The Ancients - Before Rome: The Truth About Late Iron Age Britain

Episode Date: April 7, 2022

Roman connections with Britain stretch back to (at least) the mid 1st century BC. But what has archaeology revealed about the Late Iron Age British societies they interacted with? Do we have any concrete evidence for the druids? Was human sacrifice a thing? Sit back and enjoy in this very special Ancients episode, as experts provide a detailed run down of life and death in Late Iron Age Britain. The episode covers several topics: urbanisation, ritual and religion, trade, slavery and warfare. Featuring Durham University's Professor Tom Moore, alongside Colchester and Ipswich Museums' Dr Frank Hargrave and Dr Carolina Lima.The Lexden Tumulus History Hit YouTube videoFor more Ancients content, subscribe to our Ancients newsletter here.If you'd like to learn even more, we have hundreds of history documentaries, ad free podcasts and audiobooks at History Hit - subscribe today!To download, go to Android or Apple store.

Hi, I'm Tristan Hughes, and if you would like the Ancient ad-free, get early access and bonus episodes, sign up to History Hit. With a History Hit subscription, you can also watch hundreds of hours of original documentaries, including my recent documentary all about Petra and the Nabataeans, and enjoy a new release every week. Sign up now by visiting historyhit.com slash subscribe. It's the Ancients on History Hit. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and in today's podcast, we're talking all about life and death in late Iron Age Britain. Now, do I mean by that? Well late Iron Age we're roughly talking about the periods let's say between 200 BC and 43 AD, the time just before the Roman invasions of Britain culminating in the invasion of the Emperor Claudius in 43 AD.

We're going to be talking about life and death in Britain just before the beginning of the Roman period in ancient Britannia, shall we say. And we're going to be covering various topics such as urbanism, the emergence of urbanisation in the form of these opida, these small proto-towns, if you like, which started appearing at the end of the Iron Age in places such as Colchester. We're going to be talking about ritual and religion, and of course, by mentioning those two topics, of course, we're going to be talking about ritual and religion and of course by mentioning those two topics of course we're going to be talking a little bit about the Druids and this whole idea of human sacrifice. But we're also going to be looking beyond the shores of Britain

in this period. We're going to be looking at connections between Iron Age elites in Britain at that time and the continent and the Roman Empire. We're going to be looking at some lavish burials, we're going to be looking at trade routes, but also we're going to be looking at some more infamous sites of Iron Age Britain, of late Iron Age Britain, such as slavery and warfare. Now to talk through all of this in this very special episode, and I say special because we haven't got just one contributor. We don't have just two guests, we have three. We've got leading late Iron Age specialist Professor Tom Moore from the University of Durham. We've also got Dr Frank Hargrave from Colchester and Ipswich Museums. He's

also an expert on late Iron Age ritual and religion. We've also got Roman historian Dr Carolina Lima. Now Carolina and Frank, they've both been on the Ancients podcast before last year to talk about the ancient history of Colchester, ancient Camaludinum. You're going to be hearing that name a few times during this podcast episode today. Tom, it's his first time on the Ancients podcast, but he has featured on history hits before. He was the linchpin, a brilliant part of a recent documentary we released all about life and death in late Iron Age Britain. Indeed, this podcast has been fabricated from the series of interviews which we did for that documentary.

Now, I really do hope you enjoy. There's a little bit of narration by myself in this too, to link it all together. But without further ado, to talk all about life and death in late Iron Age Britain, here's Tom, here's Carolina, and here's Frank. The Iron Age in Britain is usually dated between around 800 BC and the mid-first century AD. It's a huge period, and it was during its later half that major changes were afoot for these Iron Age communities. Professor Tom Moore is a specialist in the British and European Iron Age who works at the University of Durham.

So between about 400 and 300 BC, we see some major changes across much of southern Britain in terms of the numbers of settlements. There's an increase in the number of settlements. And also there's a change in many of those settlements. There's a move in many areas from unenclosed settlement to small enclosed farmsteads and an increase in the number of those settlements. What's happening there, we think, is just an increase in demography. So there's more people probably in the landscape. And that's part of a wider change with the move to regionally exchanged ceramics for instance that might be

something to do with improving climate so from about 800 to 400 bc the climate's a little bit wetter and a little bit cooler from about 400 bc it gets warmer a little drier and that's probably over time leading to more people in the landscape why that's important is because as those societies grow they're having obviously more competition for land, so you need places to organise that for people to meet and organise the negotiations over landscape. So by the time we get to the first century BC, you'll see the emergence of these things that we often refer to as opida or late Iron Age centres like that at Camelodunum, Colchester, which are probably places where they negotiate those relationships. So that's why it's significant, these major changes across a longer time period. As Tom mentioned, larger settlements called Opida started to emerge across Britain in the late Iron Age. One such place was Colchester, ancient Camuludinum. Dr Frank Hargrave

is the Colchester and Ipswich Museum's manager. He's a good friend of the podcast and also an expert on late Iron Age ritual and religion. Colchester, I think, was really quite important at this stage, what we call a kind of transition between the Iron Age and the Romans. But in the decades up to the Roman invasion, there would have been a huge amount of contact between Iron Age Britain and the continent. Some of that would have been direct, I think, even with kind of ambassadors from Rome even. And much of it, however, would have been on a much more kind of local basis. And the conduit of a lot of that contact probably was Colchester. And that's why

it was growing in importance, I think. It was referred to by classical sources as being the seat of Canobolin. The Trinovantes, later who then incorporated the Catavoloni into a larger kingdom, were certainly one of the most powerful groups in late Iron Age southern Britain. And Colchester Camelodunum, as it was known, was certainly the centre of that. There was diplomacy, there was trade. It was a place where people were coming from the continent and anything that was happening on the continent they certainly would have have known here. And likewise, people on the continent would have known what was happening in Britain from their relationship with Camelodunum. It's really important for understanding those processes of how power worked,

what these centres were for, how they then evolved and developed into Roman towns. Proto-towns really is what we're kind of talking about in Britain at this stage, vary by those standards, the standards of Britain. You get a sense of that from the massive dike systems for instance, these great, great earthworks. These dike systems basically consisted of a big ditch and bank earthwork. Now earthworks themselves weren't anything new to Iron Age people. Think, for instance, the big ramparts that surround famous Iron Age hillforts such as Maiden Castle in Dorset. But the dikes that surrounded these late Iron Age opita, for instance at Camaludinum, well, they were different.

They were much, much larger in their scale. Some of them are still quite vast. They survive quite high. And then you've got to imagine what they would have been like without all the kind of detritus over the ages. You know, bringing down the levels and bringing up the ditches. And then you get a sense of their scale. When we think about the fact that these dikes are often many kilometres long, you've got to think about hundreds, probably thousands of people constructing these kind of monuments. And that probably took place in one go. And it tells us something about the power of the individuals who could get those groups of people together

and the social networks they had across large areas of late Iron Age southern Britain to get people to construct these monuments. Constructing these monumental dikes would have taken a lot of time, effort and resources. So what was their purpose? If we think about the nature of warfare in the late Iron Age, which probably involved chariots, perhaps cavalry, what the dike systems do enable you to do is they cut off the spur of land that Colchester is situated on. So if you want to slow down attackers who are becoming very mobile attackers, then they would do that. There are other roles, though, that they probably had. And that's a lot of these complexes, the way the earthworks work is they funnel movement. So they use existing

valleys, existing parts of the landscape to probably channel people through into these complexes in certain ways. Now, if we think about what the role of these sites is for, as places for the sort of theatres for the leaders to demonstrate their power, you want to perhaps channel movement. It looks impressive. You move past the burial sites of previous leaders, for instance. So they probably have a role which may be defensive, but also is more about showing the power of these places and the people who constructed them. What's interesting, though, of course, is that this is a familiar site. People for hundreds of years have been building earthworks to bound communities, be they households or large communities. So people will be seeing earthworks all the time. So they're

very familiar with that as a language of power. The number of people who came to construct those kind of earthworks would be well known, well understood by the people who visited them. So these aren't necessarily bounding a community, but they're creating a space in the landscape, a place where people can enact power. They can enact assemblies of groups of gatherings of people, perhaps to do things like exchange, perhaps ritual activities. groups of gatherings of people, perhaps to do things like exchange, perhaps ritual activities. So they're part of a longer process which has been taking hundreds of years of the Iron Age of people using earthworks to define community, define places of power. What happened within these dike systems is central to the emergence of urbanism, of urbanisation in ancient Britain. But what do we mean by urbanism when looking at the late Iron Age? It's a big question. Of course, it depends on how you define urbanism. We might think of urbanism

being densely populated, perhaps thousands of people living crowded together, perhaps having markets and so on, maybe a town wall going around it. The kind of urbanisation we see in Britain is very different. And of course, it depends on how you define what a town is. If we think of a town as being a centre, a social and political centre, in relationship to a wider hinterland of rural farmsteads, then much of what we see in Britain can be described as urban, but it's certainly not the urbanism we might be familiar with, like a Roman town or a medieval town. This is a place that probably is the centre for leadership. It's probably a place where people meet and gather to negotiate things like access to land, perhaps negotiating things like going to

war with other groups. It's perhaps where rituals take place. But it's not a place, at least in Britain, where lots of people are living. The population of many of these centres is perhaps just a few hundred people permanently. Now this was especially true of Colchester. So urbanisation in Colchester or Camerledunum looked very different as to how we see towns now. I mean, obviously we think of places really kind of packed places and of course Roman towns, even early on you have these great big high-rises almost of people living on top of each other almost. That certainly wasn't the case for somewhere like Camerledunum where you'd have had settlements all kind of spread out. You would have farmland even in between these great big dikes. We do see around the Sheepen area particularly, which is interesting where we

also see some activity in the Bronze Age as well. And that seems to be a place that would have been served very well from the river. And that's where we see some of the trades. We see some kind of artefacts there related to manufacture. And that carries right on, actually, interestingly, into the Roman period too, where that's the main kind of centre of where they're repairing armour and all sorts of kind of things happening there from manufacturing of metal work and the coin manufacture, which is something really important for Camulodunum too, particularly under Cnobolin. Cnobolin was a powerful British war leader of the early 1st century AD.

He was a king of the Catavolorni people and the father of the famed Caratacus, or Caratacus. We'll have to do a separate podcast on that figure at a later date. Cnobolin held great influence over a large amount of territory in what is today's East Anglia, including at Colchester. But what's so interesting about Cunoblin for our chat today is his coinage. Cunoblin's coins are beautiful, absolutely stunning coins, but not massively dissimilar to many other kind of coins being produced around that period, so in the first century, beginning of the first century AD. Horses feature an awful lot, there's wonderful, if you're familiar with a Wiltshire horse, they look very much like that most of them, very stylized, but very definitely horses. And then you also see a few other kind of symbols floating around, the solar symbol, which looks like a kind of cartwheel

to us, stars sometimes. And he also has Camus for Camulodunum, of course, appear on his coins, and Rex for King, a highly kind of Latinized idea. And his name, of course, features on it. Now, Kuno, we're familiar with him very much for his coins. But critically, it's where those coins are found. And that's why we know he was one of the most influential people in Britain at the time, because they are found all over the coin-producing areas and even a little bit further than that too. And where there's a coin hoard, there's a good chance there's a Cunobolian coin

amongst the efforts from that too. And where there's a coin hoard, there's a good chance there's a Cunobolin coin amongst the office from that period. As the seat of Cunobolin, Colchester was certainly a major centre of power in the late Iron Age. But what about Obida elsewhere in Britain? How does Colchester compare to the rest of urbanisation in Britain? It has many similarities. So the dispersed nature of activities within the complex at Colchester is very familiar, so that there's an area for industrial activity, an area for elite residents, perhaps an area for ritual, areas for cemeteries, all dispersed among these earthworks, with lots of open areas in between them as well. Open areas that we're not always sure what they were for, there's some evidence perhaps they were farming within them, but also probably for assembling large numbers of people,

tribute, perhaps livestock at certain times of year. That does happen at most of the complexes that we look at, Badgen and in Gloucestershire, for instance, Stanek in North Yorkshire. So it suggests that there are common things in the way power is manifested, that there are large resident populations at most of these complexes. So it is quite similar to many of those. There are others like Silchester and Hampshire, which seem to be more densely occupied, but they also have large open spaces within them too, for probably the meetings of

large numbers of people. So there are similarities across them. Some of them have similar trajectories, many of those at the time of the Roman conquest. Rome clearly sees these as centres of power, so it's there, or close to those locations where Roman towns are constructed, because this is where power is already being administered, so this is where Rome sees placing a Roman fort, then a Roman settlement, Roman town, develops from those locations. The emergence of these opita across Britain in the late Iron Age is symbolic of the great change that seized this island at that time. But now we must move on to our next topic, to late Iron Age ritual and religion.

So we know quite a lot about late Iron Age ritual and religion. They varied significantly across Britain, so there wasn't a single ritual practice that all people across even southern Britain were taking part in. It varied significantly with different practices. across Britain. So there wasn't a single ritual practice that all people across even southern Britain were taking part in. It varied significantly with different practices. It seems likely that really Iron Age religion was more about kind of everyday. So it's all mixed up with your everyday activities. You might kind of deposit, let's say, a votive offering to the gods for a successful trade or something like that, or to bless a venture that you're going to do, or bless a marriage, let's say, or something along those lines. And it's kind of

intertwined in everything that you did. We certainly know rivers and all watery places have some very significant meaning to them as kind of liminal zones, if you like, between some kind of spiritual world and physical. So we get a huge number of objects being poured into rivers, into lakes, from coins in the later periods, but probably before that, agricultural or perhaps sacrificed animals even, weapons as well, interesting. And that differs actually to the continent. So on the continent, you do get these kind of shrines, particularly in northern Gaul, where the weapons were kind of almost piled high sometimes, perhaps after a battle or different things, in landscape deposits within structured shrines in some cases. That doesn't happen in Britain. It seems weapons

were going into the water. That's possibly one of the reasons why we don't actually find huge quantities of weapons, because they were kind of riverine rather than landscape deposits for the main part. So really for Iron Age people, it was about the landscape as a special place, as not about specific kind of small areas, as kind of sacred spaces. Nevertheless, we do see some new trends emerging at this time. Once we get to the late Iron Age, we see in Britain the first emergence of what we might call sanctuaries or temples. There's a few sites, literally a handful of sites, where you can say, yes, that's an Iron Age temple.

But extrapolating that across the country, certainly, you don't see that. And even at those sites, there's something not quite established about them. They seem quite flimsy. They're not really constructed in the way we think of as Roman temples, you know, these great big structures, or even Wanoish temples, which seem to have kind of come from somewhere, you know, kind of a mix of indigenous and Roman kind of structures. But it does suggest there's a change in where people are undertaking ritual and how that's being conducted. So voter depositions being deposited on those sanctuary sites, that suggests a major change in the way ritual relates

to power. Because of course, these are places now that you come to do ritual rather than doing it within a domestic sphere. A potential location for one of these rare late Iron Age religious sites is at Gosbecks in Colchester. Religious objects dating to the Roman period, such as the stunning Gosbecks Mercury statuette, indicate that this was a religious site during the Roman period, such as the stunning Gosbeck's Mercury statuette, indicate that this was a religious site during the Roman period that followed the late Iron Age period here. And this has led some to suggest

that this Roman centre of worship may well have been preceded by a late Iron Age sanctuary right at the heart of King Cnoblin's Camuludinum. We have to remember though, much of the practices that carried on for hundreds of years in the Iron Age continue to take place at the same time. We know that through treatment

of the dead, we know that with some of the late Iron Age sanctuaries that emerged at the very end of the Iron Age, but also people in the countryside were doing something quite different perhaps to those living at centres like Camulodunum. So we have a variety of practices taking place, a ritual by the late Iron Age, different people doing different things, probably the same people doing different things in different places throughout Shalak Sevitim. Now, we can't have a discussion about late Iron Age ritual and religion without mentioning the D word, the Druids. Take it away, Tom.

So who were the Druids? Well, we know really about Druids through the classical sources. So Caesar gives us quite a detailed description of them when talking about late Iron Age Gaul, so late Iron Age France. And then we have references in things like Tacitus later on, nearly 100 years later, talking about Britain. That's really how we know everything about the Druids. And it's clear from some of those sources that the role and the nature of those Druids changed over time. Even the Roman writers recognised that. Archaeologically speaking, it's incredibly difficult to identify those individuals because how would we see them in the archaeological record? Now, classical sources tell us that Druids

are probably a combination of ritual specialists, philosophers, perhaps involved in some political decision making. Archaeologically what are we looking for in the archaeological record? There are individuals who are buried with things that might suggest they were doing divination for instance. The classic example given is the burial at Stanway but many have suggested really that's just a doctor's burial. So the reason for the identification of it is a druid because there are doctor's equipment in this late-Inish burial. Some of the rods associated have been argued as being dividing rods. But really, we can't make that association. So the idea that this individual was a druid

seems unlikely on that basis. Although some of the kind of priestly classes, if you like, that may have existed in Iron Age Britain, do seem to come out of the woodwork a little bit when we look at Romano-British culture. And not too far away from here at Cavernham in Suffolk, actually, you get these wonderful crowns. And there's a dozen or so, all quite different, but these kind of crowns that were worn by priests from the late first century onwards, really. How widespread that was is hard to say, but it does seem to have been an indigenous link there. This wasn't entirely a Roman thing to wear these wonderful headdresses, and perhaps that comes from the Druids. There's an individual buried at Deal in Kent who was wearing a headdress. He's also buried with warriors' equipment. Some have suggested this is not a helmet, who was wearing a headdress. He's also buried with warrior's equipment.

Some have suggested this is not a helmet, it's not a crown, is it some kind of, is he a ritual specialist? So those could be identified as druids, but again, it's very hard to know what we would see as the regalia of a druid. So that's very hard to suggest we can definitively say. That doesn't mean the druids didn't exist. They're almost certainly by the late-Sinai ritual specialists, but identifying them archaeologically, I think, is very difficult. The discussion of the Druid always reminds us that what we have from the classical sources is this quite narrow insight into late-Sinai world that we latch onto and really want to interpret

where these things are happening. But actually, of course, that's just what was important to the Romans and what was happening in the kind of Roman conquest. Julius Caesar talks about allies of his who were Druids. And from this, we get a sense, apparently, that Britain was the heartland, actually, of this kind of religion that was centred on Druids. And you would guess that there really was a priestly class of some description that were responsible for some of the religious activity that would have occurred.

And, you know, the obvious one that the Romans talk about is, of course, human sacrifice. Certainly there was sacrifice of humans in Iron Age Britain. We have plenty of burials where people have died violent deaths. Many of those seem likely to have not necessarily always been in warfare. Whether that's associated with druids is, of course, another question. But certainly, the fact that we have trauma on many human remains from various different contexts from Iron Age Britain suggests that people were killed in violent ways, probably is some kind of sacrifice. But for many of those individuals, we sometimes think of

sacrifice as being a terrible thing for that individual. But for many people who'd come to late in their life in Iron Age Britain, that might have been actually seen as propitious, that they were somehow being treated honorably for those individuals. So even from one of the own sites that I've worked on from the late Iron Age, we have an elderly female burial, because she was old, probably of quite status in society, remembering that people die relatively young probably in these societies, she was buried at a significant transition in the site. That may be that she had actually gone willingly to that death in those sites. So sacrifice certainly happened. Where it's difficult to know is whether that's related to the Druids in the way that we see

from accounts by people like Julius Caesar. We don't know what place that had in society, but certainly sacrifices happen. The discussion of the Druid will continue to divide archaeologists and historians alike. Let's move on to late Iron Age burial. So what changes are there taking place in treatment of the dead in the late Iron Age in Britain? Well, for most of the Iron Age in Britain, one of the enigmas of that period is it's very hard to see the dead. We don't have enough human remains from the settlements that we have. So most people throughout most of the Iron Age are being treated in a way that doesn't leave an archaeological remains. That may be excarnation. That means putting up in trees or platforms to be defleshed by animals, by things like birds. It may be that they're cremated and put in waterways. And then a few people are buried in enclosure boundaries, in storage pits, and so

on. Sometimes those people are then gone back to and retrieved. So we know that some of those bodies are left out within the pits to deflesh, and then bits of human remains retained. By the time we get to the late Iron Age in southeastern England we see the appearance of cremation burials and those cremation burials are to begin with buried with pots, relatively simple, perhaps just an urn, perhaps a brooch. By the time we get to the end of the Iron Age, to the early first century AD, we see some really impressive burials with a range of grave goods. It's worth remembering that even in Southeast England, in the Late Iron Age, not everybody is being cremated. We still have the burials of certain individuals,

even within some of the burial arenas. So at Thalamian, which is a Late Iron Age centre, we have a cremation burial within the centre of the enclosure, but in the ditch surrounding it, we have two inhumation burials. So probably by the late Iron Age, burial modes are changing, and that may demarcate status difference between those individuals. So the late Iron Age is exciting when it comes to treatment of the dead, because we're seeing increasing diversity. Although we've seen diversity before in the Iron Age, what we're seeing now is people seemingly marking themselves out individually, their own identity, their status from different parts of society. So there's clearly a desire to use what happens to you after death

to demonstrate who you were in life. This seems to have been especially true for the elites situated in the south and east of Britain. Colchester and burials elsewhere, actually just outside Colchester but also around St Albans. Again, Cat of Lorna and Ike and Heartlands really seem particularly rich. There are some other oddities, let's say, around the country. Famously around Yorkshire, you have the Arras burials where they have chariots. They're incredible. And recently there was the famous Warrior burial in Chichester, for example, which is really quite unique.

And recently there was the famous warrior burial in Chichester, for example, which is really quite unique. But generally speaking, the number of very wealthy burials in this area seems to be quite special. So the reason for having really rich burials around Colchester is that it was a major centre for the late Iron Age power. And so it had increasing relationships with the Roman Empire, leaders there who had significant power, not just over the area of Essex but probably beyond over much of southern Britain. So those individuals were marking out their power through the burial arena, associating individuals with grave goods, imports from the Roman world to mark out their status as being different from the rest of the population. One of the things that you notice about many of the grave goods that these elites

are buried with is that it's drinking and feasting equipment, including a large number of amphora, as Roman archaeologist Dr Carolina Lima explains. So amphora are types of Roman pots that are very large and they're basically storage vessels used for transporting goods across the Mediterranean and later on the empire. They're very large, very distinctive and they're built to be shipped so essentially they have a very unusual structure. They can't stand on their own and they have a very distinctive bottom that sort of protrudes because it fits into the top of another amphora so they stack them onto ships, tie them together and transport huge quantities of material on boats. Very interestingly, in late Iron Age Britain, we do get amphora popping up in burials, particularly in these elite burials.

It's very, very interesting because when you think about amphora and we look at the way amphora are viewed in the Mediterranean, especially at this time and later on, they're storage vessels. So they're very disposable and they break extremely easily in ports when you're moving them off of ships. And they're discarded in huge quantities. Very famously in Rome, there's a Monte Testaccio. It's an artificial mound made of fragments of amphora or olive oil amphora that have just been thrown out. And that's kind of the way that amphora are viewed. But here they're obviously showing up in these elite burials. The offering of libations and wine in particular in graves is very common, but it's always in a lovely flagon or poured onto a libation bowl. It's not the amphora, the amphora is the transport vessel. So it's very,

very interesting that people are choosing to do that in this period. It therefore begs the question, why are they choosing, these elites, why are they choosing to be buried with these vessels, these amphora, alongside all this other feasting and drinking equipment? There are a number of things that are taking place in the late high-nage that are really interesting. The emergence of these burials, which happens earlier, right into the early 1st century BC, of burials where we have this drinking equipment, is clearly about how power is maintained. That you hold a feast, you supply drink, you supply food, and that's where you get vassals. And if power is based on your network of relationships with

other people, you want to show that you can provide that largesse to those individuals. There's something else going on as well, though, because of course what they want to incorporate that is new ways of drinking. So they're importing wine from the Roman Empire. They're using cups for the first time. It's worth remembering that throughout most of Iron Age Britain, we don't have things like cups and plates for the first time. This is coming in the late Iron Age. So they're drinking and eating in different ways. Now, of course, if you want to mark yourself out as of higher status, as your group, as being different perhaps from everybody else in society, you might want to drink and eat in a

different way. And again, to show those exotic relationships that you've got with the power on the continent that other people don't have access to. And people, perhaps vassals, are going to be more keen to be associated with you if you can demonstrate, well, I'm aware of drinking culture, perhaps not just in Rome, perhaps also on the continent in France. Much of this is more imitating what's happening in northern France than it is actually what's happening in Italy. So also those relationships with elites on the continent. So this is what they're doing. So it's a combination of showing new ways of eating and drinking, providing largesse, as well as the connections they have to power centres and ultimately the Roman Empire. Several very elaborate burials have survived from the late Iron Age that really hammer

home the connections that existed between Britain and Rome at that time. A brilliant example is the Lexton Tumulus at Colchester, an incredibly lavish burial filled with Roman goods that we released a small YouTube video about not too long ago. We'll put a link to it in the description of this podcast episode below. But contact between late Iron Age Britain and the Roman Empire wasn't restricted solely to the elites. We know that there was a huge amount of contact between late Iron Age Britain and the continent.

Very often people talk about the Roman arrival into Britain and it's a bit of a misnomer and a bit misleading because actually there's a huge amount of Roman material in contact between the two. We have a lot of ancient sources that mention that. Trebo talks about, in the first century BC, the kind of things that are being imported from Britain. So these are things like grain, hunting dogs, slaves, for instance. And there's the more intangible kind

of trade, trade of ideas and practices. So there's a huge impact in the late Iron Age of what's going on in the continent and Britain from changes in funerary practices, metalworking, pottery making and other technologies that are developing and learning, but also being introduced. Late Iron Age opida like Colchester may well have played an important role in this trade network. We often saw the development of those sites as being in controlling trade with especially the Roman Empire, because those are the places where we see the Roman imports like the wine amphora. It's hard to know to what extent their role is controlling trade, or whether it's about these are power centres to where trade and exchange and interaction with the Roman Empire takes place. So it may be that these centres are already emerging, and they are the place that

Roman traders come to. They are the place where Roman elites come to, to give gifts to the rulers, the leaders of those centres. But to what extent they were actually centres for trade is a little bit difficult to ascertain because we don't really have enough evidence for large-scale trade. That's very different, and that is one of the differences within the centre in the late High-Edge Britain from somewhere like late High-Edge Gaul. So if we go to some of the centres in central France, for instance, we have thousands and thousands of amphora being imported from northern Italy. We don't have that kind of scale of material being imported into southern Britain, which suggests that the relationship is somewhat different.

Of course, we've always got to remember that archaeologically speaking, a lot of things that might be being traded and exchanged just won't survive archaeologically. Things like grain, things like metal, ores, of course, things like slaves. Slavery in Iron Age Britain almost certainly was occurring long before the Romans arrived. Rarely we have slave chains from a number of late Iron Age sites, places like Bigbury and Kent, where we can see the manacles dating to the late Iron Age. We must remember that there may have been other forms of keeping slaves, fetters that just don't survive archaeologically, so there was perhaps more of it going on.

When the Romans arrive on the doorstep, if you like, it probably had the catalyzing effect in Britain. The slave chains we have from Camulodunum are Roman, but it's a emblematic, I think, of something that was happening before the Romans even arrived. Slave chains are, first of all, one of the very few bits of evidence that we have that directly represent slaves and slavery. You know, the archaeological record is obviously very sparse in that regard, but we do get slave chains in the late Iron Age period. The way they work is we get these gang chains, we call them gang chains because they connect several people, and the way they work is they've got collars that go around, and the collars don't actually have the same kind of locking mechanism that you would imagine a chain to have now. They interlock with each other,

and basically the way to open them is to release the next one down. So everyone's locked in together. The chains themselves, when we look at them, they're such heavy objects. I mean, it's gang chains, so it's several, but even if you just pick up one bit of it, you realize how heavy it is. And it went around people's necks, depriving them of their liberty, but also tying them to other people. So even in that moment, depriving them of the ability to move freely. They're incredibly impactful objects, because so much of the information we get about slavery isn't directly related to our archaeological record. It's also worth mentioning that when we think about Roman slavery, we very often think about the conquered people. We think about warfare and the consequence of warfare. And there's something

horrendous about that as well. But in late Iron Age Britain, people are actually being sold by people, very often within Britain, to Romans. And there's a huge increase in demand as the Romans are expanding within the continent. And it seems to be this practice that the Romans see is almost essential to their way of life, so that the more they expand, the more slaves they need to get into their borders. We know from Roman authors that slaves from Britain and before it was conquered, Gaul, were very cheap. You know, they boast about swapping a slave for just a flagon of wine kind of a thing. And you get a sense of this great appetite for slaves in the Roman Empire, tragically, then kind of accelerated what was happening in these countries on the periphery. So they actually start raiding more and they want to get more slaves.

And that becomes the main reason for their raids. And then they're selling them to the continent. So this is men, women and children. And they're being moved in their mind across the world to a place where people wear completely different clothes, they speak a different language, eat different food, a completely different world. And we don't know about that lived experience. You know, we can guess from the slave chains, we can certainly see the horrific conditions they would have been kept in in that moment.

But the consequence and the impact for the rest of their lives is something that we can only guess, we can barely fathom. Presence of slaves in late Iron Age Britain also brings to the fore another aspect of late Iron Age society, warfare. Warfare clearly was important to many of the leaders who were emerging in the late Iron Age. They don't necessarily put lots of martial equipment within those burials, or they do include some, things like chainmail armour, for instance. But we can see from the coinage that's being minted,

the fact that they're depicting people like Taski of Arnus on horseback, holding a sword, that warfare, that raiding on other groups is probably important in the way they maintain power. What we have to be careful of is to assume that all of these Iron Age societies are warring all the time. This is a warrior society where, yes, a lot of people would consider martial skills very importantly, but then they'd have to go back to the day job, go back to farming or whatever trade they were kind of invested in. So warfare was probably not necessarily endemic, happening all the time, but it was almost certainly a way that you gained prestige as a leader

and that you perhaps gained other resources, be they horses, cattle or people. So in terms of how warfare worked in late Iron Age Britain, again, one of our great sources for knowing about that is actually from one of the classical writers, Julius Caesar, when he visited Britain in the first century BC, who talks about the fact that chariots are being used. Chariots in the Iron Age attract quite a lot of debate. Exactly how they were kind of employed, how effective they were on different kind of landscapes, I think to a certain extent, has also been kind of landscapes, I think, to a certain extent,

has also been kind of debated. I think some quite practical experimentation, actually, it's been surprising just how versatile they were and how effective they could be. And again, exactly how they were deployed, still, you know, whether they were actually people literally fighting with swords, hanging off the side of them, or throwing spears from them, is debatable, or whether they're almost like transports, where you can quickly jump on them, run into battle, jump off, fight, get back on, retreat. And, you know, it's quite debatable. What we do know is Julius Caesar found them quite formidable. He writes about them, and with a certain amount of kind of respect, possibly because of the shock they brought. They ride around the battlefield, creating a lot of noise and disturbance.

And that correlates with the archaeological evidence where we have things like carnixes from late High Age Britain, these war trumpets, we have evidence of chariots. What that implies is that warfare is quite mobile, so that it's based around chariots, probably mounted warriors like we see on some of the late High Age coinage. And when you think as well that horses at the period, you think of cavalry, they weren't the great war horses that we think of in the Middle Ages with the great shock charge. So they would have had a perhaps more of a durable role than cavalry had. So there's that element too. But it's also about display. So a lot of warfare is actually about making a lot of noise, being very impressive. How many people actually necessarily die in those conflicts is hard to ascertain. Certainly, we have plenty of evidence that people were dying violent deaths from warfare,

burials like the one from Stanek, where we have an individual who's got a sword cut to his head. He died violently, probably within some warfare. But it may be that a lot of it is not necessarily about completely decimating the opposing forces. It's about making a display of your power to another group that they then may be subject to your leadership. So chariots have been around in Britain for a significant period of time. And in East Yorkshire, we have burials with chariots. And once we get to the late Iron Age in Southern Britain, we don't have burials with chariots that

we've identified. What we do have is fragments of the linchpins, the bits that hold the wheels together, the terrets, the bits that are the horse gear for the riding team for those chariots. So we know that chariots were quite widespread. We have even some sites, there's a site in Dorset where we have the moulds for making a number of horse bits for chariot gear, probably 50 or so worth of chariots. So we know there are a lot of these around in the late-Sinish Britain. Caesar claims that various kind of points of, you know, literally thousands of them deployed may not be a massive exaggeration, actually, and they probably were quite common. And the veneration, again, of an association with chariots and certainly with horses seems to have been there as well.

They're clearly very important to late-Sinish society. horses seems to have been there as well. They're clearly very important to late Iron Age society. As Frank highlighted, one animal that was highly prized in late Iron Age society was the horse. Horses must have been a valuable commodity, presumably to elites, and how widespread horses would have been kind of utilised by Iron Age people is impossible to say now, of course. But they would have been very important. We're not talking massive warhorses or anything like that. They're kind of large ponies, really, but they would have been very durable. They could have carried someone long distances.

And then there's the link, of course, with chariots. And again, the prestige around that. And they're highly decorative. Some of the kind of horse gear that you get associated with this, wonderful kind of red garnet and you know all sorts of kind of exquisite particularly when you imagine these kind of greenish kind of objects that we get today wouldn't have been like that there would have been polished bronze you know would have been quite startling really so from that point of view alone and the physical appearance you would have on

horseback with all of these trappings would have been quite impressive in of itself and then we also see on coinage particularly the horses appearing time and time again, it's kind of Wiltshire horse kind of style. And again, did these have Iron Age origins themselves? So hugely important, I think. The Late Iron Age in Britain is an extraordinary time in this island's ancient history. A mysterious period that will no doubt give up more astonishing secrets in the years ahead. So why do I think the late Iron Age in Britain, in Europe, is an interesting period to examine? Why is it so important to us? Because a lot of the things that we see emerging in that period are things that we are familiar with. Places that are the beginnings of urbanism. They

may not look like towns to us, but they are the emergence of urbanism in late-Hinage Europe, before Rome starts to build towns. We've often thought of this as being Rome brings civilization, it brings roads, it brings towns. What we can see from studying late-Hinage Britain is that many of the things that we think of as civilization, urbanism, coinage, even roads now are identified from late Iron Age Britain. But these things were already developing before Rome arrived, and in many ways, they were what properly Rome wanted from Britain. It could see it as somewhere that was worth conquering. So the late Iron Age is a really exciting period in which lots of change is taking place,

and lots of things that we think of as being part of society, urbanism, coinage, are starting to emerge. Well, there you go. There was Professor Tom Moore, Dr Frank Hargrave and Dr Carolina Lima for that that very special ancients multi-contributor episode all about life and death in late Iron Age Britain. I hope you enjoyed our editor, Mr. P, Pete Dennis. He put a lot of time into putting that podcast episode together, that special episode. So as mentioned, I do hope you really enjoyed it. Now, last but certainly not least, if you want

more ancient history content in the meantime, well, you can subscribe to our weekly newsletter via a link in the description below, where every week I write a little blurb for that newsletter explaining all about what's been happening in Team Ancient History Hits World that week. If you'd also be kind enough to leave us a lovely rating on either Apple Podcasts or Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts from, I would greatly appreciate it. Now that's enough from me, and I will see you in the next episode.