Sacred Women of the Iron Age Stories from the Dark Earth: Meet the Ancestors Revisited

Right across Britain,

archaeologists are unearthing

the relics of ancient lives.

But so much of modern archaeology is what happens after excavation.

Today, forensic analysis and cutting-edge science,

as well as brand-new finds, are overturning

what we once thought about entire eras of our ancient history.

I'm Julian Richards, and over the years,

I've been lucky enough to have taken part

in some of our most important digs.

You've not?

A lead coffin?

Now, I'm going back to some of my favourites,

to discover the very latest stories of our most ancient ancestors.

The Iron Age, a time that began 2,800 years ago.

It's one of the most elusive periods of our ancient, prehistoric past.

Think of the Iron Age and what comes to mind?

Well, iron, obviously, like this iron blade,

but also places like this, Hambledon Hill,

where this blade was found, a massive hillfort in Dorset.

We think of an age of rival British tribes, vying for power,

a time of warrior heroes, wielding finely-crafted swords and shields.

The story of the Iron Age, like much of prehistory,

can often seem to be dominated by the stories of men,

which means ignoring half the population of these islands.

Over a decade ago, I was involved in two remarkable excavations

of the burials of Iron Age women.

Excavations that opened up windows into life and death,

into class and society and into religion and ritual.

One excavation discovered the remains of a teenage girl,

crouched in a rubbish pit,

thought at the time to be a victim of human sacrifice.

But since the dig, a series of stunning new finds

on the same site has forced a rethink

and given dramatic insights into the world

of a whole Iron Age community.

Had this person got the use of their legs?

They could have been paralysed.

The other find could not have been more different.

The grave of a high-status woman,

buried with a lavishly worked chariot.

Now, brand-new scientific analysis on a mirror

buried with the woman has revealed unexpected connections

to power and the spirit world.

There was animal fur, lying against the mirror plate.

We've now come to realise that these two women,

who, a decade ago, seemed so different,

were in fact connected by shared Iron Age beliefs.

What's clear from these two burials

is that archaeology doesn't end when we put our trowels away -

in fact, it's just the beginning.

So more than a decade later,

I'm going back to these two women to find out what we know today,

that we couldn't even have imagined when they were first discovered.

Back in 2000, I was called out to the Cotswolds

to a little town called Bourton-on-the-Water,

where building work at a primary school

had revealed a whole series of pits, full of Iron Age remains.

Let me take you back almost 13 years to the dig itself.

What I found was something quite extraordinary.

Discoveries of complete Iron Age skeletons are quite rare -

most people at this time were cremated

or had their bones scattered.

But here, I found myself joining archaeologist Paul Nicholls

by a grave that contained a wonderfully preserved skeleton.

This is the site, isn't it?

It does look, doesn't it, as if...it comes right out?

-Have you got an edge?

-It's going round.

-That looks like the edge, here.

-So it's almost circular.

It's jammed right over to one side, isn't it, yet the feet are stuck

up against that side, the head's stuck up against this side.

'To stand any chance of understanding this burial,

'we had to get a clear picture of the grave.'

When Paul and I first started looking at this burial,

it looked as if it was a small, oval grave,

with the skeleton crammed up against the edges of it, the head here

and the feet up against that side, but now,

it looks as if the skeleton might be in the top of a pit,

maybe even a rubbish pit.

Perhaps this person has literally been chucked out

with some of the rubbish.

'The skeleton shared the pit

'with the broken remains of everyday life.'

-Is that pottery?

-Yeah, looks like it.

It looks quite a reasonable size bit, isn't it?

I don't know. Maybe not.

It's classic prehistoric pottery - it's black,

sooty,

I assume from the fabric, from the sort of clay and what's in it,

that someone is going to be able to tell what date that is.

'The find was part of an Iron Age settlement

'that had been revealed, piece by piece,

'as the school it now lay beneath had been gradually extended.'

The new building we've got on our right was completed in August 1996,

the archaeologists came along and dug a trench...

-That was the first hint.

-Yes, that's right, I think over 160 postholes,

so clearly, it was a well-established settlement.

Fortunately, two years later, we had funding for two more classrooms.

-That's this one here.

-That's right. The ones on our right here.

And they were completed in March 1998, but before then,

-we had, as you can see...

-More archaeologists!

Why do you think people came to this particular spot?

I think at that time, they'd have chosen it with care.

To the south of us over here, we've got the River Windrush,

which would have been useful to them, clearly.

-This is fairly well-drained, then?

-It is, yes,

-it's a gravel bed under here.

-It's a pretty good place.

'The new discovery, though, was the first burial.

'And now, we had the challenge of easing the skeleton

'from a grave in which it had lain for well over 2,000 years.'

Now, I think we might have to leave that arm in.

-Bit peculiar-looking, isn't it?

-It's not too bad.

I think it's all there, it's just rather crushed in.

'The skeleton was that of a girl,

'her remains so well-preserved that it was possible

'to reconstruct her appearance.'

'Forensic artist Caroline Wilkinson took up the challenge.'

This is the girl's skull from Bourton-on-the-Water.

Some of it's missing. Part of the nasal bone is missing,

but the majority of the skull is intact.

There is some asymmetry in the lower jaw,

you can see when you view it from the front

that the centre of her chin is heading off to her right,

although her teeth are in a central position.

The asymmetry has to be quite marked on the skull for it to show up

noticeably on the face. All of us have asymmetrical faces.

Her asymmetry isn't marked enough that she'd be particularly unusual.

What emerged was the face of a seemingly typical teenager -

from the Iron Age.

And here are the remains of the girl today.

It's the first time I've seen these bones for over ten years.

I have to say, they're beautifully conserved.

They're stored here in the archives in Gloucester.

Examination revealed that she was just 16 or 17 when she died

and while the cause of her death still isn't known,

there are signs that her short life would have been plagued by illness.

This is one of our girl's ribs and just here, on the end of it,

this little patch of discolouration,

this is evidence she was suffering from some sort of lung disease.

Now, we think that it was probably TB

and we tried to prove it by carrying out some DNA analysis,

but unfortunately, the DNA just didn't survive

to give us that conclusive proof.

But that's what we think it was.

Actually, that's very sad, the idea of this young person

coughing her life away in the smoke and darkness of an Iron Age hut.

'Ever since she was discovered, we knew she was Iron Age,

'but whether she was early Iron Age, around 700 or 800 BC,

'or from a time much closer to the Romans, was still a mystery.'

We didn't have any idea when during this period our girl lived.

'Now, nearly 13 years after her discovery,

'we've sent some of her remains to be radiocarbon dated.'

'It turns out that she lived around 300 BC,

'right in the middle of the Iron Age.'

'But her world didn't seem to be one of Celtic leaders and hero warriors,

'just an ordinary existence in a small, simple Iron Age community.

'She might have been left in a pit with animal bones

'and broken pottery, but why was SHE singled out for burial at all?'

Now it seems as if she really was rather special

because otherwise, why would she be given a proper burial

rather than being left to simply rot away?

Now when we first found her, there was a suggestion

that she hadn't died of TB, but had maybe been a human sacrifice.

Something that does happen occasionally during the Iron Age.

If that was the case, then this place would be

not so much a place of mourning, but of something much, much darker.

'This is the first time I've returned to the site of the dig

'in over a decade.

'Since then, the school has seen a new headmaster...'

Hello! '..And a lot more building work.'

This has all changed quite a bit since I was here last time.

There have been quite a few changes, I think, in the last ten years.

To be quite honest, the only thing that I actually recognise

around here is the roundhouse that we built all that time ago.

And I'm amazed to see it still standing.

That must be the building that went up

where we did the excavation in 2000.

That's correct. That is the actual building there.

That went up in 2000.

I think you found a number of artefacts in this area,

-but the actual...

-I remember this whole bit being dug.

-That's right.

-And I'm just trying to remember what it was like.

So if that was where the excavation was...

and that's where that first burial came from...

-That will be Betty just there.

-Betty?!

-Betty, Bourton Betty.

-Is that what she's known as?

-It is.

-And she's just inside the buildings just there.

-Right.

So today, the location of the burial pit is right...here,

in the corner of the corridor, right outside the classroom.

But it's actually in the layout of the whole site

that we think there might be more clues about our girl's life.

Often the secrets lie in the bones, but initially, there didn't seem

to be anything particularly special about the bones of the girl

that was found just out there.

So archaeologists turned to the rest of the site,

and here there was an absolute wealth of information.

Because in this classroom, there were masses of other pits.

There's one over here.

There's one just beside me here.

One over there. Another huge pit over by the wall there.

And these pits contained pottery, animal bone -

rubbish, in other words.

But rubbish is what gets archaeologists very excited.

Back in 2000, the pit's contents were sieved and examined,

yielding plant material, including cereal crops,

such as barley and wheat.

There were also the bones of domestic animals,

including sheep and cattle,

and pieces of simple pottery.

Chemical analysis of that pottery revealed just what

the Iron Age villagers of Bourton had been cooking.

This particular one is screaming animal fat at us.

These are fatty acids and they are mainly saturated fatty acids

that we associate with animal fats.

There is evidence of milk fat as well as meat fat.

So they are both eating the meat and milking the animals as well?

-That's right.

-It's fascinating, isn't it, that you can tell

-so much just from a little piece of pottery?

-That's right.

They are very nice little time capsules of information.

Back then, all the analysis painted a picture

of a perfectly normal Iron Age settlement.

But there was still a mystery.

Because despite the large number of pits,

we still only had one skeleton.

A solitary girl, buried in a pit, with broken pottery and bones.

All the evidence from that original excavation - the bones,

the pottery - showed that this was a fairly typical

self-sufficient Iron Age settlement.

Nothing very unusual about it at all.

And nothing to suggest why that girl had been chosen.

What was clear, though, was that

she hadn't simply been thrown out with the rubbish.

Her burial meant something to the people who placed her in that pit

over 2,000 years ago.

But why was a mystery.

We hadn't really got any idea

and sacrifice remained just one possibility.

But a couple of years after that original excavation,

more work was carried out here

which showed that she wasn't quite as alone as we had thought.

'More construction work three years after the original dig

'revealed more discoveries.'

This is another building that wasn't here

when I came here to do that first excavation.

Because the school hall was only built in 2003.

And of course, before that was built,

there was another excavation and more discoveries were made.

'What we found were yet more pits. And within them, more skeletons.

'Eight of them.'

So this is what was found here.

There were complete skeletons in...this pit.

This one.

This one.

One over here.

And then there were bits of people in a whole cluster of pits

around here, here...here.

And then this pit right at the edge of the trench is where

there were the remains of a baby, of a neonate.

The new discoveries in 2003 changed everything.

Our story of a special girl,

possibly a solitary human sacrifice, had to be completely reassessed.

This was an amazing discovery.

Because suddenly it seemed as if our girl wasn't the chosen one,

but she might have been part of a chosen few. Or even a chosen many.

So that begs the question, was this a cemetery for the whole community?

Or was there something very special about all the people

that were buried here?

And what, if anything,

did our girl have in common with all these other people?

Ever since that original discovery, I've been intrigued

by the mysterious fate of that one young Iron Age girl.

Now, with the evidence of eight new burials,

I might at least be able to get closer to the truth.

What did the people who lived in Bourton believe 2,300 years ago?

And what connected the lives and deaths of these chosen few,

as well as our original girl?

Today, the new skeletons have been conserved

by Gloucestershire County Council Archaeology Service.

And we've asked forensic archaeologist Charlotte Roberts

to make a detailed examination of them.

What they are revealing is a pattern,

and a possible reason why these people were marked out for burial.

The most interesting individuals are three adult women, older adult women.

And also a child 18 months to two years old. And we have a newborn.

Here are some remains of that newborn. Tiny little shoulder blade.

Yeah. I'm amazed that much has survived.

Is there anything consistent

about what's come out of the analysis of these burials?

The interesting thing about this site is it's producing individuals

who've got a range of different diseases

affecting the bones and teeth.

And that seems to be a consistent pattern.

Because that first one that we found

had the evidence of lung infection, didn't she?

-On the ribs, yes.

-Are they coming up with similar sort of things?

We are seeing evidence of infectious disease.

We've got another of the females who has sinusitis.

So we've got bone formation in this sinus in the face,

which indicates poor air quality.

-Again, you think about the smoky hut, sinusitis, maybe TB.

-Yes.

-Right.

-Obviously there's something going on within that community

-and they are living with poor air quality.

-Yeah.

This is a child's skull, isn't it?

Yes, this is an 18-month to two-year-old child.

Inside the skull, you can see lots of little patches of new bone.

Which probably represent inflammation of the brain

that's actually affected the skull's surface.

'But one of the skeletons revealed something even more distinctive.

'A very marked disability.'

If you look at her skeleton, the top half is pretty normal.

That's what you'd expect for a female.

But if you look at the lower half of her body,

you can see that the bones are very wasted.

It almost looks like an adult body from this part,

and a child's body from here down. Because these are so thin.

-They are not normal sized femurs, are they?

-No.

If you actually compare what the normal femur should

look like from this site, from one of the other females,

you will see that the normal contour of the bone has been lost.

You see here, the muscle markings are not as prominent as here.

What does that imply?

Had this person got the use of their legs,

or is that why the bones are wasted like this?

I certainly don't think this person

is actually using their legs as they would normally.

They're very wasted because the muscles are not working.

Therefore, the bones will just waste away. They could have been paralysed.

-Yeah.

-There are lots of reasons why you might get paralysed legs.

Some rarer than others. Things like a stroke,

though that would just affect one side of the body.

Things like multiple sclerosis,

motor neurone disease, polio, myelitis.

But this has presumably happened early in life, hasn't it?

-Because for that amount of wastage to take place...

-Yeah.

Then you start to think, well, did the community look after them?

That's what really intrigues me,

because it's got those interesting ideas behind it.

Rather than it being a society where if you weren't productive,

you were simply thrown out, you were looked after and survived.

-Yes!

-I'm surprised that so many of these are extra bones.

I know it's only a small group, isn't it?

But there do seem to be quite a large number of them.

There do. We are only looking at eight individuals

and of course that's a very small sample size.

And then projecting your findings

on the general Iron Age population of the area

is rather dodgy, to say the least.

But it is an interesting group of skeletons,

producing a lot of evidence for disease and trauma.

I'm really intrigued by all this new evidence for disease.

Because when we first found our girl back in 2000,

the only thing that seemed unusual about her

was the fact that she was suffering from some sort of lung disease.

But now it seems as if that might be what links her in

with all these other people,

all of whom seem to have signs of some sort of serious ailment.

But then of course, that raises another idea - what was this place?

Was this simply somewhere the injured or diseased were buried

when they finally died,

or was there something far more spiritual about it?

I think what this new evidence has done is show that the idea

of this girl being a human sacrifice can be completely dismissed.

But it has opened up all sorts of other intriguing possibilities.

'By examining things like pottery and bones,

'we can get a really good handle on life in the Iron Age.

'The sort of places people lived. What they ate.

'The technology that they used.

'But we are also beginning to understand more about what

'they thought about the world that they lived in. About life and death.

'About what they believed.'

This is where burials are so important to the archaeologist.

Because the way that we treat our dead says an awful lot

about the way we see the land of the living.

So was there also something spiritual

linking the burials of our rather unusual people?

Tom Moore is a specialist in Iron Age ritual.

One of the unusual things in the Iron Age is the variation in burial rites.

We have very distinctive rites in places like East Yorkshire.

Very distinctive rites in Dorset. But the majority of people,

throughout many parts of Britain, are not buried at all.

So what about round here?

How do people dispose of the dead around here?

Here, most people are probably excarnated.

That means they are probably placed in trees,

and the remains that are left are brought back...

So they just gently rot away?

They gently rot away in the open, and their remains are brought back

and deposited on the settlement sites.

And we have that from places like Bourton-on-the-Water and Salmonsbury.

Other people are then chosen for particular burial.

That's the sort of interesting thing, isn't it?

Because here we've got a group of people who,

-they've put them into pits.

-No, most people are excarnated.

These particular people have been chosen for a distinctive rite.

And that makes them distinctive.

And suggests there's something distinctive about them within

the community that leads them to get treated in a different way.

It has intrigued us as Iron Age specialists to ask -

why have these people been chosen in particular?

And one of the interesting things with the material at Bourton

is that all of the remains seem to have some kind of malady.

They are not all the same malady.

But it may be that these people looked different.

Appeared different to the community. So that they were chosen.

Now they're not necessarily being treated differently

because they're diseased or outcasts,

clearly the elder female has been treated well all her life.

But they may be special within that community.

They may be regarded as being people who have been

touched by the gods, for instance.

They're distinctive within that community.

So they get treated in actually a very special way.

That's an intriguing thought, isn't it?

People that to us would seem perhaps less,

they may well have been elevated by what they're suffering from

to some special status.

Within these communities, they may have been regarded as

the most special people within the community. Different.

Somehow perhaps having contact with a different world,

having a distinctiveness within the community

that other people didn't have.

And this place might have been important too.

Because in the Iron Age, water, and especially rivers,

were also spiritually important.

Perhaps connections to the other world.

I can see why they call this place Bourton-on-the-Water, can't you?

There's a stream running down through the middle of it.

But was water something that was really important in the Iron Age?

Was it seen as being something sacred?

Well, it's increasingly apparent to us that in the Iron Age,

spiritual, symbolic behaviour is everywhere.

In the way they orientate their houses, in everything.

But water seems to have had a particularly significant role.

It's the place for the deposition of elaborate metalwork,

deposition of human remains.

-So they're putting people and special things into wet places.

-Yep.

And even recently we've realised

that they don't seem to be eating fish in the Iron Age.

In contrast to earlier periods and later periods,

they're not eating much fish.

And that might suggest to us that there are some taboos about water.

So that something that comes out of it, you're not eating as well?

Yes, and so it has a spiritual significance

above and beyond other elements in society.

13 years ago, here in Bourton, we investigated a single burial,

of a girl.

And at the time, we thought the reason she'd been chosen

for burial was perhaps because she might have been sacrificed.

That this was somehow what made her special.

But discoveries made over this last decade have revealed that

she wasn't the chosen one, but was part of a chosen few.

And these new discoveries have also given us insight

into the rituals and beliefs of the society that she lived in.

We now know that these people had a spiritual relationship with water.

And also, that being diseased or badly injured

might be what singled you out as being special.

That you were somehow touched by the gods.

'New discoveries like those eight skeletons

'can sometimes help us to understand

'the complex beliefs of the Iron Age.'

'But sometimes, it's not new discoveries

'but new scientific analysis that can lead to fresh insights.

'And that's what's happened in the case of another Iron Age burial.'

Burials from the Iron Age are rare.

And burials of women from this period are even more rare.

What I didn't realise was,

when we were looking at the life of this teenage girl

from Bourton-on-the-Water, that a year later, I'd be investigating

the life of another Iron Age woman, who lived a few generations later,

but whose life was very, very different.

In 2001 I drove up north,

heading for East Yorkshire, on what was going to be

one of the most exciting archaeological digs of my life.

If our Bourton girl came from an ordinary village, this new find

took me into the very highest echelons of Iron Age society.

It was right here under my feet that we had the first hints

of something very special.

In 2001, of course, none of this was here. It was just a sea of mud.

There were none of these houses, this road wasn't here.

The clue to what we found here lies in the name that they gave to

this little close of houses.

Here we are - Chariot Way. Actually sends a shiver up my spine.

Back in 2001, I arrived on site to find everyone already hard at work.

Under a tent was a massive grave that we hoped would contain

a rare Iron Age chariot burial.

It was immediately clear I was NOT going to be disappointed.

Pieces of bronze horse harness were already emerging

from the dark earth,

the objects confirming everything we'd hoped for.

We did have a chariot burial.

And I wasted no time in getting stuck in.

I've got what was once an Iron Age cartwheel.

But now, unfortunately, there's very little left of it.

And the other thing that's a bit of a shame is that I hoped there

would be traces of wooden spoke radiating out from a certain point.

But there's not a sign

so it looks as if it's just the remains of the iron tyre.

There's another rather unexpected lump of iron in the middle

of this cartwheel. I'm not sure what it is.

(WOMAN) I've got a tree root.

INDISTINCT MURMURING

METAL DETECTOR BEEPS

'The importance of this find

'attracted a large team of specialists,

'including experts from the British Museum.'

'But while the BM was armed with the latest technology,

'I had to make do with pen and paper.'

What we think's happening is that there's a wooden yoke here.

One wheel just here.

And we assume another wheel overlapping it just here.

And then there's the pole of the cart that runs right down

the whole length of the grave.

And the reason that the grave is so wide at this point,

is that this is where the cart axle will lie.

But the big puzzle is, where is the bodywork of this cart?

It must be somewhere in this area here.

And the big puzzle of course is, if there is a burial in here,

if there's a skeleton, then where is that?

Everybody seems to reckon that it's right in the middle here.

-Think I might just lift it like that.

-OK.

'But before we could start looking for a skeleton,

'we had to remove pieces of chariot

'and exquisitely worked horse harness.'

Just look at the detail and the way that's been moulded.

This is the link.

And that's the bit that would have been in the horse's mouth!

Look, even more details.

Just look at the little lobes coming up on there.

-Have they got some coral on them as well?

-I don't know.

This is one of the finest to come from any cart burial

from East Yorkshire. I think we can say that already.

And it ranks alongside some of the finest

Iron Age horse bits in Britain.

Now, a decade later, the finds are stored at the British Museum.

It's always fascinating to see objects once they've been conserved,

because I remember seeing them to start with,

as they were eased out of the earth in Yorkshire,

and it was pouring with rain and they were covered with mud.

But to see them now, in all their beauty, it's just astonishing.

Finding pieces of any chariot was special.

But this Iron Age metalwork was some of the finest ever found.

Including one particular part that proved especially important,

and one that for me also held a very special memory.

I do feel very proud that I was the person that found this,

dug it out the ground over ten years ago in Yorkshire.

But it didn't look like that when I first found it.

It was just like a lump of rusty corrosion.

You couldn't even really see the proper shape of it.

But all the work that's gone on has just revealed the shape of it.

And the fact that it's covered,

this iron object is covered in sheet bronze.

So it wouldn't have looked rusty,

it would have shone, it would've gleamed.

Absolutely amazing.

Of course, getting the parts out of the ground is one thing.

But back in 2001, we knew that the only way to find out

how they all fitted together

was to create a fully working replica chariot.

INDISTINCT CHATTER

What's the greatest diameter of the axle?

'A team of experts in ancient technology set to work

'constructing new parts from scratch, using tools just like those

'that would have been used in the Iron Age.'

That's nicely split.

'This was the first time that something this ambitious

'had been attempted.'

This end is still a bit soft.

That's really going to hold anything we need it to.

'Mike Lodes and Robert Hereford had to draw on archaeological evidence

'from across Europe to understand

'how it would all have fitted together.'

You've got this repeating motif in these coins of two bows

and most of them have a Y-shape.

Here it is, over and over again, the same thing.

Why don't we give it a use? Two bows.

And some bits of cotton which suspend from the bows.

And a floor which is actually a separate frame

from the main frame of the cart.

So you can actually get some sort of shock absorbency

in all the bits and pieces that make up that.

We don't know how it will work yet but I reckon it might be worth a try.

This elegant solution fitted all the evidence found at Wetwang.

Months later, the chariot was finally taking shape.

But there was a big problem.

No-one had quite worked out how to stop the wheels from falling off.

The answer lay in my very own discovery.

The mysteriously bent piece of metalwork proved to be critical.

It was a linchpin.

Apparently, two exact copies would be enough

to get the chariot on the road.

They seem to have been found in the grave,

lying on the faces of the wheels.

And the pin itself had this ring attached to it by corrosion.

I've had a think about this and I've fixed it onto a rawhide washer.

You can mould rawhide into shapes so I have moulded a loop here

and a loop there.

And put thongs to it so that the pin is held by the bulb in the end.

And it will rotate a little bit, like that.

-The pin itself fits into a slot here in the axle.

-Mm-hmm.

-Yeah.

And the hole in the washer so that...

Pin pulls into the slot.

This thong then goes through the ring.

And then we can tie it off into a little knot on the top there.

And it will keep the wheel.

-So it's making sense of all the elements?

-Yes. And it's simple.

It's very good. Absolutely ingenious!

At last, the Iron Age chariot was complete

with every detail as accurate as we could make it.

The only question - would it actually work?

The most experimental aspect of the whole thing is this, isn't it?

-Your suspension.

-Our suspension system, absolutely.

As far as we know, we are the first people to try this.

And it looks wonderful, all this fantastic leather strapwork.

You've not only got vertical suspension,

you've also got horizontal suspension

where it's swinging to and fro in the Y-straps quite gently.

-I'll be very interested to see whether all this works.

-Walk on!

-CLICKS TONGUE

-Get on! Get on!

Come on.

-The suspension is fantastic.

-It's good, isn't it?

-It really soaks up all the hits.

-It really does.

We are going on very choppy ground. Oh, you're standing up! Well done!

So this is the way to do it. You are the driver, I'm here with a spear.

That's right.

-It works well, doesn't it?

-It does.

-Get on. Go on!

-That's feeling remarkably stable.

-And we are at a canter here.

Isn't that exciting?

Look at that, over that rough ground and it's taken those bumps.

It's very exciting riding on the back of the chariot.

And when you stand up and grab hold of the strap

and imagine what it would have been like

to have been on that as you went into battle,

with a spear in your hand and chariots on either side of you,

it gives you a feeling of what warfare in the Iron Age was like.

But it works brilliantly well.

That suspension is wonderful because, otherwise,

I'm sure you'd just be bounced off the back of it.

But you really feel as if you're part of the chariot.

'That chariot worked.

'And in making it, we revealed the fantastic levels of craftsmanship

'involved in the manufacture and design of the original.'

The craftsmanship of all these objects is very clearly Iron Age.

And the style of decoration is something that you often hear

referred to as "Celtic".

Which is a bit of a problem for archaeologists because

that's got all sorts of overtones of identity rather than just style.

But what all of these objects together do,

is they actually pose a real problem,

because this type of burial, chariot burial, is something that

occurs on the Continent, around the Paris area in France.

So what is a chariot burial doing in Yorkshire?

And what, if anything,

does it have to do with this whole idea of Celtic-ness?

By the time of our Wetwang discovery,

19 chariot burials had been found in Yorkshire.

But hardly any had been found anywhere else in Britain.

In the decade since the dig,

only one more chariot burial has been discovered -

once again, in Yorkshire.

Melanie Giles has been trying to understand why this area

seems to have more in common with France than the rest of Britain.

I must admit, I never thought that we were actually going to find

a chariot burial while we were making the series.

-They are rare, aren't they?

-They are very rare, yes.

And East Yorkshire is really unique within Britain

for burying people with chariots.

The only other place where you find similar sort of burials

is in the Paris area of France.

But has there been any suggestion that it was a bunch of French people

that came over here and started burying their dead in this way?

It used to be thought that it was literally a French invasion, they

brought across the new religion, this technology and the new art style.

And that they had invaded the area and displaced or...

Kicked out all the locals!

Yes, or lorded it over them in some way.

But that's not the case, is that? Are these people essentially local?

We think so.

The isotope analysis suggests that they are born

and brought up on the Wolds. They have lived and died locally.

But I think it's likely the idea is coming from the continent.

There are other things coming from the continent as well.

Most particularly the coral that we find decorating the turrets,

the little bit of horse gear along the front of the chariot.

These objects give the hint that ideas are also travelling,

and you think that this is why we suddenly get this happening here?

Yes. Those ideas are important precisely because they are exotic.

They are special.

They give those objects special cachet because they are

decorated with strange substances that have come from a long way away.

Do we get any ideas as to whether these things are made

as a hearse, to be used once,

or is this something this person used in life?

I think probably their major role is to provide somebody with

a ceremonial vehicle for travelling in style,

because these are not vehicles of warfare.

They are not like the descriptions of Caesar,

of the chariots greeting him and amassing on the cliff tops.

And from what we know of the technology,

it's unlikely these vehicles could travel very fast.

They can reach a decent speed, and so you could probably launch

a spear from them, if you were so inclined.

But of course, its final use is as a hearse or bier.

So I think they also have this sacred quality as well,

because they have this association with death.

Back in 2001, all the finds from the grave

were analysed by experts at the British Museum.

Here is the coral.

Foreign coral inlays confirmed the continental connections.

So also did some tiny glass beads.

And Iron Age curator JD Hill made another remarkable discovery that

proved that the chariot wasn't just a hearse, it has been used in life.

One of the rein guides had been repaired.

As you can clearly see, that is not a coral stud.

It looks like a glass enamel stud,

and it's not just simply a glass enamel stud, it looks as if

the stud itself is made potentially from several pieces of glass.

What it is, is a little red stud which has been made by heating

raw red glass till it gets to the consistency of putty

and then cutting it with a knife into shape at that stage.

Then leaving it to cool down.

Now that enamel stud is potentially the most important find

we've made so far from this grave.

Because that clearly tells us

-we are not dealing with a vehicle made for burial.

-Yes.

I love the way that archaeology works,

because so often it really is like a detective story,

in that it's the smallest object that provide the breakthroughs.

'Every detail of our chariot

'revealed something of the life of its owner

'and the technology of this remote and distant age.'

The discovery of the chariot told us

a huge amount more beyond the rather obvious fact that whoever was

buried with it was somebody of status and power in the Iron Age.

All of the components of the chariot

and harness fittings enabled us to reconstruct the whole thing

and find out what it was actually like to ride in it.

And some of the materials that were involved in its construction

revealed connections between continental Europe

and the people of East Yorkshire in about 200 BC.

But what we didn't know was that as the excavation

entered its final phase, it was going to spring one final surprise.

Something that caused an absolute media storm.

'Back in 2001, with all the pieces of the chariot removed,

'the very first bones started to appear.'

It looks as if there's quite a cavity there.

Obviously that's not the facial bones, is it?

-So it must be...

-No, it's the top of the skull. What is it?

-I'm trying to work out which...

-It's there, is it?

'As the soil was cleared away,

'we got our first glimpse of the chariot's owner.'

Here, I think we've got the lower jaw but it's all been

quite crushed and compressed by the weight of the soil.

It's not bad, is it?

The ramus in here, the side of the jawbone, this strip down here,

is really quite thin and graceful.

Which is often a sign of it being female.

There must be a possibility that it is female.

But still have to wait and see. First signs suggest it could be.

Well, at last we found some bones.

We got our first glimpse of the person for whom this burial was intended.

And it's a bit of a puzzle because I think we assumed that because

this was a cart burial, or a chariot burial, then it must be for a man.

But the first look at the bones suggests we found a woman.

'In a male-warrior-dominated society,

'it was the last thing that we'd expected.

'A woman sent to the next world with her chariot, rich grave goods

'and food for the journey.'

'Overnight, she became a new sensation,

'the press dubbing her "the Chariot Queen".'

It's a very wealthy burial.

I think there have only been seven of these that have been

excavated in recent times, under controlled conditions like this.

We think it's the earliest that's ever been found.

It probably dates back somewhere around 400 BC.

'Today, more than 12 years after being unearthed,

'the precious remains of the Chariot Queen are kept

'in the store rooms of the British Museum.'

And here she is.

Her remains have been cleaned, catalogued

and studied in minute detail.

And what they show us is a woman

who was at least 40 years old when she died,

with isotope analysis suggesting she was Yorkshire born and bred.

But despite being very local, she lived in a world where

surprising influences from all over Europe played a very important part.

'This woman was one of the earliest people in Britain

'we know to have been buried with Celtic artefacts.'

For us, one very important question was - what did she look like?

And that was something that we could answer,

using her reconstructed skull and forensic science.

What has emerged from all these studies

are some very unexpected connections

linking not only our Chariot Queen and the young girl,

but all the other diseased burials from Bourton.

'Back in 2001, Caroline Wilkinson went to work again,

'this time on the Chariot Queen.'

'But unlike our young girl from Bourton,

'this skull was heavily distorted.'

'Caroline called in forensic pathologist Dr Robert Stoddart

'to give an expert opinion.'

This degree of asymmetry is very unlikely to have been

caused by post-mortem change.

The bones are still well mineralised.

And I think it's inconceivable

that they could have been pushed out of shape to that degree.

There has been some kind of expanding abnormality in this area

which has elongated the face on the side.

This side of the skull is abnormally long.

That side is relatively normal.

Now, that must have happened before the forming bones of the skull

had begun to really fuse together.

And things of this type are sometimes called hamartomata.

Now the likely one that is involved here would be a hemangioma.

Which is an abnormality in the development of blood vessels.

'In life, this abnormal growth

'would have dominated the Chariot Queen's appearance.'

You can see this hemangioma would have given her distinctive

texture and colour to the surface of her skin.

We've got an example here of a mild case of haemangioma in a baby.

And you can see a very lumpy,

dark red discolouration to the surface of the skin.

Similar to a port wine stain.

But she would also have had quite a lumpy texture

to the surface of the skin around this area of growth.

Because it's got quite a large blood supply,

an unusually large blood supply, this area

would have grown quite quickly with the rate of the face itself.

And would have continued through her adult life.

More than a decade ago, we seemed to have two very contrasting burials

that revealed entirely different Iron Age lives.

Both of these people were buried in the middle part of the Iron Age

but at opposite ends of the country.

Whereas the young girl in Bourton seemed quite ordinary,

and was buried in a rubbish pit,

a year later at Wetwang in Yorkshire we found a rich chariot burial,

with all sorts of wonderful continental influences.

Since then, a new picture has emerged.

Bourton girl and the skeletons subsequently discovered nearby

all reveal signs of disease and disability.

And our Chariot Queen, despite living in a very different

cultural world and occupying a very different social class,

had a facial deformity

that would also have marked her out as different.

But right now, yet another connection is developing.

A connection that would take us deep into Iron Age ritual and belief.

So we had the chariot and the woman who rode in it.

Rich, someone of status, but not a queen or a warrior.

So what power did she wield?

Actually, there was one final unexpected clue that emerged

right at the end of the excavation.

An iron mirror.

What came out of the ground in 2001 was a mass of corroded iron,

fragile and crumbling.

But what had been buried over 2,000 years earlier

may have looked like this bronze replica.

A beautiful object saying wealth and prestige.

But was it simply part of a beauty kit, an object of vanity,

or did it have some spiritual power?

Was it a way of seeing into another world?

You might have thought the speculation

about the mirror's use could never be resolved.

But a new investigation has made some remarkable discoveries

that are potentially quite staggering in their implications.

Back at the British Museum,

and 12 years on from the original discoveries,

JD Hill is still working on the finds.

And the mirror is one of the most fascinating of all.

These mirrors, are they just simply something to do with vanity?

Are they just something to look at yourself in? Is it that simple?

On one level, I suppose it is. A mirror is a mirror.

And although to us an iron mirror

doesn't appear to work very well,

what you've got to remember is that we live in a world full plate glass.

We have glass in the windows, we have glass in the cars,

we have mirrors, we have office blocks all around us.

You can't help but see yourself, can you?

We are so used to seeing our reflection.

In the Iron Age, you are only going to see your reflection

in still water or polished metal.

The question to ask about the mirror is the same question you've got to

ask about every single other object you find in these chariot burials -

what's the object doing in the burial?

The more we look at chariot burials,

the more I've come to the conclusion that these objects aren't

simply there because they're the possessions of the person

who owned them, they're actually all there to do a job in the next world.

'These tiny glass beads were discovered buried

'alongside our Chariot Queen.

'But what was the purpose of placing them in the burial pit?

'And did they have any connection to the mirror?'

When they first came up there was a big question about what

they could be. One suggestion at that stage was we are talking a tassel.

-So something that was on there.

-Beautiful.

Imagine a tassel coming down here. Perhaps even horsehair.

But when it came back to the lab, we looked in the X-ray

and started the really detailed conservation,

they were separated up here in a block.

And that then raised other possibilities that they are not

a tassel, they are potentially the drawstring of her bag.

Have you any idea what the bag was made of?

Because I notice there's lots of corrosion products here.

There is lots and lots.

And one of the...great things about iron is that it may be

an awful problem to ultimately preserve it

but the corrosion products often preserve tremendous detail

of anything it's been lying next to.

The mirror is still being investigated.

But it's already given up some remarkable secrets.

A layer of corrosion has revealed traces of organic materials

that had once been in contact with the metal -

evidence of textiles as well as human skin,

perhaps from the Chariot Queen herself.

But what was even more remarkable was evidence of fine animal fur.

Fur that came from a protective bag.

When they were doing the detailed conservation work it was apparent

that there was animal fur lying against the mirror plate.

And it has been suggested it was otter fur.

The mirror's bag was made from the fur of the Eurasian otter.

Lutra lutra.

And if the findings are right, the implications are profound.

The mirror, through the fur, is connected not to vanity

but to the other world.

In particular, like the otter,

to the seemingly magical transition between land and water.

Our world and the next.

You don't find many otters when you dig up Iron Age sites.

You find all sorts of other animals - weasels, polecats, pine martens -

but you hardly ever find otter bones on Iron Age sites,

even though we know they are there.

-It's quite likely...

-Is this another thing like the fish?

It's very different... They are consciously not having them.

They are not hunting them. They are not using them.

Because I was just thinking,

this rather strange bit of taxidermy from hunting otters in 1922

so, you know, symbolic hunting of a strange animal

was still going on in the 20th century.

But all they were interested in then

was just stuffing a tail and hanging it up.

Whereas people in the Iron Age would have treated that animal

in a very different way.

Yes, it's got a practical function.

It's going to keep your mirror safe from being scratched.

But the choice of the animal is symbolically charged,

as archaeologists would say.

It comes with a whole series of

meanings, myths, stories, connotations.

You've chosen otter, not stoat. That's immediately saying something.

This is a special animal you've chosen to use in this way.

All the evidence from the Iron Age reflects the symbolic role of water.

A world in which we see our own reflections in a forbidden realm.

Perhaps this has something to do with the strange Iron Age taboo

of not eating fish.

And is why the Chariot Queen's mirror bag

is made from the fur of an otter.

A truly magical creature.

It's now becoming very apparent that our so-called Chariot Queen

was not only a woman of status

but also someone who wielded spiritual power

within her continentally connected Iron Age society.

And she couldn't be more of a contrast to that young girl at

Bourton because there is absolutely no sign of luxury in HER short life.

And yet, whereas they are separate in status,

they are linked in belief.

The pits where the chosen few were buried at Bourton

were inextricably linked with the nearby river's sacred waters.

And 180 miles away in Yorkshire,

the most sacredly charged object that the woman was buried with,

the iron mirror, was wrapped in the fur of an otter.

The creature, a strange creature seen as transcending

two different worlds -

the worlds of water and land - and moving between them.

And perhaps a creature that was seen as moving between

two other very different worlds - those of life and death.

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