Iron Age Wales: Before the Romans
The Ancients
History Hit
4.7 • 4.5K Ratings
🗓️ 22 May 2022
⏱️ 53 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
The residents of Britain during the Iron Age are often collectively called 'Celts'. However, both before and during the Roman occupation, this term is a huge generalisation. In this episode we explore the real characteristics and variations of the lifestyle and communities of present day Wales in the 1st millennium BC.
The people of Southern Britain were written about in part by both Ptolemy, who gives us the geographical location of different groups, and Tacitus who gives a slightly more colourful account of the people the Romans encountered. But with ongoing excavations and discoveries registered with the Portable Antiquities Scheme, more and more of the realities of their lives are revealed. Tristan speaks to Dr Oliver Davis from Cardiff University to find out more about what this evidence tells us about the people of Iron Age Wales. In particular, they discuss Caerau hill-fort, which once was home to between one and two hundred people, and is an incredible example of hill-forts from this area and period.
To find out more about Caerau, please find it here: https://www.caerheritage.org/iron-age
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | It's the Ancients on History Hit. |
| 0:16.3 | I'm Tristan Hughes your host and in today's podcast, well it was great to see how well |
| 0:20.3 | received our previous Iron Age episode was on the ancient so once again we're going to |
| 0:25.3 | be talking about the Iron Age in Britain but we're going to be focusing in on the Iron |
| 0:29.5 | Age in present day Wales. In the first millennium BC both before and during the Roman occupation |
| 0:36.9 | of southern Britain. We're going to be focusing on several aspects, several topics such as |
| 0:42.6 | Hillfords, peoples such as the Saluras and the Order Viques, what's the truth behind |
| 0:47.3 | the naming of these peoples and also we're going to be delving into a specific archaeological |
| 0:53.7 | excavation at the site of Cairo between Swansea and Cardiff. Because today I'm chatting |
| 0:59.7 | to one of the lead excavators, one of the overseers of that excavation which is Dr Oliver |
| 1:05.6 | Davis. Oliver, he is a senior lecturer of prehistory at Cardiff University. It was wonderful |
| 1:10.8 | to chat to him, he is a great speaker. We recorded this episode a few months back and |
| 1:14.4 | I'm delighted with finally releasing it because it was such an engaging chat. So without |
| 1:19.9 | further ado to talk all about Iron Age Wales, here's Oliver. |
| 1:23.5 | Oli, it's great to have you on the podcast. Thanks, lovely to be here. |
| 1:28.0 | Now you archaeologists in South Wales looking at ancient history and particular prehistory. |
| 1:32.5 | This is exciting times for you, it's more and more archaeology seems to be now coming |
| 1:35.8 | out the ground which is revealing more invaluable evidence, information about the region's ancient |
| 1:43.2 | history. Absolutely, I mean I've been a lecturer at Cardiff University for a number of years |
| 1:48.8 | now and a lot of my research is focused on particularly the southeast of Wales but really |
| 1:54.2 | I'm interested in all of Wales and Southwestern and southern Britain I guess. Often from the |
| 1:59.1 | outside people think of Wales and think, oh you don't find anything there. In reality |
... |
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