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Gere farm, an Iron-Age settlement before the Roman occupation. © Victor Ambrus
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'...their houses are simple, built for the most part of reeds or logs. They harvest their grain crops by cutting off only the ears of corn and store them in covered barns.' Diodorus Siculus.

The period of British history known as the Iron Age started with a slow and gradual adoption of iron-working technology during the 8th century BC. Unlike the Roman period which started with a dramatic invasion event, the Iron Age rather phased into being as Bronze-Age Britain learnt new production techniques. Both bronze and iron- working technologies existed alongside each other for some time making the clear division by archaeologists from one period into the next quite an impossible task. However, for the sake of clarity the period is split into three distinct phases which are characterised by varying types of material culture.

The Early Iron Age runs from BC 800 to 300 and essentially covers the transition from Bronze Age to Iron Age. The Middle Iron Age dates from BC 300 to 100 and witnesses the first use of coinage in Britain and more distinct and varied pottery types, wider use of iron and other evidence more clearly defined as typically Iron Age. The Later Iron Age dates from BC100 to AD43 and generally has the clearest and best evidence for the period.

Britain of the Later Iron-Age was a country split into some 25 different tribal lands, each with their own chieftain kings. The largely agricultural society was built on systems of leadership which held no concept of a united country. Each tribe was individual and existed within their own territory under their own laws. People lived in timber roundhouses (though some are known with stone walls, such as Chysauster in Cornwall) in a range of settlement types from individual and extended family farmstead enclosures and small villages, to defended sites such as artificial islands (called crannogs, such as Llangorse, Brecon) and large defended hilltops commonly known as hillforts (oppida, such as Hod Hill and Maiden Castle in Dorset).

The economy of the age was based largely on agricultural produce from wheat and barley to peas and beans. Pollen analysis has shown that Iron-Age farmers rotated their crops to preserve the fertility of their soil and that the common conception of people in prehistory living through years of miserable weather is mainly untrue. It appears that the middle to later Iron-Age climate was very similar to today. Cattle and sheep were also farmed together with pigs. Sites of artefact production are rare, but the material evidence of archaeological finds shows us that lathe turned wooden and shale items, glass beads, sea salt, wheel querns, iron tipped ploughs, weapons and tools, and wheel-thrown pots all added to the diverse trade economy. The volume of loom weights discovered in Iron-Age houses also suggests that weaving and cloth- making was a healthy cottage industry.

Of the many tribal groups it appears that those of the lowland south and east were the most successful, or 'modern'. Many outlying groups didn't use pottery or coinage even as late as the time of the Roman invasion and remain something of an enigma. However, of the lowland tribes the later evidence suggests a variety of powerful and successful societies. These tribes traded internationally, used coinage based on continental designs, produced high-quality, wheel-thrown pottery and had chieftains or leaders who approached what we would consider royal-family status. The development of Britain through the Iron Age was somewhat similar in pace to that of other communities outside of Roman influence on the continent and it would be unfair to imagine the Britons who faced the Roman invaders in AD43 as simple barbarian savages, as we may be led to believe reading some classical Roman sources.

Click here for recommended books and websites about the Iron Age.