HistoryExtra
type: channel
link: https://www.historyextra.com
description: Home of Britain’s bestselling history magazine and award-winning podcast
date: 2025-07-04T13:23:36.000Z
update period: hourly
update frequency: 1
update base: 2000-01-01T12:00+00:00
items: A hidden Roman villa? A pair of "remarkable" swords might have just unlocked its ancient secrets
items: The Romans were blamed for massacring these Iron Age warriors. But did they actually murder themselves?
items: Boudica: life of the week
items: Roman invasion of Britain: did the Britons ignore them?
items: “Graves are like time capsules – little microcosms of prehistoric culture”: Alice Roberts on what bones and burials can tell us about early Britain
items: A brief guide to the British Iron Age
items: The history of Gwrych Castle, home of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here
items: The Celts in Britain: everything you need to know
items: Medieval(ish) matters #4: back to Braveheart, Viking river boats, Picts, and the Crusades
items: Medieval matters #1: The Last Kingdom, Robin Hood and how to learn Old Norse in lockdown

A hidden Roman villa? A pair of "remarkable" swords might have just unlocked its ancient secrets
type: item
date: 2025-07-04T11:58:56.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Iron Age
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
description: Two rare Roman cavalry swords discovered in a Gloucestershire field have sparked the excavation of a previously unknown Iron Age settlement, and possible Roman villa
encoded: Two swords from the Roman empire have been found in a field in the English county of Gloucestershire, and their excavation has led to the discovery of a previously unknown Iron Age settlement, as well as possible Roman villa site. The iron swords – or spathae – may have been used by mounted Roman soldiers. Archaeologists believe they date to the second and third centuries AD. X-ray analysis by Historic England has revealed that one of the weapons has pattern welding running down the centre, while the second is plain. Parts of their scabbards were also found with them. The spathae were discovered during a metal detecting rally in the Cotswolds in March 2023. For the detectorist who found the swords, Glenn Manning, it was a case of beginner’s luck: “Finding two swords in the same spot was amazing. The morning before the rally, I had a feeling I would find something special. This was only my second time metal detecting.” Read more | 10 key Roman dates you need to know The find was reported to the Portable Antiquities Scheme (a government programme in England and Wales that encourages the public to officially record archaeological objects), and Historic England then carried out geophysical survey work on the site, revealing the potential of extensive Iron Age and Roman settlement. Following excavations across January and February 2025, archaeologists from Historic England and Cotswold Archaeology confirmed the existence of the Iron Age site, along with evidence of a possible Roman villa contemporary with the swords. The settlements, located near the village of Willersey, were previously unknown. Unclear ownership The precise relationship between the swords and the surrounding settlement site isn’t yet clear, but post-excavation analysis is underway to establish further evidence. If the presence of a high-status Roman villa in the vicinity of the spathae is proven, it may help to explain the circumstances in which they were deposited. Read more | What were houses like in…

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The Romans were blamed for massacring these Iron Age warriors. But did they actually murder themselves?
type: item
date: 2025-05-19T11:11:52.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Iron Age
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Discover / Apple News
subject: Roman Britain
description: Dorset's Maiden Castle was the site of an infamous Roman massacre. Or was it? New research on the skeletal remains of Iron Age Britons suggests that it wasn't Caesar's legions who were responsible...
encoded: When the invading Roman legions assaulted the mighty hillfort of Maiden Castle, in Dorset in the middle of the 1st century AD, they killed and quickly buried its British defenders among the ramparts. That’s the story that the celebrated archaeologist Mortimer Wheeler proposed in the 1940s, following the excavations on the site that he and his equally talented wife Tessa carried out before the Second World War (she died in 1936, but he carried on their research). Wheeler discovered what he described as a war cemetery in the East Gate ramparts. He found 34 skeletons there, many with horrific injuries. He concluded that these burials were all made in one episode, following an assault on the fort by the advancing legions of Roman soldiers after their landing in Britain in AD 43. That colourful narrative has been challenged by academics in recent decades. This year, 2025, Martin Smith, Miles Russell, and Paul Cheetham, authors of a new paper ‘Fraught with high tragedy: a contextual and chronological reconsideration of the Maiden Castle Iron Age ‘war cemetery’ (England)’ (Oxford Journal of Archaeology) suggest that actually, the evidence points to these burials representing several moments of lethal self-inflicted violence, perhaps over many generations, spread mostly between the early and middle decades of the 1st century AD. In other words, the Iron Age Britons at Maiden Castle were killing each other long before the Romans arrived – and they did so with extreme violence in some cases. Maiden Castle is a huge, and famous, archaeological site in southern England. With Neolithic origins, it was occupied through much of the Iron Age. Its multiple ramparts enclose a vast space, which English Heritage describes as being equivalent to 50 football pitches. During excavations in the 1930s, archaeologists uncovered Iron Age burials scattered across the site. Although only a small part of Maiden Castle has been excavated, most of the remains found were of adult men, and many of t…

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Boudica: life of the week
type: item
date: 2024-07-03T13:16:38.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: Iron Age
subject: Membership
subject: Period
description: Duncan Mackay discusses what we know about the Iceni warrior leader who rose up against the Roman empire
encoded: How much do we really know about the Iceni warrior leader who rose up against Rome? How close did she come to success? And can we know what she looked like? Speaking to Elinor Evans, archaeologist and writer Duncan Mackay traces the story of the freedom fighter Boudica, scourge of the Roman empire. View Green Video on the source website

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Roman invasion of Britain: did the Britons ignore them?
type: item
date: 2022-02-22T07:48:22.000Z
subject: Iron Age
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Roman
description: To fight or capitulate. That was the choice facing the people of Britain when the Romans invaded in AD 43. Or was it? Miles Russell tells the story of a tribe that adopted an alternative strategy: to treat the legions with utter indifference
encoded: In 1936, a group of archaeologists working at Maiden Castle, near Dorchester, made a grisly discovery. Scattered near the east gate of this ancient hillfort were at least 52 Iron Age skeletons, some with horrific injuries to the head, back and shoulders. For the excavation director, Mortimer Wheeler, the cause of these terrible injuries was clear. He interpreted the skeletons as part of a war cemetery, bodies lying “in tragic profusion, displaying the marks of battle”. To him, these were the men and women of the Durotriges tribe, who had, in the first century AD, vainly defended their hilltop home against advancing Roman troops. “What happened here was plain to see,” Wheeler was later to write. The Roman infantry, under the covering fire of missiles, had “advanced up the slope, cutting its way from rampart to rampart, tower to tower” until they got into the area of the hillfort gateway. “Confusion and massacre dominated the scene,” he went on. “Men and women, young and old, were savagely cut down, before the legionaries were called to heel and the work of systematic destruction began.” Learn more about the Romans: A brief guide to ancient Rome and the Romans, plus 9 fascinating facts Everything you wanted to know about Roman Britain The Romans in Britain: exploitation or innovation? It was a dramatic and evocative description of a battle fought 1,900 years earlier – and one that proved extraordinarily persuasive. Mortimer Wheeler’s “war cemetery” became a 1930s media sensation – one that, until recently, appeared in pretty much every account of Roman Britain. For much of the 80 years or so since Wheeler’s team entered Maiden Castle hillfort, the Durotriges have been credited with leading armed resistance to the armies of Rome, operating from a series of strongly fortified hillforts across what is now Dorset and southern Wiltshire. Their story has been presented as a bitterly contested struggle against what may have been the first professional army of the ancient wor…

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“Graves are like time capsules – little microcosms of prehistoric culture”: Alice Roberts on what bones and burials can tell us about early Britain
type: item
date: 2021-08-11T09:05:20.000Z
subject: Bronze Age
subject: General prehistory
subject: Iron Age
subject: Membership
subject: Period
subject: Stone Age
description: Alice Roberts speaks to Ellie Cawthorne about her book Ancestors, which explores the story of prehistoric Britain through seven burials – and reveals what cutting-edge science can tell us about the ancient past
encoded: What kind of things might you find in a prehistoric grave, and what could they reveal about the past? Prehistory is intensely interesting to me because the only way that we can approach it is through archaeology. You are left to piece together the story through traces left in the ground – the material objects of ancient cultures, remnants of constructions and buildings, and the remains of our own ancestors. There’s an often forensic process that goes on when you’re trying to reconstruct what life was like in the prehistoric era, and burial sites represent a treasure trove of information. Graves such as that of the [early Bronze Age] Amesbury Archer or the “Red Lady of Paviland” [actually a young man who died 33-34,000 years ago] are absolutely stuffed with cultural artefacts. They essentially act as time capsules – little microcosms of the culture of the time. As well as the objects we find in graves, we’re able to extract ever more information from the bones themselves. For me, as a biological anthropologist, it’s been astonishing how the science around this has developed over the past 20 to 30 years. What kind of information can we glean from bones? If I’m presented with a skeleton, I can tell quite a lot just by looking at the bones with the naked eye. I have a background as a medical doctor and before I started learning the business of osteoarchaeology, I would have thought: “It’s just a skeleton. How much can you really tell? You can’t ask it about symptoms, you can’t do blood tests.” But I was astonished at how much you could work out. First, bone responds to disease. Some infections, such as syphilis and tuberculosis, affect bone in very distinctive ways. Osteoarthritis is also easy to identify from tiny holes on the surface of a joint. Next you can look at teeth. People suffered from dental disease in the past, just as we do today, but most prehistoric people actually had much better teeth than ours because they didn’t have such a starchy, sugary diet. They …

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A brief guide to the British Iron Age
type: item
date: 2021-02-09T14:00:22.000Z
subject: General prehistory
subject: Iron Age
subject: Period
description: During the period between c800 BC and the Roman invasion of AD 43, Europeans brought knowledge of iron-working technology to the British Isles. BBC History Revealed brings you a quick guide to the British Iron Age
encoded: When was the British Iron Age? The Iron Age of the British Isles is usually dated to the period between c800 BC and the Roman invasion of AD 43, during which time knowledge of iron-working technology was brought to Britain by Europeans, later referred to as Celts. By 500–400 BC, use of iron artefacts had been adopted across the British Isles, gradually replacing the use of bronze. How did people live? Perhaps surprisingly, Iron Age people were closer to the men and women of today than we might think. Settlements consisting of individual stone houses with garden plots sited along a street have been found in Cornwall, while in Wessex, remains of large thatched roundhouses have been unearthed, which would have been a hub for domestic life. Explore 8 little-known prehistoric sites in Britain An open-hearth fire in the centre of the house would have provided warmth, light, and a means of cooking food. The Iron Age diet itself was not unlike ours, consisting of bread, grains, a type of porridge, and meat, as well as honey and dairy products – and even beer! Iron Age Britain was primarily agricultural, with crops and livestock providing the means of survival, as well as commodities that could be exchanged with neighbouring farms. There was even time for leisure. Glass gaming pieces discovered in Iron Age burials indicate the presence of rudimentary board games, while the use of large, upright weaving looms meant that fashion, too, played a part in daily life. Textiles were dyed bright colours, and decorative accessories, such as brooches and pins, have also been discovered. Read more about what life was like during the Iron Age What do we know of their beliefs? With farming at the heart of Iron Age society, religious festivals probably followed the agricultural year. Two celebrations we know of are Beltane, on 1 May, which welcomed the warm season and the moving of cattle to open fields, and Lughnasadh, on 1 August, which marked the ripening of crops. One festival still ma…

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The history of Gwrych Castle, home of I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here
type: item
date: 2020-11-17T18:14:56.000Z
creator: Elinor Evans
subject: 20th Century
subject: Iron Age
subject: Medieval
subject: Period
subject: Victorian
subject: Castles
subject: TV interest
description: We caught up with Dr Mark Baker, chairperson of the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust, to find out more about the new UK home of the TV series I’m A Celebrity, Get Me Out Of Here, from royal ties to its haunted past…
encoded: Gwrych Castle, a 19th-century country house near Abergele in North Wales, might be about to become one of the most famous historical sites of 2020, thanks to its new role as the home of ITV’s I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here. But in the 1990s, the castle was fading fast, stripped of its wealth, crumbling and forgotten. It was in this state that the site first caught the attention of Mark Baker, when he was 11 years old. His curiosity would lead him to establish the Gwrych Castle Preservation Trust – a charity dedicated to protecting the castle’s heritage and history – all the more remarkable considering Baker was still just 12 years old. “I used to pass it every day to and from school, and I would look up at the castle from my parents’ car,” explains Baker. “I witnessed it slowly disappearing into the hillside, into a mass of overgrowth. I began to notice there was light coming through parts of the building that hadn’t done so before; the roof had been stolen, windows smashed and anything of value taken away.” When Baker ventured up to the site, he found “a scene of devastation”. The place had been ransacked by asset strippers, who took everything from its artwork to its fireplaces. “I could see remnants of what had been there in terms of its former glory,” Baker says. “There were still vestiges of the past, and it caught my imagination to try and rescue it.” From magnificent ruins to imposing forts: 10 must-visit British castles Undaunted and helped by what Baker calls “the naivete of youth”, he started to research the castle at the libraries at school and in the town of Abergele. “I came across so many discrepancies in the castle’s narrative that no one really knew who owned it, or how old it was.” Curiosity in full gear, Baker wrote to Prime Minister Tony Blair and Prince Charles about the castle, ultimately meeting them to discuss what actions could be taken. “The Prince of Wales was most supportive and made an off-the-cuff comment that I should write a book a…

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The Celts in Britain: everything you need to know
type: item
date: 2020-08-18T05:05:09.000Z
subject: Iron Age
subject: Period
subject: Roman
subject: Family and parenting
subject: Roman Britain
description: Portrayed by the Romans as savage and uncivilised – and with a supposed penchant for human sacrifice – the Celts had been resident in the British Isles for many centuries prior to the invasion of Emperor Claudius’s forces in AD 43. They were a loose conglomeration of tribes that ruled particular regions and shared ideals and ways of living. Miles Russell reveals the true story of the Celts in Britain – who they were, how they lived, who they fought and whether they really did indulge in human sacrifice...
encoded: Q: Who were the Celts? These pan-European tribes were seen by the classical world as the ‘enemy at the gates’ The Greeks called them ‘Keltoi’ or ‘Galatians’, while the Romans knew them as ‘Celtae’ or ‘Gauls’. They were frequently depicted as savage, warlike and dangerous; a very real threat to the survival of Mediterranean culture. Archaeology, however, has shown them to be one of the most important and influential of all ancient civilisations, with their artistic and cultural influence, which spread from Spain to Turkey and Italy to Scotland, still affecting us today. The ‘Celts’ were not, in fact, a single race, but a series of distinct tribes, albeit bound by common ties of art, custom and religion. Celtic groups existed throughout central Europe, on the fringes of the classical world, from the 4th century BC. For Greece and Rome, they represented the archetypal ‘enemy at the gates’; the ultimate barbarian whose way of life was incomprehensible and completely at odds with their own. Given that both the Romans and the Greeks used the word ‘Celt’ in an inconsistent – and frequently quite derogatory – way to cover those who lived beyond ‘civilisation’, it can be difficult to see how the term was originally applied and what precisely it meant. Matters are not helped by the way in which the word ‘Celtic’ has taken on a more political dimension in recent years, being linked with concepts of Welsh, Scottish, Cornish and Irish independence and self-determination. This, of course, causes further confusion, given that both Britain and Ireland were not considered, by contemporary Roman historians and geographers, to be part of the Celtic world. If, however, we use the words ‘Celt’ and ‘Celtic’ to cover the distinctive cultural, religious, linguistic and artistic styles common across large swathes of pre-Roman Europe, then it is apparent that not only was Britain part of this greater Celtic inheritance, but also that the Celtic style that developed here represented the final…

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Medieval(ish) matters #4: back to Braveheart, Viking river boats, Picts, and the Crusades
type: item
date: 2020-05-20T15:40:58.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: Iron Age
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Viking
subject: Crusades
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval matters blog
subject: Viking Britain
subject: Viking warfare
description: HistoryExtra content director David Musgrove rounds up the latest medieval stories on the website this week – talking to experts about Viking river transport and Pictish settlements and remembering Braveheart a quarter of a century on from its release
encoded: It’s all about Picts, logboats and the crusades this week, plus the small matter of our virtual Medieval Life and Death Festival. First up, logboats, which are – as the name suggests – boats made out of logs, otherwise known as dug-out canoes. There have been a fair few such craft found in archaeological contexts, with dated examples back to the Mesolithic and Neolithic. Because they are hewn out of single logs, they are limited in size and girth, but they would have been perfectly serviceable boats. I actually did my undergraduate dissertation on the possibility of prehistoric logboat navigation on the River Exe. Quite a few people have made replicas to prove what they were capable of, and I’ve seen modern examples being used on pretty large and fast-flowing rivers in Nepal (as I paddled past in a much less elegant modern plastic kayak). Nevertheless, you don’t necessarily think of Vikings and logboats in the same breath. Vikings travelled around in much grander longships didn’t they? Well, yes, and no. A week or so ago, Bristol University archaeologist Dr Cat Jarman posted on Twitter about a new potential find of a Viking Age logboat, which I thought was rather exciting, so I asked her for a bit more information. View oEmbed on the source website She explains: “The logboat was found at the edge of a small lake on a farm in Agder, southern Norway. The farmer, Frode Øina Andreassen, was recutting boggy ground near an old channel when he accidentally came across the boat and lifted it out. "His great-grandfather had found two very similar boats nearby on the same property in 1932, and those have been dated to 600-900 AD, so Viking Age or just before. Because of that, it's likely that this dates to the same period too and an expert from the Norwegian Maritime Museum has estimated a date of 500-1000 AD. "They've now taken samples for radiocarbon dating. A Viking Age date would be exciting because it would add to what we know about transport by small vessels in this per…

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Medieval matters #1: The Last Kingdom, Robin Hood and how to learn Old Norse in lockdown
type: item
date: 2020-05-01T09:45:59.000Z
creator: Dr David Musgrove, FSA
subject: Anglo-Saxon
subject: Early medieval
subject: General prehistory
subject: Iron Age
subject: Medieval
subject: Membership
subject: Norman
subject: Period
subject: Plantagenet
subject: Stone Age
subject: Viking
subject: Medieval kings and queens
subject: Medieval life
subject: Medieval Life and Death
subject: Medieval matters blog
subject: The Last Kingdom
subject: Viking Britain
description: HistoryExtra content director David Musgrove rounds up the latest medieval content on the website this week – and reveals how he's been trying to learn Old Norse. Plus, what else is new in the Middle Ages?
encoded: What’s new in the Middle Ages? As the most medievally-inclined member of the HistoryExtra team, I’m going to start a weekly round-up of what I’ve been enjoying in the world of medieval history. I’m going to take a broad view of what medieval means, so anything from late Roman up to the late 15th century will be fair game. And actually, I’ll probably allow myself an occasional interlude into prehistory too. If anyone reads this, I’m going to cajole my colleagues to do similar round-ups for later periods and genres of history. My plan is to highlight what’s been happening on HistoryExtra from a medieval perspective, on our podcast, and in our print magazines BBC History Magazine and BBC History Revealed. Plus, I’ll generally be keeping an eye open for anything else that’s going on medieval-wise. So, first up, it’s been a big week for Anglo-Saxon and Viking aficionados because Netflix has dropped the entire 10 episodes of the fourth season of the Bernard Cornwell-penned The Last Kingdom. King Alfred is dead and we’ve got Edward the Elder and Aethelflaed front and centre in the action. I don’t know what viewer figures have been like but I’m guessing a lot of people have been bingeing, given the state of the world right now. Certainly a lot of you have been enjoying our The Last Kingdom content on the site – if you’ve not seen it yet, this page is a good place to start. Ryan Lavelle, historical advisor to the series, has been blogging his way through all ten episodes for us too, giving us the lowdown on what to look out for from a historian’s perspective. Check it out here. Meanwhile, back in the real world, pandemics are unsurprisingly still big news, and we’ve seen lots of people reading over our Black Death content on the site. In the current issue of BBC History Magazine, there’s loads of great stuff, including a feature by Catherine Rider on medieval magic. She did a great piece for the site at the start of the year on medieval ways to look ahead to the new year. I’…

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