What is the Iron Age?

What is the Iron Age? Well normally the use of a time index such as Stone Age, Bronze Age or Iron Age helps to put prehistoric events in some form of time line. This is when the peoples of the era got to a state of technological advancement such that they were able to efficiently use said substance. Often the use of the substance tends to show a leap in technologies of the time.
But when talking about Iron Age forts there is a little more prudency needed. Is that not everyone on the planet started using each substance at exactly the same time; for example, the meditarainan peoples started using iron long before the British habitants. For this reason, we are to change the question to “when was the British Iron Age?”. The answer to this question is slightly simpler, which is that the iron age began about 800 BC and finished when the romans invaded Britten in about 50 AD.

What is an Iron Age camp?

An Iron Age camp can also be referred to as a hill fort. This is normally a settlement on a highly defendable position on highlands, such as a hill. To add to the natural defence ability of the geology of the position, steep embankments were made*^/** on which stone and/or wooden walls were built. These extra defensive parts made attack on the fortification much harder. As well as the aforementioned defences there were also often guardhouses and other defensive buildings.

Inside the camp people would have lived in the buildings of the time. Often outside the main fortification there were small constructs used for livestock. As well as having all the other necessities of the time such as temples.

When Julius Caesar first saw hill forts in gull how described them as 'oppida' which roughly means somewhere with administrative properties, indeed hill forts were the first things that would be described as large towns north of the Mediterranean.

What was life like in an Iron Age hill fort?

Most of what we can work out about what life was like in the iron age is to look at where it is they lived.

The first and most distinctive observation that is made when looking at the iron age camp in Oxton is just how well hidden it is from the rest of the world; whereas one of the reasons why people built grate hill forts (apart from as a means of defence) was also as a show of power (i.e. I have a bigger fort then you and so I must be better than you). Though in Oxton we see it being very isolated and so my impressions of the site is that it must have had some purpose beyond status, maybe it was used more as a defensive structure or even as a place to go to for safely from those that do not know you are there.

In Oxton, apart from that larger ground works we also know that the Iron Age people used to live in small round houses with a well in close proximity - this can reveal that the land that was chosen not just because of the earth works, but also the water supply.

*A good example of a hill fort is Maiden Castle, which has good embankment structures.

**for more images please go to our Interactive Map