The Iron Age
The Indo-European Celts appear in Europe as an entity in the early part of the first millennium BC, having probably been a part of a migration of people from the Pontic region including the Doric Greeks and the proto-Italic and Venetic groups.
The culture of the Celts is said to have developed from the Bronze Age European Tumulus and later Urnfield cultures, which have been labelled as “proto-Celtic”.
There is no easily identifiable Celtic “invasion” of Britain as such, and they appear to have filtered in quite peacefully during the Late Bronze Age and Early Iron Age, trading and mixing with the earlier inhabitants – especially, perhaps, their Urnfield relatives.
Hallstatt culture is indeed only differentiated from Urnfield culture by the former’s utilisation of the new innovation of iron, and the two now appear to have been almost contemporary, rather than Hallstatt being the successor of Urnfield culture.
The Celtic people inhabiting this area were the SETANTII, a part of the Brigante federation, which covered a huge swathe of Northern England.
This group appear to have been centred on the flat lands about the Fylde.
The name “Setantii” means “Those who dwell by the water”, possibly associated with Ptolemy’s PORTUS SETANTIORUM, assumed to be in the vicinity of Morecambe Bay and the Wyre Estuary.
The Brigantes as a whole, unlike their more affluent and prosperous neighbours to the south, lived mainly pastorally, by driving cattle. Some sedentary farming may have taken place, but not on the scale of the wheat production of the south east.
The life led by these Celts was significantly more primitive than the existence of those settled in the south-east of Britain.
It must be noted that, until the arrival of the Romans in this area in about 71 AD, a largely Bronze Age culture still persisted here.
The North has many Iron Age sites (hill forts, and, in some areas, hut circles, the latter being more common in a few areas than the former), although little in the way of pottery or metalwork useful for dating purposes have been uncovered within them.
The Middle and Late Iron Age is associated with La Tène culture – basically Hallstatt wares modified by the Celts’ communications with Classical Greece and the nascent Republican culture of Rome.
The Brigantes’ neighbours to the north east, the Votadini, it has been hypothesised, were of a Gaelic origin, more commonly associated with Ireland, where Celts settled about 300 BC, and some people have stated that the first Celts in Britain were of this stock.
Irish-sounding place names appear in Scotland early on, and in too wide an area to be associated with the Scots (495 AD and onwards).
These people are associated with the “Brochs”, fortified castle-like structures. Also of debatable origins are the Picts, who may well have, at some stage, been resident in the North of England.
They came, it is believed, from Iberia in 1000 BC. In Roman times and later, though, their main bases were the fertile east coasts of Scotland.
During about the 6th and 5th centuries BC, a group of hill forts were built, cutting a swathe across Britain from the Cotswolds through the Welsh Marches to Cheshire and Yorkshire.
These structures can be broken down into three groups:
1) Important, giant hill forts – probably the centres of tribal power. Examples such as Cadbury Hill and Maiden Castle are of this type. In the territory of the Brigantes, two such forts are identified: Stanwick, near Richmond, in North Yorkshire, and Almondbury, in the vicinity of Huddersfield, South Yorkshire.
These were almost certainly the northern and southern ‘capital’ of the Federation, respectively.
2) In the Brigantine Federation, the cheiftains of the various sub-tribal groups would have inhabited just such a fort as this. From these smaller earthworks, if located intelligently, a ruler could watch over a large swathe of land. PORTFIELD, near Whalley, the nominal capital of what became Blackburnshire in later times, the part of the country running from Samlesbury to Gisburn, and CASTERCLIFF(E), probably that leader’s secondary ‘mansion’, can be placed in this category.
3) Small domestic enclosures. These are probably where the small farmers lived, or hill-top communities gathered in their round-houses. Sites in the East Lancashire area of this type are plentiful: in the upper Ribble Valley and east of Burnley, between Swinden and Catlow.
The tribes making up the Brigantes, along with the myriad other Celtic (and, possibly, surviving pre-Celtic populations) lived their lives in a traditional Iron Age Celtic way for centuries.
In about 100 BC, an advanced group from the continent, the Belgae, invaded or filtered in, being recognised as the most forward of the Celtic groups.
This group, of mixed Celtic and German stock, were the tall, fair-headed people who were regarded with awe by the next invaders.
