British Iron Age - Iron Age Beliefs in Britain

Iron Age Beliefs in Britain

The Romans described a variety of deities worshipped by the people of Northwestern Europe. Barry Cunliffe perceives a division between one group of gods relating to masculinity, the sky and individual tribes and a second, female group of goddesses relating to associations with fertility, the earth and a universality that transcended tribal differences. Wells and springs had female, divine links exemplified by the goddess Sulis worshipped at Bath. In Tacitus' Agricola (2.21), he notes the similarity between both religious and ritual practices of the pre-Roman British and the Gauls.

Religious practices revolved around offerings and sacrifices, sometimes human but more often involving the ritual slaughter of animals or the deposition of metalwork, especially war booty. Weapons and horse trappings have been found in the bog at Llyn Cerrig Bach on Anglesey and are interpreted as votive offerings cast into a lake. Numerous weapons have also been recovered from rivers, especially the Thames, but also the Trent and Tyne. Some buried hoards of jewellery are interpreted as gifts to the earth gods.

Disused grain storage pits and the ends of ditches have also produced what appear to be deliberately placed deposits, including a preference for burials of horses, dogs and ravens. The bodies were often mutilated and some human finds at the bottom of pits, such as those found at Danebury, may have had a ritual aspect.

Caesar's texts tell us that the priests of Britain were Druids, a religious elite with considerable holy and secular powers. Great Britain appears to have been the seat of the Druidic religion and Tacitus' account of the later raid on Anglesey led by Suetonius Paulinus gives some indication of its nature. No archaeological evidence survives of Druidry, although a number of burials made with ritual trappings and found in Kent may suggest a religious character to the subjects.

Overall, the traditional view is that religion was practised in natural settings in the open air. However, several sites interpreted as Iron Age shrines seem to contradict this view which may derive from Victorian and later Celtic romanticism. Sites such as at Hayling Island in Hampshire and that found during construction work at Heathrow airport are interpreted as purpose-built shrines. The Hayling Island example was a circular wooden building set within a rectangular precinct and was rebuilt in stone as a Romano-British temple in the 1st century AD to the same plan. The Heathrow temple was a small cella surrounded by a ring of postholes thought to have formed an ambulatory which is very similar to Romano-Celtic temples found elsewhere in Europe. A rectangular structure at Danebury and a sequence of six-poster structures overlooking calf burials and culminating in a trench-founded rectangular structure at Cadbury Castle, Somerset, have been similarly interpreted. An example at Sigwells, overlooking Cadbury Castle, was associated with metalwork and whole and partial animal burials to its east. However, evidence of an open air shrine was found at Hallaton, Leicestershire. Here, a collection of objects known as the Hallaton Treasure were buried in a ditch in the early 1st century AD. The only structural evidence was a wooden palisade built in the ditch.

Death in Iron Age Great Britain seems to have produced different behaviours in different regions. Cremation was a common method of disposing of the dead, although the chariot burials and other inhumations of the Arras culture of East Yorkshire, and the cist burials of Cornwall, demonstrate that it was not ubiquitous. In fact, the general dearth of excavated Iron Age burials makes drawing conclusions difficult. Excarnation has been suggested as a reason for the lack of burial evidence with the remains of the dead being dispersed either naturally or through human agency.