An Iron-Age Roundhouse
Salisbury Plain
18 February 2001

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Places to visit and other websites

The Museum of the Iron Age
Church Street
Andover
Hampshire SP10 1DP
Tel: 01264 366283

This unique museum tells the story of Danebury, an Iron-Age hillfort that lies six miles south-west of Andover. Archaeologist Barry Cunliffe and his team devoted 20 summers to digging this 2,000-year-old settlement, making it one of the largest and best-known excavations in Britain. They revealed evidence for scores of houses, hundreds of storage pits and found thousands of objects. The displays provide a vivid impression of what life was like for our prehistoric ancestors who farmed, fought, worshipped and died in Wessex before the Romans arrived. Displays include life-size models of a weaver and warrior; a reconstructed rampart and roundhouse; miniature street scene; many of the recently excavated objects; and replicas of tools, a plough, and grave pits.

Butser Ancient Farm
Butser Ancient Farm
Nexus House
Gravel Hill
Waterlooville
Hampshire PO8 0QE
Tel: 023 9259 8838
Website: www.butser.org.uk

Butser Ancient Farm is a replica of the sort of farm that would have existed in the British Iron Age around 300 BC. Its director, Peter Reynolds, was one of the experts featured in the Salisbury Plain dig. Founded in 1972, the farm has buildings, structures, animals and crops of the kind that existed at that time. It is much more than a museum, though. It is, in effect, a large open-air laboratory where research into the Iron Age and Roman periods goes on using the methods and materials available at the time, and also by applying modern science to ancient problems. The farm is open to the public, and is happy to welcome school parties, archaeological societies, and other group visits by arrangement. Special-interest groups can also be catered for. The farm runs a number of day schools and courses for people interested in the Iron Age and in archaeology in general. You can take a virtual tour of the site at www.skcldv.demon.co.uk/iafintro.htm

Flag Fen
Flag Fen Excavations
Fourth Drove
Fengate
Peterborough PE1 5UR
Website: www.flagfen.freeserve.co.uk
The Flag Fen visitor centre has both Bronze Age and Iron-Age roundhouse reconstructions, giving a glimpse of what it would have been like to live at Flag Fen thousands of years ago. Its displays include the oldest wheel ever found in Britain, and there is also a specially constructed preservation hall built over one of the earlier excavations of Bronze-Age timbers at the site. Other attractions include a Roman herb garden and ancient farm-animal breeds. Flag Fen is also where the famous Seahenge timbers, from the wood circle excavated and removed from off the Norfolk coast at Holme-next-the-Sea in 1999, were sent for preservation and study.

Peat Moors Centre
Shapwick Road
Westhay
Nr Glastonbury BA6 9TT
Tel: 01458 860697
Website: www.gallica.co.uk/celts/peatmoor.htm

The centre has reconstructions of many prehistoric structures, including Iron-Age roundhouses, prehistoric trackways, Roman pottery kilns and an Iron-Age canoe. It also offers displays on the history and archaeology of the local area. A range of Iron-Age activities are available for school groups and students in addition to tours, and special weekend activity courses are run on themes such as coracle building, green woodworking, Roman pottery-making and the reconstruction of prehistoric trackways.

Castell Henllys Iron-Age Hillfort
Meline
Crymych
Pembrokeshire
Dyfed SA41 3UT
Tel: 01239 891319
Website: http://castellhenllys.
pembrokeshirecoast.org.uk

Set in 30 acres of woodland and river meadows, Castell Henllys (Welsh for the castle of the Prince's court) is the site of an Iron-Age hillfort, where excavations continue every summer. It boasts the longest-standing Iron-Age roundhouse reconstruction in Britain, the 'Old Roundhouse', which was reconstructed 20 years ago. Three more roundhouses and a granary have since been reconstructed on their original Iron Age foundations. The latest project is the 'Chieftain's House'. The site also contains a visitor centre, sculpture trails depicting Celtic myths and legends, and prehistoric breeds of livestock grazing in adjacent fields (don't miss the Iron-Age pigs!) before visitors enter the hillfort itself. You can take a virtual tour of the site at http://castellhenllys.pembrokeshirecoast.org.uk/
english/tour/tour.htm

Further reading

English Heritage Book of Iron Age Britain by Barry Cunliffe (English Heritage, 1995) paperback £15.99 ISBN: 0713472995
Between 700 BC and the Roman conquest of Britain in 43 AD, a number of important social changes took place. The first millennium BC was a time of dramatic change in Europe, dominated by the emergence of Rome as a mega-state. Britain, on the periphery of these developments, witnessed huge social and economic change, seeing the end of the Bronze-Age cycle of subsistence farming and the beginning of a more complex society. Still-existing regional boundaries were established, hillforts such as those on Bredon Hill were built by warring chiefs and the first towns were founded. This well-illustrated book surveys the period.

Iron Age Communities in Britain by Barry Cunliffe (Routledge, 1991, 3rd edition) hardback £100 ISBN: 0415054168
For more than 20 years Barry Cunliffe's survey of the British Iron Age has been a standard source. But the mass of new evidence (more than 700 new papers and books have been published in a decade) and the quite radical change in emphasis that has occurred in prehistoric studies has required a complete revision of the book. This new, third edition retains the qualities of the first two editions, but the changes are substantial. The text has been completely revised, new sections have been introduced and all illustrations have been redrawn. Likewise new photographs have been taken of all the sites. The result is, once again, a classic of British archaeology.

Prehistoric Settlements by Bob Bewley (Batsford/English Heritage, 1994) paperback £15.99 ISBN: 071346853X
This book traces the variety and development of prehistoric settlements in Britain through 8,000 years, from the hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic to the tribes of the Iron Age in the years before the Roman invasion. Examining key sites such as Star Carr, Bodmin Moor, the Dartmoor reaves, and hillforts and farmsteads, Bewley concentrates on two central themes: the close relationship between the individual settlement site and the wider landscape; and the ways in which archaeologists discover, interpret, and reinterpret prehistoric settlements.

Britain and the Celtic Iron Age by Simon James and Valerie Rig (British Museum Press, 1997) paperback £9.99 ISBN: 0714123064
Excellent introduction to the Celts, a family of European peoples who spoke related languages and shared many things in common, from art to aspects of religion and social organisation. Was the British Iron Age simply part of this supposedly uniform, Celtic world, or was it something much more distinctive, complex, strange and fascinating? New research is promoting reappraisals of Britain's prehistory, in ways that challenge many ideas, such as that of a familiar Celtic past. Excellent introduction to the Celts, marvellously illustrated, with lots of pictures of sites and artefacts, and chapters on people, economy, settlement, society, ritual and communications.

The Ancient Celts by Barry Cunliffe (Oxford University Press, 1997) hardback/paperback £25 hardback ISBN: 0198150105/0199690510
With a subject as wide ranging as a good thousand years of prehistory in Europe, this master of the subject explores in some considerable depth the archaeological evidence in a superbly illustrated book which also contains copious maps. Examining the archaeological reality of the Iron-Age inhabitants of barbarian Europe, he traces the emergence of chiefdoms, patterns of expansion and migration, and the development of a mature urbanised society, thus assessing the disparity between the traditional view of the Celts and the archaeological evidence. One of the tricks of archaeological writing is not only to know your subject, but to be able to explain it as well, and this is just what the author is able to do.

The Salisbury Hoard by Ian Stead and Colin Renfrew (Tempus, 2000) hardback/paperback £17.99/£12.99 ISBN: 0752414046/752414720
A modern Beowulf-like real-life saga of archaeological detection, leading to a unique prehistoric hoard. The Salisbury Hoard is the most remarkable hoard of prehistoric metalwork ever found in Britain, but knowledge of it was almost lost with artefacts scattered by metal-detectorists, dealers, auction houses and collectors. Thanks, however, to the dogged persistence of Dr Stead well over half the hoard has now been recovered and acquired by the British Museum, where it will be displayed as one of the most important finds of the century.

The Bog People by P V Globb (Faber and Faber, 1998) paperback £12.99 ISBN: 0571194699
From time to time workers in bogs throughout Europe accidentally expose the sunken bodies of people who died 2,000 or more years ago. The bog waters have kept the bodies from decay, sometimes even preserving the facial expression at the moment of death, and many of the bodies bear signs of violent ends. This book seeks to cast light on these Iron-Age people, their lives, their religion and rituals.

The Bog Man and the Archaeology of People by Ann Brothwell (Harvard University Press, 1987) hardback £10.25 ISBN: 0674077326
Describes the discovery of a two-thousand-year-old body in a Cheshire peat field, discusses the scientific analysis of the body, and explains how mummies reveal information about the past.

Farmers in Prehistoric Britain by Francis Pryor (Tempus, 1998) hardback £18.99
Wearing both his hats as archaeologist and farmer, Pryor has produced an empathic work on the life and methods of prehistoric farmers. Often what survives is just a few crop marks, but this work brings what is now obscure into vivid reality.

Iron Age Farm – The Butser Experiment by Peter J Reynolds (British Museum Publications, 1979) hardback/paperback out of print ISBN: 0714180149/0714180157
Butser is an experimental farm set up to discover the practicalities of farming in the Iron Age. Nearest modern analogue breeds were used if the original breeds of the Age had died out, and grains and cereals harvested and stored under Iron Age conditions. Dr Peter Reynolds, author of the book and director of the project, diagnosed and described the functioning of the grain pit at the Salisbury Plain dig. The book describes these and other aspects of Iron Age farming, including the observations of the high jumping capacity of Soay sheep (six feet!) and the difficulty of keeping them penned.

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