Later prehistory
The Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age: The Beaker period c 3100 to 1800 BC
Around 3100 BC, there was a huge change in the way people did things. No new long barrows, cursuses or causewayed enclosures were built and those that existed fell into disuse. Instead, burials were made under round barrows, like one beside the railway line between Hitchin and Letchworth Garden City, and new types of ceremonial sites were built, which we call henges; there is one on the Weston Hills and another in Norton. After about six hundred years, metal tools were imported from Ireland. By about 2200 BC, bronze was made from copper and tin mined in Britain.
These early bronze objects were rare and valuable, so most tools were still made of flint. The earliest bronze objects in Britain were simple-shaped axes and daggers, and these are normally found in graves. Most metalwork consisted of weapons rather than tools and it has been said that the Bronze Age saw the first “arms race”.
Flint and other stones were still used for some tools and weapons. Heavy stone ‘battle axes’ and axe hammers were made, and fine, sharp flint arrowheads.
Towards the end of this period, a new type of building was developed, the roundhouse. During this period, new types of pottery were made. The older styles, which were simple, black bowls, gave way to highly decorated red or orange bowls and, after 2500 BC, tall yellowish beakers. The beaker style is found all over Western Europe and north-west Africa and shows the development of long-distance trade as metalworkers needed sources of copper and, especially, tin.
Excavations in the 1960s at Blackhorse Road in Letchworth uncovered several deep pits. Some of them contained flint tools and pottery made in the Beaker Period as well as the bones of some of their sheep and cattle. These pits may have been dug to get at flint nodules, which were used for making tools. They were later filled up with debris from a nearby living site.
At Codicote Heath, pottery sherds and flint flakes and tools made by the early farmers were found in shallow hollows beneath a later burial mound.
At Baldock, flint tools and pottery similar to that from Blackhorse Road have been found in excavations since the 1970s. One pit was used as a rubbish pit by an early flintworker and on anther site, the chips of flint left by someone making tools were simply left scattered on the ground. A building stood nearby.
The Honoured Dead: the Middle Bronze Age c 1800 to 1140 BC
Once farming had become the usual way of life in Britain, more woodland was cleared and more farms and hamlets developed. From about 1400 BC, very little of the original woodland was left and farmers began to divide up the landscape into field systems. Only one definite house site of this period is known from North Hertfordshire, at Codicote Heath. Most houses were quite flimsy because until about 1200 BC, the weather was much warmer than today – it was more like the weather of southern Spain!
Around this time, burial practices changed from placing the body under a mound to cremating (burning) the body and putting it in a pottery vessel called an urn. Wealthier people would still have their ashes placed under a round barrow, but the urns of poorer people were simply placed in a hole in the ground. The most common style of urn is called a ‘collared urn’ because of the thick collar around the rim.
There must originally have been several hundred round barrows in North Hertfordshire. Many have been flattened by ploughing or erosion, so that fewer than thirty can still be seen as mounds. Many of the ditches surrounding the barrows can still be seen in aerial photographs as rings of different-coloured soil, called ring ditches. More than a hundred ring ditches are known in North Hertfordshire.
Around the long barrow on Therfield Heath is a group of round barrows that can still be seen. Many were excavated in the past. Several covered burials of cremated bones in pottery urns. Some burials had several pottery vessels with them. With one burial was also a group a bronze ingots.
During the Middle Bronze Age, bronze tools and weapons became more common. A greater range of items of more complicated shapes were made as new techniques of casting were developed. Swords, spearheads, new types of axes, chisels, sickles, razors and pins were among the new types of items made. Such items are often found in hoards, some of them left by travelling bronze smiths or traders. Bronze may also have been traded in the form of ingots: a hoard of small ingots was found beneath one of the round barrows on Therfield Heath.
At Cumberlow Green, Rushden, a ‘founder’s’ (bronze worker’s) hoard of 40 items (including axes, swords and scrap metal) was found in the 19th century. Several other single items of bronze have been found in North Hertfordshire, for instance at Pirton, Letchworth and Baldock.
The Late Bronze Age c 1140 to 750 BC
After about 1200 BC, the climate got cooler and wetter. People living on higher ground had to abandon their farms, as they could no longer grow crops there and the land turned into moorland. This happened in places like Dartmoor and the Pennines, which had previously been fertile farming landscapes. Elsewhere, people were drawn to wet places, such as ponds, rivers and marshes. They threw in all sorts of valuable metalwork, perhaps hoping to please the water gods.
Other things began to change. Around this time, people began to build defended settlements on the tops of hills, known as hillforts. They no longer buried the wealthy dead under round barrows. Instead, everyone was buried in cemeteries called urnfields using urns that were larger but plainer than before, called ‘bucket urns’. Three were found at William in 1923, probably just part of a larger urnfield.
New types of bronze weapons and tools were developed as casting techniques became more sophisticated. Socketed axes and spears were first made at this time. Several socketed bronze axes, a spearhead and other items, probably from a hoard, were found near Wilbury Hill, Letchworth, early in the twentieth century. Other hoards have been found at Barley and at Barkway in more recent years.
The Early Iron Age c 750 - 400 BC
Iron Age society was divided up into tribes, each controlled by a warrior chief. In the Early Iron Age, these tribes were small and it is possible that each of the hillforts in North Hertfordshire was the base of an individual chieftain. These small tribal areas were often divided by boundary ditches and aerial photographs have shown many of these in North Herts. Several of them cross the Icknield Way. In other places rivers made natural boundaries.
The earliest hillforts had been built in the Later Bronze Age, but they became much more important and widespread in the earlier Iron Age. They were usually built on hilltops and surrounded by one or more defensive banks, called ramparts, and defensive ditches. They may have been used as places of refuge during times of war, as places for collecting produce from nearby farms and as the religious centre of the tribe. Many contained large numbers of houses and must have been fortified villages. The hillforts in North Hertfordshire are sited along the chalk ridge between Luton and Royston at Ravensburgh Castle (Hexton), Wilbury Hill (Letchworth) and Arbury Banks (Ashwell). A prehistoric trackway, the Icknield Way, also runs along this ridge and passes near or through the hillforts.
During the Early and Middle Iron Age, people did not usually bury their dead in the ground. Instead, they seem to have removed the flesh from the bones, either with knives or by leaving the body out in the open so that it would be eaten by scavengers such as crows. The bones would then be taken away; sometimes they were placed in pits or rivers, but most of the time, we do not know where they were taken. Although this sounds strange to us, many people in Tibet still dispose of the dead in this way; it is known as ‘air burial’ as the flesh is eaten by eagles.
During the Iron Age, an important new style of art was developed. Art historians call it La Tène art, after the name of a site in Switzerland where it was first identified. La Tène styles use sweeping, curving lines and often group things in threes. The style is abstract – it does not depict people, animals or objects, but creates beautiful, elaborate patterns. The skilled craftspeople of the Iron Age used these patterns on bronze, iron and pottery, often producing superb geometric patterns. Many of the objects in this and the following cases show how talented Iron Age people were at metal working.
Iron Age people were dependent on farming for their livelihood, just as their Bronze Age ancestors had been. They grew crops in their fields and kept animals on their pasture. Cattle, pigs, sheep and horses were all reared. These produced wool, meat, manure and the power to pull ploughs across the fields. At Whiteley Hill in Barley, a study of the animal bones found on a site that dates from about 750 BC has shown that sheep were kept for their meat, rather than wool. The site was probably the home of a warrior chieftain. Sheep must have been reared for wool elsewhere, perhaps at sites like Jack’s Hill, near Graveley.
The Britons
Greek and Latin writers do not tell us much about Iron Age Britain. We know that the people of Iron Age Britain were called Prettanoi by their Celtic neighbours in Gaul (modern France) and we know that they had a very similar language (linguists call it Brittonic and it was the ancestor of modern Welsh, Cornish and Breton). Prettanoi was a native word meaning ‘painted people’, and we know that the Prettanoi called the island Albion, ‘the white land’. Later Greek and Roman writers began to call the island Britannia, meaning ‘land of the Britons (Prettanoi)’. In many ways, their culture was very similar to that of the Celts, which is why many people call the people of Iron Age Britain ‘Celts’, but we know that they did not think of themselves as Celts. It was probably more important to know which tribe a person belonged to.
The Middle Iron Age c 400 - 100 BC
After about 400 BC, Britain was in less close contact with Europe than it had been for centuries. Instead of importing goods and learning newly fashionable styles, people began to develop their own, regional styles. It is at this time that archaeologists believe that big tribal groups began to grow by taking over their neighbours. By the end of the Middle Iron Age, some of the tribal leaders may have been powerful enough for us to call them kings.
Iron Age people lived in farmhouses called roundhouses. They were made out of wooden posts, driven firmly into the ground. The gaps between were filled with woven twigs, covered with a sticky mixture of mud and straw. Roofs were thatched with straw and reeds. We think that there were no windows in these houses: all the light came through the door. In the centre of the house stood an open fire. Smoke simply went up into the roof and went through the thatch. A cauldron would be hung over the fire, filled with stews, while meat could be roasted on a metal bar (a spit) or on a hook hanging from the rafters. The door usually faced south-east. In this way, morning sunlight would fill the house.
People continued to live in places like Wilbury Hill, but they demolished the defences as the village grew. There were also individual farms, like those excavated at Blackhorse Road in Letchworth Garden City during the 1960s.
The Late Iron Age c 100 BC - AD 43
During the first century BC, the tribes in south-east England developed into kingdoms with rulers called kings (the native word was rigos). By the time of the Roman Conquest, North Hertfordshire was in the kingdom of the Catuvellauni, the most powerful kingdom in Britain. The kingdom was divided up into smaller units, just as a modern county is divided into districts; each unit probably represented a group of people whose leaders had close family ties.
By 56 BC, Rome had conquered much of Europe including France (which they called Gaul). In 55 BC and 54 BC, Julius Caesar attempted to invade and conquer Britain. Although he was unsuccessful in his conquests, it did lead to much stronger contacts between Britain and the Roman Empire.
The explosion of trade during the late Iron Age led to the development of a complex urban society. A new form of settlement site appeared called oppida. These were large market centres more like a town than a group of farms. The houses in oppida were now usually rectangular instead of round.
As trading with the continent became more intense, coinage began to appear, to make selling easier. The first coins used in this country were gold coins minted in Gaul. As these coins were in short supply British tribes soon began to copy them. A monetary economy quickly developed and smaller denomination coins made of silver and bronze appeared and are fairly common finds on late Iron Age oppida. Several have been found in North Herts, especially at Baldock.
Baldock is an example of a late Iron Age 'town' or oppidum. A number of rectangular wattle and daub (wood and clay) houses have been found and a few roundhouses; these may have been shrines. Many burials have been excavated most of which were cremations with ashes being placed in urns. Inhumations (skeletons) have also been discovered. A large amount of bronze coinage, jewellery and pottery have been found.
During the Late Iron Age, burial of the dead became much more common. There were two ways of burying: by placing the body in a hole in the ground (which archaeologists call ‘inhumation’) or by burning the body and placing the ashes in the ground (‘cremation’). Both types of burial are found in North Hertfordshire, although cremation seems to have been more common.
Chieftains’ Burials from Baldock 100 - 25 BC
In the winter of 1967-68, a grave was discovered by workmen using a bulldozer in Baldock. They found what they thought was scrap metal and sold it to a junk shop. A passing archaeologist recognised that this was an important and exciting discovery and a team from the British Museum was sent to investigate.
Archaeologists found a burial that had taken place around 100 BC, at the start of the Late Iron Age. The burial contained a cauldron, two fire dogs (for supporting spits to roast meat over a fire), an amphora (to hold wine), two bronze bowls and two wooden buckets with bronze bindings. The buckets were used for holding wine at feats – guests would dip their cups into them. Among the bones from the grave, there were bear claws and it is thought that the body had been wrapped in a bear skin when it was on the funeral pyre. The burial was obviously of someone wealthy and it is thought that this was a local chieftain.
In 1981, another important Iron Age burial was discovered in Baldock, during the building of Clothall Common estate. This one was in the middle of a huge ditched area and was probably once under a square mound of soil. The ashes were in a pit, along with a pedestal urn, a bucket and bones from at least three pigs.
Nearby, archaeologists found a pit containing the remains of the funeral pyre. Among the ashes, they found pieces of chainmail armour that had been cut into pieces and bones of animals that may have been eaten as part of a funeral feast. There were foot bones from a horse and it is thought that the body had been wrapped in a horse hide when it was on the pyre.
This second burial was later in date than the first. We think that it took place around 25 BC. By this time, Baldock was part of the kingdom of the Catuvellauni, so the person buried here must have been a lesser chieftain rather than a king.
