EVERYTHING YOU WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT ROMAN BRITAIN

Q: Who was living in Britain before the occupation, and what do we know about them?

A: There was a whole collection of different tribes, most of which we know very little about. What we do know about them comes from Roman histories, which are quite fragmentary, but they do give us the names of certain groups. In Dorset, for example, there were the Durotriges; in Kent, there were the Cantiaci; while Berkshire was home to the Atrebates. But although we know their names, it’s very difficult to know what being part of a tribe actually meant at this time – how each was organised, the customs they followed, and so on. We know there were ruling parties and aristocratic elites in Iron Age Britain, and that there were probably farmers and taxpayers and other individuals who were protected by them. But pre-Roman Britain was a real patchwork of different tribes, clans and groups, with no central authority at all.

The major disadvantage of trying to understand Iron Age societies from a historical point of view is that they didn’t write things down. We’d love to get their perspective on