Happisburgh, Norfolk
Happisburgh(pronounced ‘Hays-borough’), on the Norfolk coast, is the site of the oldest human footprints in Europe, and the earliest evidence for humans in Britain.

Stone tools discovered here are dated to between 950,000 and 800,000 years ago.

The footprints were discovered on the beach and have now been destroyed by the sea. Analysis of the prints suggests they were made by a group of five people, probably three adults and two children. They were probably a family group, walking in a muddy estuary. They may belong to an early human species known as Homo antecessor.

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Lynford, Norfolk

At Lynford quarry in Norfolk archaeologists found an ancient stream channel containing woolly mammoth bones and Neanderthal stone tools, dating to about 60,000 years ago.

The remains of at least 11 mammoths were found, mostly large males. Humans had broken some bones for marrow and taken others away for their meat. Forty-seven handaxes were found at the site, tools well-suited to cutting meat.

However, we do not know whether people were hunting the mammoths or scavenging animals that had died naturally or been killed by other predators.

Other animals found at Lynford include brown bear, hyena, woolly rhino, reindeer and bison. The environment at the time would have been open grassland with few trees and the winters were very cold.

Mammoth tusks in the stream channel at Lynford during excavation.

© Historic England

Beeches Pit, Suffolk👁 Image

The first humans evolved in the warmth of Africa.

In order to survive in the cooler climates of Britain and northern Europe our ancestors would have needed clothing and fire to keep them warm.

At Beeches Pit in Suffolk, there is evidence of burning which suggests people were making fires about 400,000 years ago. They were also knapping handaxes, perhaps while they sat by the fireside.

They were living in dense deciduous woodland which would have been cold and dark at times.

Evidence for clothes is even harder to find but we can assume our ancestors wore animal skins or furs to protect them from the cold, as there was no cotton, wool or other fabrics for them to use.

Reconstruction illustration giving an artist's impression of tool-making at an early Upper Palaeolithic hyena den, excavated near Oakham in Rutland, as it may have appeared 30,000 - 40,000 years ago.

Artist: Judith Dobie. c.1995 - c.1999. © Historic England [IC126/008]

Hengistbury Head, Dorset

Hengistbury Head is a site in Dorset which dates to the end of the Palaeolithic period, about 14,000 years ago. Unlike many sites from this period which are preserved in caves, Hengistbury is an open-air campsite from where people could have looked out over their hunting grounds.

Although today it overlooks the sea, this would have been dry land in the Upper Palaeolithic.Hundreds of stone tools have been recovered here, including types of tools found widely across other parts of northern Europe.

Archaeologists can reconstruct how people made their tools by doing a 3D jigsaw to ‘refit’ the pieces struck from a core.

Studying where different types of tools and debris were recovered has suggested that different areas of the site were used for different activities, including making tools and preparing animal skins (‘hides’).

Boxgrove, Sussex

The oldest human bones from Britain were found at Boxgrove in Sussex. They belong to a human species called Homo heidelbergensis, which was probably the direct ancestor of the Neanderthals. The humans who lived here were tall and muscular.

The Boxgrove site is about 500,000 years old.

Stone handaxes were found, as well as animal bones with marks where they had been chopped up, indicating that humans were butchering the animals.

At this time the site was a watering hole which attracted animals as well as people. Although the climate was similar to today, the animals living around Boxgrove included species now found in Africa, such as lions, hyenas and rhinos, as well as extinct species like giant deer. The people who used this site would have risked animal attacks!

Swanscombe, Kent

Three pieces of skull from an early Neanderthal were found at Swanscombe, Kent, at different times during the 20th century. The skull fragments were scattered over an area which also produced thousands of handaxes.

At this time people did not usually bury their dead, so human bones only survive by chance. The Swanscombe skull is not very muscular and so it is thought to be from a woman.

The size of this and other skulls means that we know Neanderthal brains were just as large as ours.

The woman lived during a relatively warm period about 400,000 years ago, between the worst of the ice ages.

She lived and died in a landscape of marshes surrounded by grassland, where rhinos and wild cattle grazed, and woods, which harboured fallow deer and straight-tusked elephants.

Kent’s Cavern, Devon

Kent’s Cavern in Torquay, Devon, has a long history of use and of research. Recent work produced what may be the earliest evidence for our species of modern human in Britain about 40,000 years ago, however, archaeologists are still arguing about the age of this specimen!

Other finds in the cave date from a later occupation 14,000 years ago. These include a rod of mammoth ivory, antler harpoons, bone needles, and various types of stone tools.

Tools from here and Creswell Crags are so similar they may have been made by the same group of people.

These finds suggest Upper Palaeolithic people moved widely across Britain and did not live permanently in caves like Kent’s Cavern.

Instead they would have used the cave temporarily while undertaking other tasks, such as hunting.

Gough’s Cave, Somerset

The remains of modern humans from Gough’s Cave in Somerset have revealed a grisly secret.

Around 15,000 years ago some human bodies were being butchered, the bones chewed and cracked for the marrow.

Cups were made out of people’s skulls.

Archaeologists think that the cannibalism and use of the skull cups may have been part of funeral rituals at the time, but we do not know whether people were doing these things to the bodies of their loved ones or their enemies.

The finds from Gough’s Cave show that Palaeolithic people did not always behave like we do today.

People’s beliefs and customs have changed over time just as much as their tools and technology.

'Red Lady' of Paviland, Gower

One of the most amazing Palaeolithic sites in Britain is a cave in Gower, south Wales, where a young man of our own species was buried around 34,000 years ago.

The site is important because it is a very old example of special treatment of the dead, and the skeleton is well preserved.

The site was discovered nearly 200 years ago by the palaeontologist and clergyman William Buckland. He thought the body was that of a woman because it was wearing jewellery, and wrongly dated it to the Roman period!

The body had been buried in a special way, which no doubt relates to people’s religious beliefs at the time.  It was decorated with ground-up red stone (ochre), which was still visible when it was excavated.

Also found with the burial were periwinkle shells and mammoth ivory jewellery.

Creswell Crags, Derbyshire

Creswell Crags on the Derbyshire/ Nottinghamshire border is a network of caves with evidence for Middle and Upper Palaeolithic activity by Neanderthal humans and our own species.

On the walls of Church Hole Cave, more than 20 carvings have been identified, including animals, birds and symbols.

These were made by modern humans and date to the end of the Palaeolithic, at least 12,800 years ago, making them Britain’s oldest art.  Other Palaeolithic art from the caves includes a beautiful carving of a horse on an animal bone.

The large mammals carved on the cave walls include wild cattle, horse and red deer. Animal bones found in the caves show that modern humans were also trapping Arctic hare for their fur.

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Skara Brae, Orkney
Unlike the longhouses of the early Neolithic, the later part of the period saw a different style of house – roughly square with rounded corners and about 5 x 5 m in area.

At Skara Brae in Orkney the well-preserved houses were built of stone and connected by passageways.

The houses also had stone furniture, including cupboards or ‘dressers’ at one end, box ‘beds’ at either side, and a central square fireplace.

Doddington Moor, Northumberland

In some areas of Britain, where suitable rocks are exposed, Neolithic rock art is found. One good example is on Doddington Moor in Northumberland.

There are a number of rock art sites here, where Late Neolithic people carved patterns and motifs, mostly ‘cup and ring marks’ where carved rings surround one or more small depressions or cups.

These types of motif are found across Britain, and from countries along the Atlantic coast of Europe. Over 5000 cup and ring mark sites are known from Britain.

As far as we can tell, the rock art does not depict actual things, such as humans or animals, maps or the stars. They may have served as signposts in the landscape or held some unknown, possibly sacred, meaning for the prehistoric people who made and looked at them.

Langdale axe factories, Cumbria

The Langdales are hills and mountains in the Lake District. They were the location of Neolithic stone quarries known as axe factories. The waste stone from this process can still be seen at these sites today.

Langdale stone is very good for producing  polished stone axes, but it also has a distinctive green colour.

A green axe from the Alps, Switzerland, had been brought all the way to the Sweet Track in Somerset, so the colour and other properties of Langdale axes were probably important too.

Getting to the axe quarries would have been risky and dangerous, and the stories about your adventures getting there would have impressed people.

The journey might have been as important as the stones you brought back!

The Sweet Track, Somerset

The Sweet Track (named after Mr Sweet, the peat digger who discovered it) is the oldest  wooden trackway known in Britain. It was built across a marsh in Somerset.

As shown in the picture here, long poles were driven into the marsh so they could support planks for people to walk on.

Archaeologists used tree-ring dating to find out that the track was built in the winter of 3807-3806 BC.

The track was not just a way of crossing a marsh. Objects found next to the track suggest that Neolithic people performed ceremonies here.

The finds included a green stone axe from the Alps, pottery and a wooden bowl.

Another Neolithic trackway in Somerset produced a carved human figure made of ash wood.Such finds show that Neolithic people’s beliefs about water and the landscapes they moved through may have been very different from our own.

Horton, Berkshire

Neolithic people lived in very different types of houses to those found in the Mesolithic. They were still mostly constructed from wood, but varied in shape and size.

In the early Neolithic some people built timber halls or longhouses which were rectangular in shape, and sometimes very big!

It seems likely that these large buildings were not ordinary dwellings but more like village halls or community centres.

Four early Neolithic houses (3700BC) were found at Kingsmead Quarry, Horton, Berkshire. The largest was 15m x 7m in size.

Inside archaeologists found pottery, flint tools and arrowheads, a rubbing stone for grinding grain and charred food remains.

Grimes Graves, Norfolk

This is an aerial photograph of the Grimes Graves flint mines in Norfolk. You can see how big the site is by looking at the cars in the car park on the right. Each of the depressions to the left of these is a Neolithic mine.

At least 433 shafts were dug to mine flint from deep underground.

The biggest were 14m deep and 12m wide. Neolithic people had no metal tools, and used antler picks and stone tools to dig. They may have used torches of burning branches and animal fat.

Most of the mining at Grimes Graves took place between 2600 and 2400 BC.

The flint dug out of the mine shafts would have been used for stone tools, including polished axes.

Mining flint would have been a dangerous undertaking. Some of the shafts seem to have been the sites of ceremonies, perhaps to ensure success or luck.

Carn Brea, Cornwall

Carn Brea is a Neolithic hilltop (or Tor) enclosure in Cornwall, equivalent to the causewayed enclosures found in other areas of Britain.

The site was in use for a long time, at least until the Iron Age, but the first time people came there was in the early Neolithic.

The site was enclosed by a stone wall, ramparts and ditches. Within the enclosure were several flat areas where houses were built. Evidence for burning and finds of hundreds of flint arrowheads suggest the site was attacked. Similar evidence came from the causewayed enclosure at Crickley Hill in Gloucestershire.

Pottery found at Carn Brea was made with a distinctive type of stone, which comes from about 30 km away. People living here might have traded this pottery with communities living far to the east in Wessex.

Thornborough Henges, Yorkshire

Henges were circular enclosures used in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age. They usually have a large ditch with a bank outside.

At Thornborough in Yorkshire a group of three large henges, each about 240 m across, form an impressive alignment stretching for over 1.5 km. Henges had fewer entrances than the earlier causewayed enclosures. This might have meant that only certain people were allowed inside.

At Thornborough there is little evidence of what took place inside but some henges elsewhere contained structures such as circles of upright stones or timber posts.

If henge ditches were built for defence we would expect them to be outside the banks, so instead these sites might have been used for special ceremonies. It has even been suggested that they were built this way to keep ghosts or spirits inside!

West Kennet, Wiltshire

West Kennet is an example of a type of early Neolithic burial monument called a long barrow. The barrow is a large mound of soil about 100m long and 25m wide at its east end.

Inside the mound at this end are a passage and five chambers built out of stone, where the bones of about 36 people were buried in around 3600 BC.

Long barrows and chambered tombs of different kinds are found all across Britain. Not all had large stone chambers filled with bones like West Kennet; some contained timber burial structures or had no burials at all.

Some locations have groups of monuments which suggest these areas were special places in the Neolithic. The landscape around West Kennet includes other important Neolithic monuments such as Windmill Hill and Avebury.

A reconstruction drawing of the Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure. By Judith Dobie © Historic England [e870088.tif]

Stonehenge Cursus, Wiltshire

Cursus monuments are long and narrow earthwork enclosures that were built between 3600 and 3000 BC. They range in size from about 100m to almost 10km long but they usually contain very few finds so their purpose is hard to discover.

However, they are often thought of as processional ways, through which people crossed sacred or important parts of the landscape.

Few cursus monuments survive as visible monuments above ground but one exception is the Greater Stonehenge Cursus, which is around 3 km long.

When the archaeologist William Stukeley noticed this monument in the 18th century he thought it was a Roman arena and gave it the Latin name for a chariot race track - cursus!

Avebury and Silbury Hill, Wiltshire

The first henges were probably constructed in Orkney around 3000 BC, but the largest are found in southern England, at Avebury, Marden and Durrington Walls in Wiltshire, and Mount Pleasant in Dorset.

The henge bank and ditch at Avebury enclose an area of over 400 m across and the ditch is 11 m deep. Britain’s largest stone circle follows the inner edge of the ditch.

Outside Avebury are a number of related monuments, including two avenues of standing stones that would have guided visitors to the henge entrances.

1 km south of Avebury is the great mound of Silbury Hill, which was built around 2400 BC, a few hundred years after the henge.

While we know a lot about how and when Silbury Hill was constructed no-one is sure why it was built.

Durrington Walls, Wiltshire

At Durrington Walls in Wiltshire recent excavations uncovered remains of houses that were very similar in plan but made of timber and chalk.

These discoveries show that there were connections between the north and south of Britain 4500 years ago, and that people in different areas used the materials available to them to build similar-looking homes.

Stonehenge, Wiltshire

Stonehenge is probably the most famous prehistoric monument in Britain. It has a long and complicated history of construction from the Neolithic to the early Bronze Age.

The site includes outer circles and inner horseshoe arrangements of massive sarsen stones, brought from about 30 km away, and smaller bluestones from south Wales, 240 km away. These were put up around 2500 BC.

The stones are unique in a number of ways, including their shaping, the lintels that join the tops of the upright stones, and the distance they were brought. Some archaeologists think the bluestones were transported all that way because they were believed to have healing properties.

Surrounding the stone circle is a circular ditch and bank that was first constructed around 3000 BC. For much of the period, before the stones arrived, the site was used as a cemetery.

The Amesbury Archer, Wiltshire

The Amesbury Archer was buried near Stonehenge in the late Neolithic. He was an important person, possibly a metalworker. Finds buried with him included Beaker pots, archery equipment (hence his name), copper knives and metalworking tools. His two gold hair ornaments are the oldest evidence for gold in Britain. His hair may have been dreadlocked.

At the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, metalworking was a specialist task and closely guarded secret. People may have thought it included magical processes.

Specialists like the Archer may have been seen as powerful and dangerous.

Scientific analysis of his teeth shows the Archer grew up in Europe, in the Alps.

Another burial nearby was of a close male relative (perhaps his son) who grew up in Britain.

These findings show that some people travelled long distances across Europe at this time, which may have added to their prestige.

Seahenge, Norfolk

As well as round barrows other types of circular monument are found in the early Bronze Age. ‘Seahenge’, on the north coast of Norfolk, is a timber circle with an upturned tree (with the roots in the air) at its centre. Because the site was waterlogged archaeologists were able to work out that the ropes used to move the tree trunk into place were made from twisted stands of honeysuckle.

The outer ring was built of split oak tree trunks, with the bark facing outwards. A  ‘Y’ shaped timber formed the entrance to the circle and access to the centre was probably restricted to only certain people. Tree-ring and radiocarbon dating (as used at the Neolithic Sweet Track) show that the circle was built in 2049 BC.

Marks from at least 50 different bronze axes have been found on the timbers.

Since these axes would have been quite rare at the time they suggest the act of building the circle brought a wide community together. Bronze axes have also been found on the beach nearby.

Must Farm and Flag Fen, Cambridgeshire

Some of the most remarkable Bronze Age finds have come from the Fens near Peterborough. At Must Farm a settlement was built on a timber platform on an old river bank. Around 900-800 BC it burnt down and fell into the river channel, where many fragile objects have been preserved, such as pots which still contain food.

Further along the river a group of nine Bronze Age logboats were found, along with fish traps and metal objects.

Nearby at Flag Fen a 1km-long timber causeway was built across the wetland. Part of this was made into a wooden platform, around which hundreds of pots, metal and stone objects were deposited, probably for ceremonial reasons.

The activity in the wetlands began c 1750 BC, and went on for about 1200 years. On the dry ground at Fengate finds of Bronze Age fields and roundhouses indicate that people were living and farming nearby.

The Dover Boat, Kent

The Dover Boat is over 3500 years old and was built to cross the sea. Only part of the boat was found during excavation but it is estimated to have been up to 15m long. It would have been propelled by paddles and may have travelled along the coast and across the English Channel to trade goods such as bronze, shale, pottery or livestock.

The boat was made of wooden planks, which were held together by thin twisted pieces of wood (‘withies’) and wedges. This meant the boat was much wider than log boats like those from Must Farm. The trees used to make the Dover Boat were about 350 years old when they were cut down.

Similar types of boat have also been found in the Humber estuary in Yorkshire.

Grimspound, Devon

Grimspound, on Dartmoor in Devon is a later Bronze Age village, lived in between about 3500 and 3000 years ago. The stone foundations of 24 round huts excavated at the end of the 19th century are still visible.

These huts would have been covered with conical roofs of turf or thatch. The people who lived in them would have cooked on a central fireplace.

The village was surrounded by a large boundary wall enclosing an area about 150m across. It is more likely to have been used to keep animals in or out than for defence. The people living at Grimspound were farmers who kept livestock and grew crops. At this time the soils on Dartmoor were more fertile than they are today.

In other parts of Britain Bronze Age roundhouses were usually built of timber rather than stone and do not survive as visible features today, except when excavated by archaeologists.

Cliffs End Farm, Kent

At Cliffs End Farm, Ramsgate, Kent, a group of burials were found in a large pit.

The first burial in the pit was that of an elderly woman who had been killed, perhaps as a sacrifice. There were several other complete skeletons as well as just scattered bits of human bone. All of these people lived – and died, in the late Bronze Age, around 3000 years ago. Also within the pit were the bones of cattle, lambs and a buzzard. More burials took place here a few centuries later in the Iron Age.

Scientific analysis of the human bones has shown that there were three groups of people: some were local, some came from Scandinavia and some from southern Europe; this was largely a cemetery for migrants. Along with older examples, like the Amesbury Archer, this shows that some people travelled long distances across Europe in the Bronze Age.

‘Near Lewes’ hoard, Sussex

This group of objects was found ‘near Lewes’ in Sussex. Dating to around 1400-1250 BC, it is known as a ‘hoard’. Hoards are collections that archaeologists believe were buried together as ceremonial offerings, or to keep valuable things safe.

At Lewes more than 50 objects - bronze axes, bronze torcs (neck or arm rings), finger rings, gold discs, pins, bracelets and necklaces with amber and ceramic beads - were buried in a pot.

The hoard includes axes local to the Brighton area, and things from France, Germany and the Baltic, showing the importance of cross-Channel trade at this time, and suggesting that the hoard had great importance to the people who buried it.

Whitehorse Hill, Devon

A very well preserved set of grave goods was recently found in a square stone burial chest (‘cist’) within a natural peat mound on Dartmoor. The cist contained the cremated bones of a 15-25 year old person, probably a female, who died between 3900 and 3700 years ago.

The bones had been wrapped in a bearskin and placed on a layer of purple moor grass.There was also a basket containing a woven band with tin studs, 200 beads of shale, amber, clay and tin, two pairs of turned wooden ear studs and a flint tool.

These objects are very rare and include things traded from a very long way off. Although young, the person buried here was clearly very important, perhaps part of a leader’s family.

The Mold Cape, Flintshire

The cape was found by 19th century workmen digging  for stone in an old burial mound in Mold, Flintshire, North Wales.

It is 3900 to 3600 years old. The shape means that you would not be able to move your arms very well, so it was probably used for ceremonies, rather than everyday wear!

The cape  was too small to be for a man – it would only fit a smallish woman or a child, and they were probably very important.

The cape would have been hammered out of a gold lump. The decoration looks like strings of jewellery or folds of cloth, and would have been hammered into the gold sheet. Lots of amber beads, maybe between 200 and 300, were also in the grave, but many of these and the bones from the grave have been lost.

Yorkshire
We have very little evidence of human burial from the Iron Age compared to earlier and later periods. But in the Yorkshire Wolds people buried their dead in large cemeteries of square barrows

(as opposed to the Round Barrows of the Bronze Age).

While most people were buried with only a pot, or a brooch, or nothing at all, some richer graves have been found including a number of ‘chariot burials’ (though the chariot would have been more like a wagon).

One such burial of an Iron Age woman who died 2300 years ago was excavated at Wetwang Slack. She was buried with a mirror, a joint of meat, and the chariot, which was taken apart and placed with her. Archaeologists have speculated about why she was buried like this. She might have been a chief, a religious person, someone with special skills, or perhaps she was special or different for other reasons.

Lindow Man, Cheshire

The body of a late Iron Age man was found in Lindow bog, Cheshire. It is very unusual to find human remains, except bones, but in this case the bog preserved the skin, hair, and insides of the man, who was about 25 years old when he died. He had a beard and a moustache, and neat fingernails. Food preserved in his stomach included bread made from wheat and barley.

Other ‘bog bodies’ have been found at Lindow and elsewhere in Britain, but they are more common in Ireland and Denmark. Some people found in bogs died naturally, but others, including Lindow man, had suffered violent deaths.

It is possible that Lindow man was killed as part of a religious ceremony. He might have been a priest or person of some importance.

Snettisham hoards, Norfolk

Hoards similar to those found in the Bronze Age continued to be deposited in the Iron Age. Some of these are clustered at particular ritual sites where spectacular finds have been made (see also Hallaton).

At Snettisham, Norfolk, 11 metal hoards have been found within a large enclosure. They included gold and silver ‘torcs’, coins and metal ‘ingots’ that may have been used as money. The Snettisham hoards were buried around 70 BC.

This picture shows a group of torcs. The one on the left was made from 1kg of twisted strands of gold and silver. The complicated ends were cast in moulds. The objects had been buried in a very specific order which suggests a ceremonial deposit or offering.

Torcs were a type of ornament worn around the neck. Unlike modern necklaces they would have been difficult to put on or take off.

Maiden Castle, Dorset

There are over 1000 hillforts in England and Wales. These are enclosures surrounded by ramparts and are usually found, as the name suggests, on hilltops. Some of them, like Danebury in Hampshire, have lots of evidence for settlement inside while others may only have been used temporarily, or for keeping animals.

Archaeologists do not agree on whether defence was the main purpose of hillforts or if they were simply designed to look impressive. In either case, constructing a hillfort would have required organisation, manual skills, labour and leaders.

Maiden Castle in Dorset is the largest hillfort in Britain. It was in use from the 4th century BC until the Roman conquest. It is surrounded by steep ramparts and at one time was inhabited by several hundred people. Fewer people lived there by the time the Romans arrived, but a small cemetery contains the bones of people who may have been killed fighting the Romans, including one skeleton with a catapult bolt in his spine.

The Battersea Shield, London

The Battersea shield was found in the River Thames. It probably dates to the 2nd or 1st century BC. It is 80 cm long and is made from sheets of bronze covering a wooden shield.Because of the very thin metal and its fine red enamel (glass) decoration it was probably not designed to be used in battle. Instead it may have been made as a ‘status symbol’, to impress people with how important its owner was. It might have been put into the river as an offering to the gods.

The swirly ‘Celtic’ decorations, called the La Tène style after a site in Switzerland, are found on other Iron Age metalwork over a large area of Europe.

Llyn Cerrig Bach is a lake on Anglesey where numerous metal objects were deposited for ceremonial purposes between about 300 BC and AD 100. This collection includes swords, spearheads, a bronze trumpet, pieces of a wagon, horse harnesses, and a cauldron.

The collection also includes two sets of chains.   The big links probably went round the necks of people who may have been slaves. We know from Roman writers that some British people  were traded as slaves in the Roman Empire.We do not know why the chains were deposited here but they may have been an offering to the gods. Deposits in wet places (rivers, lakes and bogs) were common in the Bronze Age and Iron Age; other examples include Flag Fen and Lindow Moss.

Glastonbury Lake Village, Somerset

Glastonbury Lake Village was an Iron Age settlement in Somerset, built in a swamp on an artificial island about 100m across. People lived there between about 250 and 80 BC, after which the site was gradually abandoned, perhaps because of flooding or because the river channels became blocked.

The site was excavated between 1892 and 1907. The wet conditions had preserved the timbers from many roundhouses (up to 14 at any one time), a surrounding fence and a landing stage for boats.

The village may have been home to as many as 200 people, who raised sheep and grew cereals but also ate wild plants and animals from the wetlands.

Finds from the site are numerous and provide evidence for manufacture and trade as well as daily life. They include pottery, tools for making fabric and sharpening knives, materials for metalworking, a wooden frame for stretching animal skins, baskets and parts of a cart.

Hallaton coin hoard, Leicestershire

At Hallaton in Leicestershire amateur archaeologists found an open-air hilltop shrine, containing Iron Age coin hoards, parts of Roman helmets and remains of feasting. It was in use around the time of the Roman invasion of Britain in the 1st century AD.

Rather like Snettisham the rituals carried out here involved the deliberate burial of a number of hoards of metalwork, in this case mostly coins.

In total more than 5000 Iron Age coins were found, more than had been found in the entire region up to that time! But perhaps the most impressive find was a Roman cavalry helmet with silver decoration.

Other activities on the hill included feasting on sacrificed pigs, as shown by a mass of bones found buried by the entrance, which was symbolically guarded by dog burials.

Carn Euny, Cornwall

Carn Euny is an Iron Age village in Cornwall.  The site was occupied for circa 500 years, from the 5th century BC.  People lived in roundhouses with stone foundations, walls were made from woven wood panels covered in clay (‘wattle and daub’), and thatched roofs were supported by wooden posts.

On the site now you can also see drainage gullies, and holes for the wooden posts. The site is unusual because of a well-preserved underground stone tunnel known as a ‘fogou’, which is roofed with large stone slabs.

We do not know what the tunnel was used for. It might have been for storage, or to hide in, or for ceremonies. Similar underground tunnels are found at Iron Age settlements in other parts of north west Europe.

Broch of Gurness, Orkney

In western Scotland hillforts were not built in the Iron Age. Instead defended settlements with towers are found, these are called brochs.

The Broch of Gurness in Orkney is one of the best preserved examples of this type of settlement.The village began between 500 and 200 BC, and was abandoned after AD 100. It covered an area 45m in diameter, and was surrounded by deep ditches and ramparts. A circular tower was built, and later surrounded by stone houses with yards and sheds. The houses have a large central room and stone furniture.

The broch tower was probably the home of an important farming family. A central fire, stone furniture, and a well are present in the broch. The walls are very thick and the tower could have provided a defence against other groups.