Professor Tom Moore

Probably some time before opera really kind of emerged, actually.

So society is changing in the late first century BC.

This is the first time that we can start to identify individuals who are calling themselves kings.

For instance, they're minting coinage.

There are new types of burial rites are emerging.

So there are graves with grave goods, something we haven't really seen across the British Iron Age.

So society is changing and the opera are the places where those kind of

Definitely.

And that is, I mean, it is at the opera that we see much of the interaction with the Roman world.

You know, we see imports from the Roman world at sites like Colchester, even at Stanek in the north of England.

One of the interesting things there is what that relationship is like.

And one of the things I'm really interested in, because we used to, some time ago, think it was about sort of economics, if you like.

The Roman Empire expands, and this is a place that you sort of, Iron Age societies are trading with.

And certainly that was happening to some extent.

But a lot of the items we have...

in some of the burials at places like um lexton at colchester are probably more like diplomatic goods so there's more of a kind of political relationship you know as the empire expands and has these these kingdoms on its peripheries which it's kind of managing as a political relationship so

I would probably say no.

They have quite different functions in many ways.

Many of those hill forts, I mean, again, it depends where you are.

In the southwest, in Maidencastles, there's kind of slightly different organisation there.