horse, you know. So they seem to be treated in different ways than say cattle, sheep.

When we get to the late Iron Age, lots of the late Iron Age coinage they really focus on the whole symmetry. That coinage is beautiful. Those horses that they look immaculate. Yeah, and they're really stylistic and you know, if you think about the African horse, it has some similarities to some of the depictions on on much of the Iron Age coinage. I mean what what I always think about that is uh remembering that Iron Age coinage is

originally imitating uh coinage that comes from the Greek world and the Roman world, but they pick the horse, you know, they ch make a choice to focus on the horse because perhaps of its significance in terms of of wealth and we think of horses or

Really, they should be thought of as ponies. They're quite small, actually, you know. Uh that they're they're small horses. But pulling chariots, by the late Iron Age, we get some coinage which depicts ymwneud â phobl, ymwneud â phobl, ymwneud â phobl, ymwneud â phobl, ymwneud â phobl.

And I mean, one of the things that fascinates me is that they're exchanging horses over long distance. We haven't done lots of the work yet, but with some of the initial isotopes, so you know, telling where things come from from the the the bones in terms of the strontomy and oxygen. from my own site showing that the horses at Badginant have come from Wales. There are other sites that are exchanging horses over long distance.

Horses are probably a a form of status. And if you can imagine them pulling your chariots, imagine riding them, you can see that that's a high status. animal and something that you want to depict as, you know, that's why it's on coinage. It's uh how many horses you have is probably how powerful you are.

Well, there you go. Tom, we've covered a lot of ground, and admittedly, it's been a big subject to try and tackle. So I appreciate you hanging on in there with my questions, going from one thing to the next. Really appreciate it. Um, the legacy of the Iron Age.

Of course we had a look at that passage earlier and how it was seen as kind of backward and uncivilised compared to Rome. But in regards to actually on the ground itself, following the Roman conquest Is it fair to say that the Iron Age I mean Iron Age way of life? roundhouses and so on. I mean, it doesn't just disappear like that.

Not at all. No. I mean many people lived in roundhouses well into the Roman period, you know. And that wasn't because they were backward, that was because that was a way of living, a choice of living. You might think of Celtic art, we often refer to it as Latin style art i in archaeology, but that goes on and has a life of its own.

Yeah, th well the stylistic art, the sort of curvilinear art that, you know, people are familiar with, that comes from the Iron Age and is then used in different ways and adopted and and adapted in the Roman in Roman Britain. You know, it becomes and takes on a life of its own. Uh a and and so of course beyond the the Roman Empire. So the Iron Age doesn't just disappear, it becomes part of Roman Britain uh and Britain long long after the Iron Age seems to end.

Yes, Tom, how do you think how should we view Iron Age Britain today? That's a very good question. I would say y uh Iron Age Britain really You know, if you think of the the landscapes intensively farmed by the end of the Iron Age, you know, they are s uh establishing the Oppida, these large places, many of which become Roman towns, they're still towns today, like Colchester. So it really sets the framework for much of what is Britain, I would say, an intensively farmed and occupied landscape.

Tom, this has been fascinating. So much ground covered. We could do several more hours talking about Iron Age Britain, but we'll we'll leave it there. It just goes for me to say thank you so much for taking the time to come on the show. Well there you go. There was Professor around so many topics regarding Iron Age Britain, how different places in Britain were in those centuries before.

Invasion. We will put in the show notes links to a couple of other episodes we have recorded over the years about Iron Age Britain, one all about the Druids with the one and only Professor Ronald Hutton. And another one about late Iron Age Britain, what we actually know about the very end of the Iron Age at the time that the Romans invade, which also does feature Tom for part of it.

Put a link to those episodes in the show notes. Thank you once again for listening. Now if you've been enjoying the Ancients, please make sure to follow the show on Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts. That really helps us. You'll be doing us a big favour. If you'd be kind enough to leave us a rating as well, maybe even a comment too, well we'd really appreciate that. We love interacting with you.

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