http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== < Main Page Chapter 16 The Iron Age in Britain It is one of the imports of the seventh century BC that signals the beginning of the Iron Age in Britain. This is the Hallstatt C iron sword. In South Wales the iron handle of such a sword turned up in a metalworker's hoard at Llyn Fawr together with a bronze sickle which had been copied in iron by the smith. This find allows British archaeologists to date the beginning of the British Iron Age to c600BC. As far as pottery is concerned there is little change in technology. Pots were still hand made but by the third century BC various regional styles had homogenized to form the 'Saucepan Pot' style-zone covering most of southern England. The pots are characterised by vertical sides like saucepans without handles and jars with rounded shoulders and beaded rims. These styles survive until the first century BC but it was about 150BC that a new technology appeared in the shape of the potters' wheel in manufacturing sites of southern England. However, hand-made pottery was still being made, as in the south-west for example, where Glastonbury ware continued to be popular. So far two ports are known to have been in operation during this period. One is Mount Batten, the promontory near Plymouth, the other, Hengistbury Head in Dorset. Mount Batten has been identified by one authority as Ictis, the international trading port for tin to which merchants travelled from as far afield as the Mediterranean. Documentary evidence from Mediterranean sources demonstrates that Ictis was in existence during the late Bronze Age and so could lay claim to being Britain's oldest port. The interest of Greek merchants in the British tin was born from the actions of the Carthaginian fleets patrolling the western Mediterranean who had blocked off Greek access to the tin mines of Spain. With the beginning of the last century BC evidence for British trade across the English Channel increases dramatically. At Hengistbury Head Italian Dressel 1a amphorae, lumps of raw glass, figs and classy pottery from Brittany were imported. At the same period, we hear of exports from Britain. Strabo, a Greek geographer and historian and contemporary of Caesar, tells us that they included corn, cattle, gold, silver, hides and 'clever' hunting dogs. Collection and transportation of export goods to these ports from the British hinterlands would have required a good deal of organisation and when we recognise that the exotic objects received in exchange for these materials were intended for an aristocratic market we can make a shrewd guess at which section of British society was responsible for this organisation. The proliferation of hillforts in Britain during the sixth century and later suggests the growth of a tribal aristocracy who were best fitted to carry out this task and the numbers of grain storage pits which appear in the southern region inside the developed hillforts of the mid-Iron Age like Danebury in Hampshire attest to the collection and concentration of agricultural products in central places which would have been a necessary prerequisite for an export system. Many round huts inside the enclosure attest to a sizeable population. Round huts are the norm for British hillforts with only two so far containing rectangular buildings similar to those in Continental hillforts. These two are Crickley Hill in Gloucestershire and the hillfort above Bradford-on-Avon in Wiltshire. Despite the non-appearance of a 'princely structure' in the lengthy excavations at Danebury hillfort and the recent interpretation of the place as an Iron Age 'community centre', it is probably still sensible to regard it as a chieftain's stronghold. Hillforts reached their largest number around the middle of the Iron Age. Thereafter a good number fell out of use presumably because the growing power of certain chieftains in southern Britain enabled them to extend their sway over their weaker neighbours and dismantle their hillforts. Some of those that were the winners in this phase disappeared in their turn before the Roman Conquest and only a number, outside the south-east, suffered attack and capture by the Roman army or, in the Welsh Marches and in north-western Wales, were allowed to continue to be occupied by their native inhabitants under the rule of the newcomers. Some hillforts in the Welsh Marches and in northern England were not built until the last century BC and a few not until the next century when they could have been a response to the Roman conquest of southern England. By the time of the Roman conquest some of the more powerful tribes in Britain had established fortified enclosures described as oppida which functioned as 'capitals' of their territories. They are similar to but not identical to the oppida of the European mainland and cover larger areas than hillforts and were set in wooded situations and fortified with banks and ditches. Sometimes they contained mints like the oppida on the Continent for producing late-Iron Age tribal coinage and had adjacent richly-furnished, aristocratic graves. Examples of oppida so far identified are a number of earlier ones at Loose, Oldbury and Bigbury in Kent, Dyke Hill and Salmonbury in Oxon, Wheathampstead in Herts and Winchester in Hampshire. Later in the first century BC came Colchester in Essex, Verulamium in Hertfordshire, Silchester in Hampshire, Selsey in Sussex, Bagenden in Gloucestershire and Grims Ditch in Oxon. The largest of these, at Colchester, covers an area of over 3,000 hectares, twice as large as the biggest princely stronghold yet known on the Continent. In southern Britain, as in advanced areas in Europe, the oppida can be considered as successors to hillforts. Further development took place in the Roman period when some, like Colchester and Verulamium became sites of Roman-style towns. In France similar development can be seen at Alesia (Alise-Ste Reine, Burgogne) as well as other places. The relationship between the aristocratic power centres and the ordinary farming people in their homesteads has not yet been fully explored because there has not been enough excavation on homesteads close enough to the oppida/hillforts to have had a relationship with them. Probably the relationship would have been a client/patron arrangement in which the peasant farmer paid rent for his land or his animals in exchange for protection and perhaps a guaranteed place of exchange for his surplus production. On the chalk in the south of England the homesteads consist of enclosures surrounded by ditches and banks which could have been topped with palisades or thorn hedges. Inside, a number of timber-framed and thatched circular huts served as farmhouse and ancillary farm buildings. They were walled with wattle-and-daub and ranged in size from structures big enough to use as barns to small enough to be toolsheds. Many of the farmyards contained pits for grain storage as well as post-set frameworks interpreted as supports for small above-ground granaries. Little Woodbury in Wiltshire serves as the type-site but similar sites are found on the chalk as far north as Staple Howe in Yorkshire. On parts of the downland in Hampshire so-called 'banjo' enclosures of banks and ditches are assumed to be part of the pastoral activities of the area. In Scotland defensive stone structures like brochs and duns suggest that a more aggressive spirit was abroad there. An economy based on cereals and milk developed from a late-Bronze Age orientated to sheep farming with hill-top enclosures for stock. By the last century BC rapid change was beginning. The southern strongholds that were the masters of the cereal/sheep system were affected both by the intervention into the trading system of the advancing Roman world which provided new markets for them but also by the increasing soil depletion on the chalk downs. Settlement spread to the heavier soils off the chalk and new farms were established on freshly-cleared claylands. Experimental work done at Little Butser Research Station in Hampshire together with the finds made on excavation sites suggest that by the end of the Iron Age a wider range of non-cereal crops was being grown on farms. Such research suggests that fields of grain may have yielded as much as equivalent acreages in the 1940s. Storage-pits at Butser constructed after models discovered in excavation hold two tons of grain and can preserve it in good condition for a year or more as long as they are kept airtight. As the investigator (the late Peter Reynolds) maintained, this is more in the nature of a warehousing facility than simple domestic storage. Mixed farming of this type occupied a block of territory spread over the south and east of England in the Lowland Zone and must have been the major productive agricultural area in the British Isles. During the Iron Age autumn-sown spelt wheat began to replace spring-sown emmer while bread wheat, which grows well in heavy silt and clay, became popular at the end of the period. Other cereals included more barley and less rye and oats. As green crops, Celtic beans, chess and fat-hen were raised. Woad appears also to have been planted. All these crops were grown in small, squarish 'celtic' fields whose boundaries can still be seen on hill-slopes with negative 'lynchets' at the top and 'positive' lynchets (banks) at their lower margins. Cattle were celtic shorthorn, about the size of the modern Dexter while sheep were similar in size to modern Soays. Goats were reared together with dogs and pigs while ponies were bred for traction and milk. Wool became more important as the Iron Age went on and was probably being exported by the end of the period. Another region which has received a fair amount of intermittent attention from archaeologists is the Somerset Levels. Excavation on an Iron Age site began there as far back as 1892 when work started on a crannog settlement which we know today as the Glastonbury Lake Village. Apart from evidence of mixed farming, wild food was collected while the industrial activity included the production of wooden, bone, pottery, bronze and iron artefacts. Wooden artefacts in the museum at Glastonbury demonstrate the high standard of the carpentry of the period. The Meare East and West sites in the same area have received attention at different times between 1908 and 1982. The latest interpretation of their functions envisages them as seasonal markets at which a variety of materials and objects, both local and exotic, were offered for sale. These include bronze, tin from further west in Devon, lead from Mendip, iron, stone, flint from the chalk country further east in Wiltshire, shale from Dorset, jet and amber from Yorkshire, glass imported from the Continent, wood, clay, antler and bone. This assemblage represents the evidence for a thriving internal and external trade in this area between 150BC and AD100. In the south-west life-styles were more diverse than further east with areas that were predominantly pastoral, some engaged in mixed farming and others that appear to have practised transhumance. Excavated sites in the area are Killibury in Cornwall with evidence for emmer, spelt and oats and Goldherring in the same county which produced corn, barley, oats and rye. Crops in Pembrokeshire included emmer and wheat. At Mount Batten, the port, near present day Plymouth, cattle replaced the Bronze Age sheep as the predominant animal. It seems that the cattle and pigs were being reared for meat while the mature sheep bones tell us that that they were being kept for their wool. In Wales pastoral farming was the rule inland with mixed farming around the coasts. A feature of pastoral farming in both the highland and lowland zones are large divisions of the countryside separated by banks and dykes. The best evidence in northern Britain for farming survives on the marginal lands; on the better soils traces of prehistoric farming have been obliterated by modern agricultural practices. We know that spelt, emmer and barley were being grown in fields that had begun to be cleared as early as the mid-second millenium BC. Arable farming became more significant with the approach of the Roman period at the same time as cattle, sheep, pigs and horses together with geese and chickens can be recognised in the archaeological record. Far north in the highlands and islands, cattle, sheep and pigs were reared, in some places fed on seaweed. Hillforts were common in highland areas like south-western England and Wales and, unlike hillforts in the south and east, some lasted into the Roman period and even beyond. Petty princelings built the little cliff castles that perch on headlands in Pembrokeshire and elsewhere. Nowadays their only enemy is the sea which, over the centuries, has been gradually gnawing them away. Drystone masonry was often used defensively in the highland zone as at sites like Chycauster and Carn Euny in Cornwall. In north-west Scotland stone-built structures like the blockhouse at Clickhimin in Shetland and later, brochs as at Jarlshof and, later again, wheelhouses like that at Clettravel in North Uist appeared. It must be remembered that in this area of islands and indented coastlines the sea provided a major input into the local economy and reinforced the provision from cattle, sheep and cereal-growing and perhaps also brought a piratical threat against which these defences were needed. One group of people who have been studied in some detail are the Iron Age people in Yorkshire who are known archaeologically as the Arras culture. The best evidence for them comes from their burials. Several of their cemeteries have been exhaustively excavated. Graves are surrounded by square-plan ditches and a few contain the only cart (chariot) burials known in Britain. Two different types of burial can be distinguished: crouched north-south postures and extended east-west orientations, each type with different grave-goods. Brooches and sheep-bones were common with the crouched burials while swords, spears, tools and pig-bones characterise the extended burials. Some corpses had been speared as part of the burial ritual. The cart burials include decorated metalwork as well as the only example of a mail tunic from the La Tène world. Two aspects of these burial rites were probably introduced from the Continent during the late-third century BC and adopted by the local people. They are the idea of cart burials and the square barrows that surmount many of the graves. Tribal territories began to take on the trappings of states, each with an oppidum fortified against inter-tribal attack as its capital: in Gaul the Aedui had their stronghold at Bibracte and the Arveni their capital at Gergovia and in England the major tribal identites are those of the Iceni, the Catuvellauni, Trinovantes, Atrebates and the Cantii, while, during the late-Iron Age, the people in south-eastern England are identified archaeologically with the Aylesford-Swarling culture. Iron Age people in Europe shared a common way of life, a common religion and probably a basic common language. This made the movement of fashions and ideas relatively easy. Coinage and the potter's wheel were introduced into Britain during the century before AD43 and the life-style of the aristocracy was considerably romanised. In their richly-furnished graves are wine amphorae, Italian bronze vessels and other imported luxuries. Coins struck in Britain originated as Gallic ones which were themselves copies of Macedonian Greek staters. Later, Roman coins were used as models. In successive borrowings, original designs deteriorated but it is possible for us to use the coins to determine the relative order in which the different issues were minted and, as each tribe used its own special mark, tell from the distribution of find-spots the approximate boundaries of each tribal area. Usually, the coins were struck in gold, less often in silver but it is interesting to note that coins made from bronze appeared in Kent during the first century BC and may have been used as small change in market places. This occurrence demonstrates how the 'bow wave' of Roman customs influenced Britain before the Conquest for Roman minor coinage on the other side of the Straits of Dover was already facilitating local trade there. Markets were supplied with goods from small trickles of imports and small native centres of production of which a few are known in various parts of the country like places where iron was smelted locally in small bowl furnaces. At Gussage All Saints in Dorset a late second or early first century bronze foundry has been excavated while springs in Droitwich and Nantwich produced high quality salt. Salt was also evaporated from sea-water at locations around the eastern and southern coasts and there were many small centres of pottery production making wares like black, scratched cordoned Wessex bowls during the early Iron Age, saucepan pot assemblages in the middle Iron Age and Glastonbury ware from the fourth to the first centuries BC. During the first century wheel-made fine pottery production started in the south-east. In west Sussex sandstone quarries produced querns carried as far as Danebury in Hampshire and the raw glass imported into Hengistbury Head from the Continent must have been intended for workshops in southern Britain. From Yorkshire came jet ornaments while similar bracelets and anklets were made in Dorset from the Kimmeridge shale. Roads or tracks existed but there is little evidence for them today unless ancient tracks like the Peddar's Way in Norfolk or the Pilgrim's Way across the North Downs were in existence then. Rivers were used as routeways for river craft such as the Ferriby boats found by the Humber which demonstrate that river transport there at least dates back to the Bronze Age. In the same area, in Lincolnshire, one of the most interesting occupation sites of the late Iron Age has been excavated at Dragonby where ditched enclosures (perhaps property divisions) and an irregular pattern of streets with wooden round houses of c100BC gave way in the Romano-British period to rectangular, aisled buildings with stone footings. The site survived at least until the later fourth century BC with the inhabitants concentrating their farming skills on stock-rearing but trading and carrying on 54industrial activities. During the last hundred years of the British Iron Age from Caesar's visits down to the Roman conquest of AD43, the wealth-gap between the Highland and Lowland Zone widened. The rulers of the southern tribes were regarded as kings by the Romans, they ruled over wealthy societies with a sophisticated artistic tradition, and one can understand why the Romans would be tempted to add the country to their empire. It is within this last hundred years that the finest bronze metalwork appears. Objects like the Battersea Shield dredged up out of the Thames are decorated with the sophisticated La Tène art style, one of the great landmarks in the development of European art. But despite a flow of imported metal objects into Britain the finest objects in our Iron Age museum galleries are all of British or Irish manufacture. Most of the imported luxuries at this time come from Roman Italy. Wine amphorae turn up in excavations on aristocratic sites in the south-east together with the bronze jugs from which to drink it. Also of bronze are 'frying-pans' of unknown purpose. Pottery vessels appear among the imports, the commonest types being the black-slipped bowls and plates which were the aristocratic tableware of the period. The Iron Age in Europe [LINK] main page [LINK] Roman Conquest, the Army and Villas [LINK]