A Piece Of History Uncovered

Literature is ripe with impressive tales from the Iron Age. Between roughly 1200-550 BC, civilization went through a major change. Nomadic tribes, often violent and barbarous, began to settle down in small villages. They learned to farm. They learned to make fine instruments of commerce and war. Warrior kings held regions together. King Arthur, Robin Hood, Confucious. Sampson. These and many more are the tales and mythologies that come from the Iron Age period. Rome was not yet a threat to anyone. Queen Tomiris of Persia reigned over the Middle East after the death of King Cyrus the Great.

Sitting here a few millennia later, the stories sound exciting, thrilling, and romantic. The hard truth is that few survived past the age of 35 or so. Young girls were married by the age of 12 and began raising families. Wooden structures replaced the tents of the Bronze Age, but these were still rough, with dirt floors and open sewage. Disease was rampant.

Still, somehow, as farming took hold, people learned the metal trades, and economies began to grow in places we now know as Leeds and York, even Manchester. The stratas of society began to develop, and the use of coins for matters of trade became commonplace. As challenging as life was, it was still considerably better than those who had lived a thousand years earlier.

Artifacts from this period, especially in the part of England once known as Northumbria, are tough to find. Buried under several feet of dirt and rock, the battles that dominated this part of Britain were effective in leaving little behind. So, when a large trove of Iron Age artifacts was discovered in a field near Melsonby, North Yorkshire, archeologists all over the world became quite excited.

After the initial discovery was reported to the authorities in December 2021, the site was excavated in 2022 with the support of the British Museum and a £120,000 grant from Historic England. Early analysis of the hoard, released on Tuesday, suggests a lot of the items had been purposefully burnt or broken before being buried as a show of power and wealth.

Tom Moore, head of the department of archaeology at Durham University, said the size and scale of the find was “exceptional for Britain and probably even Europe. Whoever originally owned the material in this hoard was probably a part of a network of elites across Britain, into Europe, and even the Roman world. The destruction of so many high-status objects, evident in this hoard, is also of a scale rarely seen in Iron Age Britain and demonstrates that the elites of northern Britain were just as powerful as their southern counterparts.”

Curators feel this is the discovery of a lifetime. You have to use your imagination a bit; Iron Age artefacts from 2,000 years ago have rusted or faded and are far from their original glory. Some of them were decorated with coral which has bleached over the centuries.

Already, the impact on what we know of the period is important. Horseback was not the only means of transportation. Both four-wheel wagons and two-wheel chariots were available long before Romans could have introduced them to the regions.

They now have proof that Iron Age residents of northern England had trading connections with the continent and the growing Roman Empire. Deciphering everything found will take years, expanding through the entire careers of multiple researchers.

Among the items uncovered were the partial remains of more than seven four-wheeled wagons and/or two-wheeled chariots, including elaborate harnesses for at least 14 ponies, some which were adorned with red, Mediterranean coral and coloured glass, and 28 iron wheels from horse-drawn vehicles, some of which had been intentionally bent out of shape. They also found three ceremonial spears and two ornate cauldrons or vessels, one that was decorated in both Mediterranean and Iron Age styles and probably used as a wine mixing bowl. Some of the objects found were most closely related to others found in continental Europe, suggesting people shared technologies over this distance.

With the tales of Robin Hood coming from Middle England, and those of King Arthur and his knights of Southern England, one has to wonder if this new find might give way to a previously unknown hero of the Northumbria region. Our understanding of history is never complete, and with a large find such as thing one, everything we thought we knew about the time period could be turned on its ear.

Certainly, one rarely sees archeologists getting as excited about something as much as they are about this find. As researchers pour over the “new” artifacts, we will develop a better understanding for this critical point in the development of civilization, and perhaps a better understanding of who we are today.