BBC - Daily Life In The Iron Age

From: John Hughes <nysalor_at__N1a2oJaHQPy-p5LxuGK9Y6b4u9kLrr9GvXWt-lXX_GZTU8_0S4mXpN2N6cveU0o9qC8>
Date: Sat, 6 Apr 2002 11:42:24 +1000


>From the BBC History site, the 'Surviving the Iron Age' television series.
There are some great stead and daily life insights here. The site also has a photo gallery of everyday tasks..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/programmes/surviving_ironage/index.shtml

Anne the Chief:

Well it's difficult to describe just a typical day in an Iron Age village because every day is different. We tend to wake up fairly early with the light, in fact I've been waking up much earlier than I normally do, because it's light and I'm so grateful for the light. I actually go down and clean the latrine, that's the first thing I do. I know I'm chief and I shouldn't be doing that perhaps, but it doesn't matter. Then I'll go and feed the cattle, then we get on with breakfast, which is very often porridge which is soaked the night before. And then that's cooked. And if we do like a big pot full we can have enough for all day porridge so we can go and dip in and get some more during the day if we're hungry. We've decided to only have two meals a day because it does take such a long time to prepare anything.

So it may be that we're going to have an animal slaughtered. Then it has to be skinned, it has to be gutted. In the case of a lamb it might have to be hung for a couple of days before we can use it. The food has to be thought of all the time 'cos we're always hungry. We're using much more energy than we would normally use, much more physical exertion so we need a lot of food around. Other than that, there's wood to be [cut], fires to be kept going. Blacksmiths working the forge, keep that fire going, get it nice and hot, and they can get on with their tasks. They've got various challenges and things they have to do. So it's looking after the animals, it's looking after ourselves, it's grinding flour. So, I mean, you can't just sort of pop down to the shop and get a loaf of bread, you've got to sit down here. We've got querns (mills for grinding corn) in here. So you've got to climb up into the grain store, go and collect a bowl of grain, come back here, put it in a quern, work for a couple of hours to get enough flour to make something like chapattis. It's just ordinary, just living, just surviving takes up most of your time. And actually it's quite difficult to fit in other things around it."

Bethan the Teacher:

"Well a typical day is that you get up in the morning, and it's a real struggle to get out of bed actually because you tend not to have too much sleep here. So you've got to like force yourself out of a straw bed, straw mattress, which you've been cold in all night. Than I usually start off by milking the goats, I've kind of taken that role, so that takes about twenty minutes depending on how good they are, usually they're quite naughty. Then I come back and everyone does their chores, maybe there's washing up to do, maybe there's flour to be grounded, maybe people want to carry on with their weaving. Then we have porridge in the morning, that's our usual kind of morning, erm, breakfast, if you like, is porridge, which is just boiled wheat, that's all it is.

Then we tend to have a meeting sometime just deciding what people are doing and there's always chores to be done in the day. For example there's people always cooking, so two people do the food every day, then other people who aren't doing the food, they just carry on doing what they want to do. Say there's projects to be done, for example one day I did the shelter over the furnace which needed to be done. If there's grounding flour to be done we've got to do that all day. Other projects carrying on such as digging pits for cooking food. These are things which take a lot of time. We have two meals a day which is the porridge, and then we have the evening meal. 'Round the evening meal we just get together and we have a chat about how the day's gone. Everybody's always doing something round the fire as well, it's not as if we're just sitting there chatting.

For example you're breaking hazelnuts, maybe spinning some wool, or maybe just doing things that need to be done, you know, straining milk. So every day is different here, your priorities change. If something happens during the day that needs to be done you've got to go on to that. That's an interesting part of life here really. In the 21st century every day is pretty much, can be pretty much the same, you know, and you go to work, whatever. Here you're doing different things everyday, which keeps you on your toes and keeps you interested."

Chris the Druid

"A typical day in the Iron Age village begins with rising at first light with the sun, and then maybe tending to your fire that's maybe died down a bit in the night. I look after the goats, so I go down and milk the goats, come back, bring the milk back for porridge or whatever kind of spelt wheat that we sort of boil up and add our milk and honey to. And then various other chores happen in the morning as well. Sometimes grinding some corn. This time of year, sort of in the autumn, a lot of kind of processing of the harvest really, and the grain. We've kind of worked into having like two meals a day. A late breakfast after a morning's work. And then in the evening we sort of gather together as a community and all eat together. And then you kind of get this nice social time round the fire, in the evening, with nice sort of herbal brews happening and things like that."

Little Chris

"I wake up in the morning and I'll do the chickens, I'll maybe get the fire going, I'll keep the fire going all day. I play most of the time, look for eggs, help other people really. A normal Iron Age boy, 2000BC, would probably be doing a lot. They probably would have been working, they would have been hunting, they would have been learning to fight and serving up food and cooking. I've learnt lots of things, I've learnt a lot of history."            

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