The Iron age people of Britain

The land that people know as Britain is thought to have been named as such by the Romans who referred to the island as Britannia, which meant Land of the Britons. Who came up with the name is unknown, as is the time it was named and there are also various arguments to suggest the name may have come from an adaptation of the old French word Bretaigne or other eastern Europeans roots.

Whatever the source of the name may be, the isle of Britain has been the home of humans for thousands of years, and they remain one of the most mysterious and interesting civilisations in history, so here are some of the most commonly asked questions about the iron age people of Britain to help better understand just how hard and different life was back then.

What are Iron age people called?

They were generally referred to as Celts, though this name was used by the Romans to refer to the people of a large section of Europe. The people from the area around modern day France and a number of surrounding countries were called Gaul’s, with everyone else being referred to as Celtic. The size and shape of the territories changed over the years but most of central and western Europe was either Gaul or Celtic territory, a name that took hold and is still known to this day. Before the Romans its assumed that individual tribes called themselves whatever their tribal name was, and didn’t have a collective name to refer to people from Britain as a whole.

When was the Iron age?

The iron age started around the year 800 BCE and officially ended in the history books in 43 AD, though it was a while after this before the whole island received the technology. The Romans landed in Britain in 43 AD and with them brought the technology to make steel, something previously unknown across the whole British isles. There was fierce resistance from the native Britons and it took a while for the Romans to conquer territory and spread their knowledge of how to make steel. Since Scotland was the only major territory to resist the Romans they weren’t able to receive the knowledge of steel making, and so the iron age ended in Scotland as late as 500 AD.

What was before the Iron age?

Before the iron age came the bronze age which ran roughly from 2500 BCE until 800 BCE. Bronze is made from a combination of tin and copper, both of which have melting points low enough to be able to melt them on a large fire. Iron on the other hand requires much higher temperatures and it took around 1700 years after bronze was being used for someone to work out how to melt iron. Before the bronze age was a brief copper age and then it goes back into what people now refer to as the stone age.

Where did iron age people live?

The number one home choice for someone in the iron age was the classic roundhouse. Log cabins took to much work to carve and manoeuvre into place, and tiles were still a long way off from being invented. A roundhouse could be built from nothing more than strong branches, sticks and straw, with it likely only taking a few days from start to finish with a few people helping out. The central fire pit gives out much more heat than any other fire source and the thatch allows the smoke to escape without the need for a chimney or open door.

What did iron age people wear?

The only crop people of iron age Britain are thought to have grown that can make fabric was flax. A tall stemmed plant that looks similar to a thin weed was the only crop they could mass produced that they could turn into fabric, which people today know as linen. The stems of the plant are made up of many strong fibres which are stripped off and dried before being woven into yarn. Wool and leather clothing would be a close second as they provided the best heat and leather was water proof, but both materials only come when an animal can produce them and flax was the only thing they could mass produce fabric from.

What did Iron age people eat?

Something people don’t realise is that during the iron age there was still a huge amount of wilderness combined with a tiny population. This meant that wild food was in abundance and it was still possible to live a hunter gatherer lifestyle. The problem now was having so many people staying in one place which would have been very risky to rely on hunting alone to feed them all. Crops had to be grown to ensure food all year round and so a small selection of grain and vegetables were grown in-case wild food sources were scarce during the winter. Here’s a quick list of the crops they grew and the animals that were around at the time, please note that its possible extra crops could have been grown but the following are known to have been farmed during the iron age.

Grain
Rye, Barley and wheat (of the types Emmer and Einkorn)

Vegetables
Peas, Beans, Chickpeas, Lentils, Cabbage and Leeks

Meats
Various types of fresh and seawater fish and shellfish, Ibex (goat), Mouflon (sheep), Aurochs (Cow), domesticated pigs, wild boar, deer, chickens, ducks and various small game animals.

Fruit
Elderberries, Blackberries, Raspberries, Strawberries, Blueberries, Bilberries and apples, most of which would be grown on a semi-wild basis.

Other foods
Honey, wild nuts, ale, butter, cheese, milk, yogurt and wild foods like nettles, mushrooms and edible roots.

How did iron age people make iron?

Iron would have been produced from a type or iron bearing sand or from ore itself. Seeing a layer of rust coloured mud on the bottom of a water source like a stream would indicate an iron deposit near by, and since iron is much more common than both tin and copper it wasn’t difficult to find. The issue came with making a fire hot enough to melt it, something that couldn’t be reached in a normal bonfire, even if coal was being used. It wasn’t until around the year 800 BCE that someone worked out blowing on the coals made them hotter, and so this person is probably responsible for the creation of the bellows.

A clay chimney-like smelter would be built and lined with layers of coal and crushed iron ore. After the fire got going someone would start pumping the bellows through a small hole in the side of the smelter. The constant air supply would help the coals burn hotter and the iron would run out an opening in the bottom of the smelter and run into a mould dug into the earth.

The iron would then be heated up again and hammered for a long period of time to remove as much of the carbon as possible, which makes the iron very brittle. After enough hammering the iron would be strong enough to make into a tool or weapon.

What was invented in the Iron age?

The tools and weapons used during the iron age were the same as those from the bronze age, just made of a much stronger material. After people realised how to make the most effective weapons they could there was nothing new to invent, with knives, spears and axes being used since people first started to make weapons. The invention of iron made swords more practical as a long bronze sword would be prone to bending and chipping, for this reason the sword became the most preferable weapon during the iron age instead of the spear.

The only two notable inventions during the iron age was common metal working and the plough. Common metal working involved things like making barrel bands and nails for building, something take bronze was just to weak to do safely. The plough was the most significant invention of the age because it allowed for the mass production of grain. Bronze didn’t have the strength to pull up rocks and earth and every stage of the farm work had to be done by hand. A single plough could do the work of 50 people and freed up a huge number of people to work on other things, or growing more grain.

The plough wasn’t just a piece of metal used to drag through the earth, but was the reason that people started to branch out to trade their extra grain with other people. This trade could have been the introduction for the Celts with other civilisations in Europe and could have opened the door for new crops, animals and people to enter the country.