Tag Archives: middle-iron-age

A farmer herds his cows into the settlement, with roundhouses in the background

 

From at least 700 BC (and probably from as early as 1,000 BC) the dispersed settlements of the family groups of the Middle Bronze Age gave way to a single large settlement occupied by a reunited community. This settlement was constructed in the middle of the site. Although this required some of the hedgerows in the vicinity to be uprooted, the majority of the fields that had been established over 1,000 years earlier continued in use. Our evidence for this settlement is clearest from about 400 BC during the Middle Iron Age when it consists of at least 14 roundhouses with thatched roofs and wattle and daub walls. The community in the settlement now farmed the previously independent farmsteads of the Middle Bronze Age as a single agricultural resource. This included the creation of a vast enclosure, which may well have provided a protective pasture for collective herds of cattle, sheep or horses. Animal rearing and cereal growing were still the main sources of food for the people of the settlement, with the greater emphasis being on the pastoral resource.