Professor Tom Moore

Now, it looks, we couldn't find any evidence that she'd sort of had a throat cut, any kind of nicks on the throat or anything.

But the burial is kind of, you know, might interpret as being kind of sacrifice, or she's based in the ditch, and it's very unusual.

It looks like she didn't want to go in.

It's not...

But actually, if you think of her being an elderly female, and the fact that she's come from long distance to the site in her childhood, she's probably somebody who's really important in society.

So, you know, does her treatment in death denote something that she was sacrificed, or does it denote actually something that she was a really important member of society?

So I think that's where the archaeology, you know, we have to be a little bit nuanced about how we interpret it.

Understood.

Horses are really kind of intriguing when we think about the Iron Age, and certainly throughout much of the Iron Age, in the Middle Iron Age for instance, they're clearly treated differently.

So when we're talking about ritual, bits of horse remains are deposited on sightseeing.

There's great examples from Danebury of the leg of a horse, you know, so they seem to be treated in different ways than, say, cattle, sheep.

When we get to the late Iron Age, lots of the late Iron Age coinage, they really focus on the horse imagery.

Oh, it's beautiful.

Yeah, and they're really stylistic.

And, you know, if you think of the Ufferton horse, it has some similarities to some of the depictions on much of the Iron Age coinage.

I mean, what I always think about that is...

Remembering that Iron Age coinage is originally imitating coinage that comes from the Greek world and the Roman world.

But they pick the horse, you know, they make a choice to focus on the horse because perhaps of its significance in terms of wealth.

And we think of horses, or really they should be thought of as ponies.

They're quite small, actually, you know, they're small horses.