Tristan Hughes

But of course, Iron Age Britain, it's a large topic.

So we're going to hop from topic to topic within Iron Age Britain during our chat and seeing how much we can get through.

But first off, with the background, when someone says Iron Age Britain today, how large a period of time are we talking about?

It's a huge period, isn't it?

It's like from today all the way back to the time of the Crusades.

So when talking about Iron Age Britain, I guess we're going to need to get our head around straight away that there's a lot of...

development, a lot of evolution that you can see in these societies over that period.

There used to be a tendency to think with the coming of Rome, that was the coming of civilization as it was.

And what was in Britain before, it was mysterious, but it was the land of backward barbarians almost.

And this is where archaeology, it really shines a light on Iron Age Britain unlike anything else.

What I have here, I wanted to bring this because it was discovered deep in an attic quite recently, but it's a history book.

from I think it's the 1850s or 1840s, so it's quite an artifact in itself.

But it has like the first page, kind of gives you an insight into how they viewed the Iron Age back then and how different we can, and we can like dissect it all and going through the archaeology today.

But it's interesting how it, like this book, you know, for kids more than 150 years ago, it starts basically with the Romans and a quick explanation of what was there before, what they thought.

It talks about Caesar's arrival in Britain and talks about the people of Britain.

Its inhabitants, who were then thinly scattered over the island, were not civilized at all.

They resembled barbarians, barbarous tribes.

In old tombs or fields of battle, specimens of their arms and tools are still dug up.

These consist of spear and arrowheads, hatchets and knives, ingeniously made of flint.

They were not acquainted with the use of lime in building, but lived mostly in subterranean dwellings covered with large slabs of stone.