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British Iron Age |
| History of the British Isles
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By chronology
By topic
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The British Iron Age is a conventional name in the archaeology of Great Britain referring to the prehistoric and proto-historic phases of the Iron-Age culture of the main island and the smaller islands, typically excluding Ireland.1 The parallel phase of Irish archaeology is termed the Irish Iron Age,2 and similarly locally defined Iron Ages exist for many regions of Europe, such as the Danish Iron Age.3 The Iron Age is not an archaeological horizon of common artifacts, but is rather a locally diverse cultural phase. Whatever is said of the British Iron Age is not necessarily transferable to any other, and vice versa, except for the common preference for the use of iron.
The various Iron Ages have no common set of dates. The British Iron Age lasted in theory from the first significant use of iron for tools and weapons in Britain to the Romanization of southern half of the island. The Romanized culture is termed Roman Britain and is considered to supplant the British Iron Age. This terminology should not be construed to mean that Roman Britain and the Romans there and elsewhere were not in the Iron Age. Although the beginnings of Iron Ages are generally well-defined by the replacement of iron for bronze or stone, the endings have no such physical basis of definition. Many consider civilization to be still in the Iron Age. By convention the Iron Age "ends" when a more salient basis for characterizing the culture becomes available, such as Roman occupation. The Irish Iron Age was "ended" by the rise of Christianity there.
The conquest of Britain by the literate Romans brought to light that the tribes populating the island belonged to a generally recognized identity called the Celtae. The British language became recognized as one of the group now known as Celtic languages. This identity must have formed in the centuries preceding the conquest; hence the term Celtic Britain for the period is an equally old and respected term. It also is conventional and should not be construed as meaning that Britain was not Celtic under the Romans or in later times or that no peoples other than Celtic lived in Britain anciently.4
The term "Celtic Iron Age" is reserved for a hypothetical Celtic unity between the various Iron-age cultures of Europe. During its widest credence the Hallstatt culture and the La Tène as well as the British and Irish Iron Ages came under the umbrella of this term.5 That some of the Celtic tribes mentioned by Julius Caesar are to be associated with artifacts showing evidence of the La Tène is not in question. That all the Iron-age cultures of Europe share a substantial cultural unity and that this unity is to be identified with a real common ethnicity specifically termed Celtic has for the most part lost credibility. The critics claim that a unity has been doctored up a priori on little or no genuine evidence.6 The controversy continues with as yet no resolution acceptable to the mainstream of scholars.
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At present over 100 large Iron-age sites have been excavated7 dating from the 8th century BC to the 1st century BC, overlapping on the Bronze Age in the 8th century BC.8 Hundred of radiocarbon dates have been acquired and have been calibrated on four different curves, the most precise being based on tree ring sequences.
The precision of the dates in this first millenium BC does not allow a periodization based on the radiocarbon dates. The range of any one radiocarbon date at one Standard deviation; that is, at 68% probability of the historical date being within the range, is in the order of a few hundred years. Many schemes have been proposed based on sequences of pottery and other artifacts. The following scheme summarizes a comparative chart presented in a recent book by Barry Cunliffe:9
The end is extended into the early Roman Empire under the theory that Romanization required some time to effect. In parts of Britain that were not Romanised, such as Scotland, the period is extended a little longer, say to the 5th century. The geographer closest to 100 AD is perhaps Ptolemy. Pliny and Strabo would already have written, but Ptolemy gives the most detail (and the least theory).
Attempts to understand the human behaviour of the period have traditionally focused on the geographic position of the islands and their landscape, along with the channels of influence coming from continental Europe.
During the later Bronze Age there are indications of new ideas influencing land use and settlement. Extensive field systems, now called Celtic fields, were being set out and settlements becoming more permanent and focused on better exploitation of the land. The central organisation to undertake this had been present since the Neolithic period but it was now being targeted at economic and social goals and in taming the landscape rather than in building large ceremonial structures such as Stonehenge. Long ditches, some many miles in length, were dug with enclosures placed at their ends. These are thought to indicate territorial borders and a desire to increase control over wide areas.
By the 8th century BC, there is increasing evidence of Great Britain being closely tied to continental Europe especially in the south and east. New weapon types appeared with clear parallels to those on the continent such as the Carp's tongue sword, complex examples of which are found all over Atlantic Europe. Phoenician traders probably began visiting some of the British Isles in search of minerals around this time, bringing with them goods from the Mediterranean. At the same time, northern European artefact types reached eastern Great Britain in large quantities from across the North Sea.
Within this context, the climate became considerably wetter forcing the Bronze Age farmsteads which had grown on lowland areas relocate to upland sites.
Defensive structures dating from this time are often impressive, for example the brochs of northern Scotland and the hill forts that dotted the rest of the islands. Examples of hill forts include Maiden Castle, Dorset and Danebury in Hampshire. Hill forts first appeared in Wessex between 550 and 400 BC in a simple univallate form and often connected with the earlier enclosures attached to the long ditch systems. Few hill forts have been substantially excavated in the modern era, Danebury being a notable exception but it appears that they were used for domestic purposes with examples of food storage, industry and occupation being found within their earthworks. They may have been only occupied intermittently however as it is difficult to reconcile permanently occupied hill forts with the lowland farmsteads and their roundhouses found during the twentieth century such as at Little Woodbury and Rispain Camp.
The presence of hill forts is possibly because of greater tension between better structured groups, although there are suggestions that in the latter phases of the Iron Age they existed simply to indicate wealth. Alternatively, they may have served as wider centres used for markets and social contact. Either way, during the Roman occupation the evidence suggests that as defensive structures they proved to be of little use against concerted Roman attack. Some continued as settlements for the newly conquered Britons. Some were also reused by later cultures, such as the Saxons, in the early Medieval period.
The Roman historian Tacitus described the Britons as being descended from people who had arrived from the continent (which at that time was dominated by the Celts), comparing the Caledonians in modern-day Scotland to their Germanic neighbours, the Silures of southern Wales to Iberian settlers and the inhabitants of south east Britannia to Gaulish tribes. This migrationist view long informed later views of the origins of the British Iron Age and indeed the making of the modern nations. Linguistic evidence inferred from the surviving Celtic languages in northern and western Great Britain appeared to back this idea up and the changes in material culture which archaeologists observed during later prehistory were routinely ascribed to a new wave of invaders.
By the 1960s this view had fallen from favour as it was argued that changes in language and artefact types could not necessarily be attributed to large, long distance population movements. Ideas can be transported more easily than people and can account for many changes in the archaeological record, and for the presence of Celtic languages in Britain. The numerous finds of swords and other weaponry were originally attributed to a warlike society but are now interpreted as items of social status, perhaps given as diplomatic gifts between tribes.
There was certainly a large migration of people from central Europe westwards during the early Iron Age but whether or not people from this movement actually reached Great Britain in significant enough numbers to constitute an invasion is in question. The arrival in Kent of the Belgae in the 1st century BC still requires explanation under any non-invasionist theory however.
Population estimates vary but the number of people in Iron Age Great Britain could have been three or four million by 150 BC with most concentrated densely in the agricultural lands of the south. Settlement density and a land shortage may have contributed to rising tensions during the period.
Between c. 400 and 100 BC there is evidence of emerging regional identities and a significant population increase. Early in the Iron Age, the widespread Wessex pottery of southern Great Britain such as the type style from All Cannings Cross may suggest a consolidated socio-economic group in the region. However, by 600 BC this appears to have broken down into differing sub-groups with their own pottery styles.
Claudius Ptolemy described Iron Age Britain at the beginning of Roman rule, but incorporating material from earlier sources.10 Although the name Britannia had been known since the voyage of Pytheas and was in use in Strabo and Pliny, Ptolemy uses the earlier Albion, known from as early as the Massaliote Periplus.
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Tribes & cities |
Rivers Forests |
Promontories
Bays & estuaries
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Islands |
| Series on Celtic mythology  |
| Gaelic mythology |
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Irish mythology |
| Brythonic mythology |
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British Iron Age religion |
| Religious vocations |
| Festivals |
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Samhain |
The Romans recorded a variety of deities worshipped by the people of north western Europe. Barry Cunliffe perceives a division between one group of gods relating to masculinity, the sky and individual tribes and a second, female group of goddesses with associations with fertility, the earth and a universality that transcended tribal differences. Wells and springs had female, divine links exemplified by the goddess Sulis worshipped at Bath. Julius Cæsar wrote of superstition playing a strong role in Gaulish religion and this is likely to have been mirrored in Great Britain.
Religious practices revolved around offerings and sacrifices, sometimes human but more often involving ritual slaughter of animals or the deposition of metalwork, especially war booty. Weapons and horse trappings have been found in the bog at Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey and are interpreted as votive offerings cast into a lake. Numerous weapons have also been recovered from rivers especially the Thames but also the Trent and Tyne. Some buried hoards of jewellery are interpreted as gifts to the earth gods.
Disused grain storage pits and the ends of ditches have also produced what appear to be deliberately placed deposits including a preference for burials of horses, dogs and ravens. The bodies were often mutilated and some human finds at the bottom of pits such as those found at Danebury may have had a ritual aspect.
The priesthood of this religion was the Druids. Caesar's texts tell us that they were a religious elite with considerable holy and secular powers. Great Britain appears to have been the seat of the Druidic religion and Tacitus' account of the later raid on Anglesey led by Suetonius Paulinus gives some indication of its nature. No archaeological evidence survives of Druidry although a number of burials made with ritual trappings and found in Kent may suggest a religious character to the subjects.
Overall the traditional view is that religion was practised in natural settings in the open air. Several sites interpreted as Iron Age shrines however seem to contradict this view which may derive from Victorian and later Celtic romanticism. Sites such as at Hayling Island in Hampshire and that found during construction work at Heathrow airport are interpreted as purpose-built shrines. The Hayling Island example was a circular wooden building set within a rectangular precinct and was rebuilt in stone as a Romano-British temple in the first century AD to the same plan. The Heathrow temple was a small cella surrounded by a ring of postholes thought to have formed an ambulatory which is very similar to Romano-Celtic temples found elsewhere in Europe.
Death in Iron Age Great Britain seems to have produced different behaviours in different regions. Cremation was a method of disposing of the dead although the chariot burials and other inhumations of the Arras culture of East Yorkshire, and the cist burials of Cornwall, demonstrate that it was not ubiquitous. In fact, the general dearth of excavated Iron Age burials makes drawing conclusions difficult. Excarnation has been suggested as a reason for the lack of burial evidence with the remains of the dead being dispersed either naturally or through human agency.
Trade links developed in the Bronze Age and beforehand provided Great Britain with numerous examples of continental craftsmanship. Swords especially were imported, copied and often improved upon by the natives. Early in the period Hallstat slashing swords and daggers were a significant import although by the mid sixth century the volume of goods arriving seems to have declined, possibly due to more profitable trade centres appearing in the Mediterranean. La Tène culture items (usually associated with the Celts) appeared in later centuries and again these were adopted and adapted with alacrity by the locals.
There also appears to have been a collapse in the bronze trade during the early Iron Age, evidenced by the increase in buried hoards which may have been an attempt to control the supply of the material.
Exports certainly included British weaponry which has been found on the continent although this may represent the diplomatic links discussed above. Hengistbury Head in Dorset had a large natural harbour that was an important port for the import and export of goods with the Roman world. The products which Strabo, the Greek geographer recorded describe Great Britain as providing "grain, cattle, gold silver, iron, hides, slaves and hunting dogs" 11.
Tens of thousands of coins from the Iron Age have been found in Great Britain. Some, such as gold staters, were imported from mainland Europe, others such as the potins of south east England were crude copies of Greek and Roman originals. The British tribal kings also adopted the continental habit of putting their names on the coins they had minted. A native quarter stater entered circulation in the Late Pre-Roman Iron Age. Hoards of Iron Age coins include the Silsden Hoard in West Yorkshire found in 1998. Of examples that were entirely minted locally a large hoard from the Corieltauvi tribe was found in Leicestershire in 2002.
Historically speaking, the Iron Age in southern Great Britain ended with the Roman invasion. In areas where Roman rule was not strong or was non-existent, Iron Age beliefs and practices continued for centuries. Even in southern England, earlier place names survived indicating that Latin ways had not entirely removed the pre-Roman culture.
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