Who used iron in the Iron Age?

The Iron Age in Britain began around 750BC and lasted until the coming of the Romans in AD43.

It was the arrival of iron working techniques from southern Europe that brought Britain into the Iron Age. Iron was stronger and more plentiful than bronze and iron working revolutionised many aspects of life, most importantly agriculture. Iron tipped ploughs could turn soil more quickly and deeply than older wooden or bronze ones, and iron axes could clear forest land more efficiently for agriculture. There was a landscape of arable, pasture and managed woodland. There were many enclosed settlements and land ownership was important.

Hillforts were an important part of the Iron Age British landscape, especially in the west. An amazing website, the Oxford Atlas of Hillforts shows us just how many hillforts there were scattered across the countryside. Take a look and see where the nearest hillforts are to you, and then why not go and visit?

Iron Age Britons lived in organised tribal groups, ruled by a chieftain. These groups would have changed and evolved throughout the Iron Age, and their early interactions seem to have been hostile, perhaps as tribal groups and boundaries settled in to place. This inter-tribal warfare was traditionally interpreted as the reason for the building of hill forts, as defensive areas where small communities across the landscape could muster and stand their ground when attacked.

But while this may have been the case in some, some hillforts are sited on the sides of hills with poor defensive value, and so some may best be seen simply as communal gathering places or even strongholds of elites within the groups. Some may even have simply been enclosures for domesticated animals such as cows.

Although the first had been built about 1500 BC, hillfort building peaked during the later Iron Age. There are over 2,000 Iron Age hillforts known in Britain. By about 350 BC many hillforts went out of use and the remaining ones were reinforced. Why so many went out of use is not known. Perhaps people had begun to meet together as larger tribal groups in just a few of the most important hillforts. You can find out more about the tribes which had developed by the time of the arrival of the Romans here.

One of the most spectacular hillforts is that of Maiden Castle in Dorset. Check out the English Heritage Maiden Castle website for more details of its history, some of which I have adapted below.

Maiden Castle - a hillfort in Dorset

Maiden Castle is one of the largest and most complex Iron Age hillforts in Britain. Its vast multiple ramparts enclose an area the size of 50 football pitches, and the site was home to several hundred people in the Iron Age (800 BC–AD 43). Excavations during the 1930s and 1980s have unearthed much of its history, from its origins as a Neolithic enclosure over 6,000 years ago, its modifications during the Iron Age, to the construction of a Romano-British temple here.

The hill was originally inhabited during the Neolithic period when as enclosure was built here on the hill top following the clearing of the woodland on top. Following a period of reduced activity, the first hillfort was constructed in the early Iron Age. Enclosed by a single rampart, it was built on top of the earlier enclosure and was later extended west to enclose more than double the original area. Extra ramparts were added, the inner rampart was heightened and the entrances became increasingly complex as more ramparts were added and gateways were redesigned.

The same sort of changes must have happened at other hillfort sites as well. Many would have been built where previous settlements had been found and would have become more complex during the Iron Age. This is particularly true for the first few hundred years, because generally - and this is true also of Maiden Castle - in the later Iron Age defences seem to have become less important. As stated already, hill forts more genrally seem to have been less used in this later period, so it seems that the reasons for their occupation changed considerably as the Iron Age progressed.

At the height of its occupation, the Maiden Castle fort was densely populated and there were many roundhouses. These had central hearths, large pits for storing grain and were often circled by drainage gullies. Various finds from the site show that activities such as textile production and metalworking were taking place here.

In the middle Iron Age, the layout of the interior of the hillfort was reorganised. Once randomly arranged houses were now built in regimented rows, with traffic guided along roads. This reorganisation suggests some control existed over social life within the fort.

Later in the Iron Age, this organised system broke down, and the focus of the settlement became once again the eastern end of the hillfort. At this time, there was increasing trade with the continent, and specialised industries such as metal-working were becoming very important.

We know of a traveller named Pytheas, a Greek colonist from Massalia (modern day Marseille in southern France) who wrote an account of his voyages by sea - the Periplus - around Britain and Ireland and even up to the Arctic. The name of his book, Periplus, is Greek for 'sailing around'. Unfortunately his book is lost, but enough ancient authors themselves quoted passages of his book or referred back to it, so we know something of what he saw. He is thought to have lived around in the latter part of the fourth century BC, the time when Alexander the Great lived and was travelling in the opposite direction into Asia.

Pytheas called the Iron Age Britons the "Pretanoi", which is linguistically linked with "Britanni", and was quoted as writing that the Britons were renowned wheat farmers. Large farmsteads produced food in industrial quantities and Roman sources note that Britain exported hunting dogs, animal skins and slaves. Then there was tin. His account of the tin trade in perhaps Cornwall was used by the historian Diodorus Siculus in this account from Book, Chapter 22 of his Library of History:

The inhabitants of that part of Britain which is called Belerion are very fond of strangers and from their interactions with foreign merchants are civilized in their manner of life. They prepare the tin, working very carefully the earth in which it is produced. The ground is rocky but it contains earthy veins, the produce of which is ground down, smelted and purified. They beat the metal into masses shaped like knuckle-bones and carry it off to a certain island off Britain called Ictis. During the ebb of the tide the intervening space is left dry and they carry over to the island the tin in abundance in their wagons ... Here then the merchants buy the tin from the natives and carry it over to Gaul, and after travelling overland for about thirty days, they finally bring their loads on horses to the mouth of the Rhone.

Some people believe that St Michael's Mount in Cornwall (below) is the location of this island Ictis.

Dr Grigsby walking to St Michael's Mount as the tide comes in and covers the causeway.

What is interesting is that Pytheas' use of the name Pretanoi may reflect the name that all or certain Britons called themselves. This is not always the case (for example the Greeks called themselves Hellenes and it was the Romans who invented that other more familar name). As the archaeologist and author Barry Cunliffe summarises:

"It is quite probable that the description of Britain given by the Greek writer Diodorus Siculus in the first century BC derives wholly or largely from Pytheas. What is of particular interest is that he calls the island "Pretannia" (Greek "Prettanikē"), that is "the island of the Pretani, or Priteni". "Pretani" is a Celtic word that probably means "the painted ones" or "the tattooed folk", referring to body decoration - a reminder of Caesar's observations of woad-painted barbarians. In all probability the word "Pretani" is an ethnonym (the name by which the people knew themselves), but it remains an outside possibility that it was their continental neighbours who described them thus to the Greek explorers."

- Barry Cunliffe, Britain Begins, Oxford University Press, 2021, p.4.

Researchers at the University of Warwick have discovered late Iron Age roundhouses on the university campus. The discovery of the outline of 15 late iron age roundhouses on the University of Warwick's campus is hugely significant for Coventry, being the earliest evidence of settlement within the modern boundary of the city. More information can be found here.

Iron is a crucial material that humans have depended on for over 3,000 years. It holds up our buildings, allows our cars to have bodies, and keeps our fridges cold, to name a tiny handful of uses. But where did it all begin?

Bronze axe and spear heads, about 1,200 years old. Image By The Portable Antiquities Scheme/ The Trustees of the British Museum, CC BY-SA 4.0. Wikipedia

Before iron, humans used bronze for their tools, weapons, and art. It was the strongest material of their time, and was used in axes, spears, razors, ornaments, buckets, and horns, among other things. Then, in 1500 BCE, somewhere in Mesopotamia (the modern Middle East), people started to recognise the strength, workability, and lightness of iron compared to bronze. With advances in metallurgy, they were able to melt iron in their bloomeries, and discovered the material to be supple, easily manipulated, and hardened to an incredible strength when cooled. The technology spread to southeast Europe through Greece and Italy, and eventually over the English Channel to the British Isles. It also spread to Central Asia.

Iron swords used by the Han dynasty in ancient China. By Flickr user Gary Todd – Military Museum: Ancient Weapons; Now at Flickr, CC BY-SA 4.0

It’s important to note that there isn’t a single Iron Age for the entire planet that can be said to start at a certain time for everyone. Because of the distance between various civilisations, and the spontaneous and fluid discovery of iron metallurgy, every subcontinent has its own Iron Age, and its own accompanying start date. For example, the European Iron Age is thought to have begun around 800 BC (specifically in Central Europe), and the Indian Iron Age sometime between 1500 to 300 BCE. It’s impossible to pin down exact dates for each subcontinent because there were so many different tribes living in these areas, each of which had to make the crucial change from bronze to iron separately.

Initially, iron was only used for personal ornaments, small knives, and as a way to repair bronze items. Bimetallic items were also made.1 But its suitability for weapons and farming equipment became apparent—a revolutionary move that made people tougher warriors and more efficient farmers. The fate of iron was sealed. Tribes could suddenly travel much further, migrating to different parts of Europe or Asia and protecting themselves from attack along the way. They could also conquer any people they came across. This gave them access to places with greater potential and prosperity, and when they did decide to settle down, they could use their newly-made ploughs and sickles to produce significantly more food. Population growth catapulted and turned villages into towns, and towns into cities. With a greater surplus of food, people could also spend less time hunting and foraging, and more time on activities like making salt, sewing clothes, and crafting jewellery—all of which could be traded with other civilizations.

Half of a pair of iron scissors, from the late Middle Ages. By Raakvlak, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikipedia

In Europe, the spread of iron was mostly undertaken by two cultures—the Halstatt, who originated in modern Austria, and La Tène who came from the Western European region of Gaul. This shifted the focus of trade from northern Europe to south-central Europe, which expanded Mediterranean civilizations and made drastic changes to how people lived. Social organisation started to emerge, proto-urban settlements, hierarchical social structures, and ideological structures. Iron literally changed the destiny of Europe, Asia, and other subcontinents where it was independently discovered or adopted, and paved the way for our modern world.

Iron has remained crucial throughout history and powered the Industrial Revolution which turned Britain into a global force. It eventually led to steel—an alloy of iron and carbon—which was much stronger and remains the material of choice for today’s buildings, railroads, and so many other things.

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