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February 19, 2002
How Queen Boadicea stayed on the wagon
By Robin Young
ARCHAEOLOGISTS have finally discovered how Boadicea, the early
British warrior queen, managed to ride her chariot into battle
without falling off it.
In previous reconstructions of Iron Age chariots as depicted on coins
of the time, passengers were unceremoniously bumped out of the cart
as soon as it got up any speed or hit rough ground.
Yesterday the British Museum was presented with a faithful replica
that actually worked, and to prove it the chariot was put through its
paces in the Museum forecourt and across its lawns.
It carried two passengers and was drawn by two diminutive horses.
Iron Age horses are known to have been the size of ponies.
The chariot, built by Robert Hurford, a wheelwright from Taunton,
Somerset, is based on finds from a newly excavated chariot burial at
Wetwang, east Yorkshire. A woman found in the grave has been referred
to as "the Yorkshire Boadicea" although no weapons were buried with
her.
The secret of the chariot's rideability lies in two pairs of arches
flexed at each side of the cart. With his knowledge of horse-drawn
vehicles, Mr Hurford realised that these arches, which are shown on
representations of chariots, were not a decorative feature but an
integral part of the vehicle's suspension system.
The arches, made of supple ash, each supported a Y-system of rawhide
thongs that helped the chariot, floored with a further flexible
webbing of rawhide straps, ride out over the bumps when driven at
speed or over uneven ground.
It is known from the description given by Julius Caesar in his
memoirs, De Bello Gallico, that the Ancient Britons used chariots
driven at speed in hit-and-run raids against his forces in the 1st
century BC.
Tests carried out by BBC2 for its TV series Meet the Ancestors showed
that when the charioteer stood on a rawhide flooring in the
reconstructed chariot, the ride was smooth enough for him to throw
spears with some accuracy. The chariot could also be fitted with a
wooden box in which a passenger could ride, perhaps for ceremonial
parades at a more leisurely pace.
Archaeologists had confessed themselves mystified as to how Boadicea
and her ilk kept their wheels on.
A common feature of Iron Age chariots excavated across Western Europe
was a J-shaped linchpin topped by a small loop and with an attached
ring. Until Mr Hurford turned his practical experience to the
question, no-one had managed to puzzle out how it worked.
Mr Hurford came up with three suggestions, the most favoured of which
involves tying the linchpin against notched wood to keep a rawhide
washer in place, retaining the wheel. Mr Hurford said
yesterday: "When the linchpin is tied, the ring is held at the angle
at which it has been found corroded in place in all the examples we
have found."
The status of the Wetwang woman whose chariot has been reconstructed
is still in doubt. She is known to have been 35 to 45 when she died,
which was an unusually advanced age for a woman of the time. She was
also 5ft 9in, which was exceptionally tall, and had a distinctive,
and probably congenital, malformation of the face which may also have
marked her out.
Few people in the Iron Ages were buried with chariots. Nineteen such
burials are known, and Wetwang woman is only the second female to
have been found buried in this way. Like the other woman found in a
chariot burial, she was accompanied by a mirror of polished iron,
which some archaeologists suggest may be the accoutrement and symbol
of a priestess rather than of a queen.
The first programme of a new series of Meet the Ancestors, Chariot
Queen, is devoted to the Wetwang excavation and Mr Hurford's
reconstruction of the chariot. It will be shown on BBC2 tonight at
9pm.
The reconstructed chariot will be on show in the British Museum's
Great Court for the next two months. It may then be taken to Scotland
and the United States on tour.
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