Professor Tom Moore

And you can, again, imagine that if your authority is about trying to negotiate with other people...

You throw feasts to get support from those individuals.

That's the way power is manifest.

Certainly in the opera by the late Arnage, some of the elite, if you like, that are emerging are adopting items from the Roman world, drinking vessels, beakers, or from Gaul as well, as that's now part of the Roman Empire, and drinking wine.

So yes, they are.

And I mean, that's another interesting thing, because there's clearly an imitation of Roman, but also Gallic.

You know, Gallic elites, they're imitating as well at the time of conquest to imitate their kind of, their partner elites on the continent, if you like, in a different way.

I mean, one of the things that's really fascinating in a sense, that's also changing identity.

One of the things that you see from much of the earlier Middle Iron Age.

It's quite hard to see the individual for most of the Iron Age.

We don't have burials or grave goods.

There are exceptions like East Yorkshire, but for most of the time, that's the case in Britain.

It's hard to see, and not many people are using things like brooches and stuff, so it's quite hard to see the individual in the archaeological record.

Once we get to the end of the Iron Age, with the burials and so on associated with the opera, you can start to see individuals, but also through the way they're eating.

We have beakers and platters.

You know, this is about individual drinking.

It's your cup, it's your plate.

You know, that doesn't exist before.

So clearly the individual is becoming more important.

So there's a change in some people's identity to sort of express the individual identity, which is perhaps again related to how power changes.