Iron Age Britain
Commonly Asked Questions
Have you ever lay awake at night wondering what types of shoes Iron Age hunters wore? well of course you have, and now you have the chance to find out. Here are the most commonly asked questions about Iron Age Britain answered all in one place.
When was the Iron Age?
In Britain the Iron Age started around the year 800 BC, I use the word “around” as people didn’t exactly keep records back then, but the earliest iron artifacts found in Britain have been dated from within 20 years of this time.
It ended in 43 AD depending on where you were in the country. The Romans landed in Britain in 43 AD and brought with them the technology to make steel, however, on their initial landing back in 55 BCE they were quickly thrown out of the country and couldn’t spread their knowledge of steel. It wasn’t until the second invasion they came back in force and managed to establish a foothold.
After they took territory they shared their knowledge of how to make steel with the local population and so the Iron Age ended in a wave starting from southeast England. It wasn’t until around 100 AD that England and Wales were fully out of the Iron Age, but Scotland took a few hundred years more as the Romans couldn’t conquer the country, and so they weren’t able to share their knowledge of how to make steel.
What did people eat in the Iron Age?
The crops known to have been farmed in Iron Age Britain are as follows:
Emmer and Einkorn (both types of wheat), Rye and Barley
Chickpeas, Lentils, Peas, and Bittervetch ( A type of bean that can make you sick if you eat it raw)
Cherries, Elderberries, and pears were planted on a semi-wild basis but not to the extent of what you would call an orchard.
Foraged fruit would include seasonal varieties like blackberries, bilberries, and raspberries.
Acorns and other seasonal nuts were gathered in mass as they could be dried and lasted a long time.
Fish that could be caught close to the shore as well as all types of beach-dwelling shellfish were always on the menu, along with any kind of meat they could catch. The remains of cow, boar, goat, and even seal bones have been found in ancient bone mounds, called midden mounds. A place used as a dumping ground for the remains of butchered animals. Small game animals of all types have also been found in these bone mounds, such as hares, squirrels, and all types of game birds.
What did Iron Age people wear?
The only known fiber crop people grew in the Iron Age was flax, a long-stemmed grass-like plant that can be turned into linen. When flax is spun without being treated it can be rough and rather uncomfortable, but there is evidence that people from this time knew how to create fibers and weave them into cloth, so linen clothing would have been the primary source of fabric.
(A very time consuming method of weaving fabrics by hand, but it was the most advanced thing they had during the iron age)
Wool and leather clothing would have been the only other options, and although warmer and longer lasting than linen, they would only be available in small amounts whenever something was hunted or during the summer when goats and sheep could be sheared.
As for footwear, it would always have been leather, as fabrics are simply too weak to walk on. Their boots would be leather wraps sown to the right size of the wearer and tied around the top of the ankle with a cord, with the sole consisting of more than one piece of leather sown together to form a thicker layer.
Where did Iron Age people live?
People during the Iron Age sure did love their circular houses, with the most popular dwelling by far being the classic Celtic roundhouse. These were quick and easy to build in comparison to something like a log cabin or stone house and provided a warm and large living space.
(A classic Iron Age round house, a very common sight for hundreds of years across the entire British isles)
Over the years when tools became better, they swapped the wattle and daub walls for stacked stone held together with packed clay, and later on, when people started to live in larger dwellings they connected the stone walls together to form a walled mini-village.
Longhouses didn’t start to appear until towards the end of the Iron Age, as they took considerably more work and involved a huge amount of detailed wood cutting. Another reason they didn’t appear more often is they were simply unnecessary, with their long construction times it would be easier and faster to build two roundhouses than it would a longhouse of the same space.
How did they make Iron?
Iron ore is common but it has a melting temperature of 1,538 °C, which is far too hot to reach in any bonfire. Before this copper and tin were used to make bronze but both metals could be melted on a big enough fire, or a small one that used coal instead of wood.
It wasn’t until someone worked out how to make bellows that the melting temperature could be reached, and stone smelters helped to contain the heat. The iron ore would have been crushed and put into a smelter in layers of ore and coal, and after it ignited the bellows would continuously blast air inside to raise the temperature.
Iron ore would have melted out the bottom and formed into something called pig iron, a very brittle first melting of ore that contains a high carbon content. Pig iron is useless as it’s too weak to make anything from, so it needs to be smelted a second time to remove the impurities and get it to a level where it can be worked.
It’s possible that in the very early Iron Age high-grade pieces of ore would have been put into a roaring fire and then hammered with rocks to bash out the other materials and semi-harden it. This would have produced a very low-grade iron tool, but a tool nonetheless.
What weapons and armor did Iron Age warriors use?
Armour wasn’t very advanced in Iron Age Britain and protection tended to be minimal, with some warriors using leather chest pieces and the occasional helmet, but things like chain mail and plate armor didn’t exist. Shields were quite common and were normally made of wooden planks cut into shape and covered with leather.
As for weapons, it was the same as it always was and has been since, with swords, knives, spears, and axes the most common and effective weapons there were. Since iron was much stronger than bronze, the sword was refined and improved and became more popular than it was in the Bronze Age, and every territory had its own versions of these weapons but they ultimately fell into one of these types.
People worked out how to kill each other a long time before the Iron Age, and the weapons were simply improved and made stronger, but ultimately remained the same.
What was invented in the Iron Age
(A re-creation of the type of plow used in the Iron Age)
The most notable and important invention of the age was the plow. Bronze was previously the strongest metal and although it was good for smaller tools and weapons, it wasn’t strong enough to rip through the ground and shift earth and stone.
The iron plough allowed crops to be mass-produced and this simple invention provided the food necessary to support a population boom. Other inventions of the age include better versions of bronze-age inventions, such as cooking pots, weapons, and hand tools. Metal was worked in the age before and they had already invented everything they needed, iron was simply a stronger version of what they already had.
