Iron Age Britain
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 24 May 2026
⏱️ 60 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
What if Iron Age Britain was never a land of barbarians at all, but a world of skilled farmers, powerful women, trade, ritual, and spectacle? Tristan Hughes is joined by Professor Tom Moore to reveal a far richer pre-Roman Britain, from roundhouses and hillforts to chariots, feasts, and buried offerings. Archaeology uncovers a society shaped by movement, identity, violence, and belief, where the Iron Age still echoes into Roman Britain and beyond.
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The Ancients is now on YouTube! Watch here: @TheAncientsPodcast
Presented by Tristan Hughes. Audio editor is Tim Arstall. The producer is Joseph Knight. The senior producer is Anne-Marie Luff.
All music courtesy of Epidemic Sounds
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Ever wondered why the Romans were defeated in the Tudorburg forest? |
| 0:04.0 | What secrets lie buried in prehistoric Ireland? |
| 0:07.0 | Or what made Alexander truly great? |
| 0:10.0 | With a subscription to history hit, you can explore our ancient past alongside the world's leading historians and archaeologists. |
| 0:17.0 | You'll also unlock hundreds of hours of original documentaries with a brand new release every single week covering everything from the ancient world to World War II. |
| 0:26.5 | Just visit historyhit.com slash subscribe. For a long time, Iron Age Britain has been misunderstood. |
| 0:49.5 | In the past, this century's long period of British prehistory, just before the Roman conquest, has been portrayed as a shadowy world, dominated by warriors in blue paint. |
| 1:02.0 | A land of so-called barbarians, living rudimentary lives on the edge of the known world. |
| 1:09.0 | But we now know that that's not quite right. Across Britain, |
| 1:15.4 | objects have been pulled from rivers and earth that tell a different story. Objects so |
| 1:22.4 | intricate and so deliberate, crafted by highly sophisticated pre-Roman societies, each with their own traditions, |
| 1:31.4 | their own beliefs. It is archaeology that has started to shine an incredible light on who |
| 1:38.5 | these Iron Age Britons actually were and how they lived. New discoveries are being unearthed and revealed to the world for the first time in more than 2,000 years. |
| 1:50.0 | We are in a golden age for Iron Age archaeology. |
| 1:54.0 | It is archaeology that is revealing a world of striking elites, both men and women, |
| 2:00.0 | of complex settlements, beautiful metalwork, |
| 2:03.2 | long-distance trade, and of profound beliefs that shaped entire landscapes. It's this archaeology |
| 2:11.3 | that we're going to delve into today. Welcome to the ancients. I'm Tristan Hughes, your host, and this is an introduction to the exciting, yet still very mysterious world of Iron Age Britain. |
| 2:26.6 | Our guest is Durham University's Professor Tom Moore, one of the leading experts on Iron Age Britain. |
| 2:36.8 | Tom, it is such a pleasure to have you on the podcast. |
| 2:39.5 | Lovely to see you again, Tristan. |
| 2:40.6 | It's been too long since we last chatted. |
... |
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