Iron Age Antics

This month at YAC members visited the Museum of the Iron Age in Andover. They were set challenges to find out more about what life was like in an Iron Age Hillfort!

They saw lots of artefacts that archaeologists had discovered from over 20 years of excavations at the Iron Age Hillfort of Danebury. There was an impressive collection of pots that had been carefully pieced back together. Members had to choose one pot to sketch. Then they had to think about what might have been used to create any patterns on the pot and most importantly what the pot might have been used for. They did this by asking themselves a series of questions such as:

How big is it?
Would it only hold enough food/liquid for one person?
Would it hold enough food/liquid for lots of people?
What shape is it?
Are there soot markings on the outside?

They also learnt about all the foods that people did and didn’t eat in the Iron Age, as well as just how much time and effort was involved in making a loaf of bread!

1: Ploughing a field
2: Planting the grains of wheat
3: Weeding and tending the field
4: Harvesting the grain
5: Threshing – beating cereal plants to separate the seeds or grains from the straw
6:Winnowing – separating the chaff (waste) from grain by fanning the stalks in the air
7: Sieving
8: Transporting the grain from the fields either to underground storage pits or above ground granaries
9: Grinding the grain to make flour
10: Mixing the flour with other ingredients such as beer or water to make a dough
11: Baking it in an oven to produce a loaf of bread!

Members were just as fascinated about death in the Iron Age and they learnt all about how the people then disposed of their dead! They thought about what might have been believed about death and how this was shown in the way they treated their ancestors. The hologram of the body of the strangled Lindow Man was also very spooky!


This entry was posted in What's Gone and tagged , , , . Bookmark the permalink.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *