Boudica's Tribe: How the Iceni Survived the Romans

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What do we know about these people both before Boudica's revolt and afterwards, after the Romans defeated Boudica?

It's a really interesting story that archaeology is helping us learn so much more about.

Now, a quick note from me before we get into it.

I would usually say Iceni, I must admit, that's what I've said in the past.

However, the experts out there who we interviewed and all the team out there say Ikani.

So, to avoid making this episode more confusing than it needs to be, we are going to be saying Ikani throughout when talking about this tribe.

But at the end of the day, at least in my opinion, tomato, tomato.

You say it however you'd like.

We're going Ikani today.

I hope you enjoy.

Let's go.

In the rolling mists of ancient Norfolk, where the river Tass threads between green fields and reedy marshes, stood Venta Ichenorum, the market town and heart of the Ichani tribe.

Imagine a morning by the river.

In the first centuries after Rome's conquest, the settlement is alive with clatter, chatter, and the earthy perfume of livestock, pottery and freshly baked bread.

Horses nibble on dew-wet grass, watched by children whose faces are streaked with dirt and laughter.

This was daily life for the Acheni Ada Venta Icanorum, a people long rooted in these lowlands.

The Acheni had occupied these lands since before the shadow of Rome fell upon Britain.

They traced descent from Iron Age Britons who had built great roundhouses and eked a fierce independence from earth and animal for centuries.

Their ancestry was carried in their bronze armorings and in the famous Netisham horde, jewelry masterpieces of spiralled gold and silver.

These treasures glimmered on the necks and arms of Acheni women and chieftains alike.

The mighty Queen Boudica may herself have worn such finery before her fateful revolt.

Though Rome's legions crushed the Acheni in the bitter aftermath of Boudica's rebellion in 60 and 61 AD, the tribe endured, battered, but not obliterated.

Venta Icanorum developed in the changing world that emerged after the Boudican revolt.

It was a symbol of the ruling Roman power.

but one that was inhabited by the Acheni and that reflected their interests and aspirations as well as those of Rome.

The town, name and all, bore witness to its inhabitants' history.

The Achenes' memory lived on in the very map of Roman power.

Let me introduce William Bowden, Professor of Roman Archaeology at the University of Nottingham, who leads the Caesar Roman project.

Well, it is such a pleasure to be here.

Thank you for inviting me to the site.

A pleasure to have you.

And it is quite an extensive operation, isn't it?

So where are we standing if we go back almost 2,000 years ago?

Well, almost 2,000 years ago, we would have been just inside the boundaries of the Roman town of Ventra Iconorum in the second, we're talking about the 2nd century AD, really.

The name means the market of the Achani.

And when you visit the Roman town today, which stands just to the south of Norwich, you'll see an area, a walled area, the city walls are perhaps the most visible part of the site, but what you see is actually only quite a small part of the Roman town.

And so where we are now is quite a long, we're about sort of 300 meters to the northeast of the site that people visit as Caster Roman town, but actually, although it feels like we're in a random field, we're actually still within the boundaries of the town as it was in the second century.

And you're certainly still digging some amazing things up.

I mean, how long have you been doing archaeological work here?

How long has the Case de Roman project been going on?

Well, I started working here in 2006

and

we started doing geophysical survey at the main town site and followed that up with seasons of excavation from about 2009 onwards.

But we always wanted to have it as a, I started it as a university project, but I always wanted to have a really strong community element to what we were doing here.

So we set up the charity Caster Roman project in 2009

and used that to support community and volunteer activity in archaeology.

And now it's very much been taken over by the community.

The community manage the project, they do most of the work and so our you know our members really lead the activity here.

But this is also an amazing site isn't it because sometimes we get into this bipolar world of either a site is Iron Age pre-Roman or it's Roman in Britain but this site allows you to show how much more permeable it was.

You get to see the Iron Age and Roman stuff together at this site.

That's right and I think that's

one of the key things that we have at this site.

That kind of binary opposition between

the Romans and native Iron Age people is I think a a big problem actually in how people still conceptualize the Roman period in Britain because I think when people think about the Romans they think about you know a bunch of soldiers coming over from Italy doing Roman stuff and then you know and everyone else goes away so making their roads and aqueducts making roads and aqueducts you know drinking wine you know wearing togas or whatever and actually

as we know most of the people living in Britain at that time are you know the descendants of the Iron Age population you've perhaps got an immigrant population of you know maybe five percent perhaps a little higher in higher in cities but the people living in this area are still the Icani so I was my next question was going to be how do we pronounce the name?

But you said there, so it's Acani, not Iceni, is it?

Yeah, that's right.

It always used to be Bodicea and the Iceni, but the correct pronunciation,

according to the people who study ancient Celtic languages, is Boudicca and the Acani.

Bodicea arrives effectively from a medieval typo, a slight miscopying of Tacitus, and

and that's where you know that's where bodicea comes from and the name becomes tremendously popular in particularly from the victorian period but yeah it's boudicca and the icani so if we focus on the acani before the roman takeover let's say before the boudican revolt first of all this always feels a tricky question to ask but do we have any idea when the people here start labeling themselves as icani if they even ever did so yeah that's a really good question.

And

obviously, all the names that we have for

peoples in pre-Roman Britain

come from Roman sources.

And so we've got Roman sources, particularly Caesar,

talking about describing the sort of ethnic makeup, if you like, of Britain.

And they do it from a very particular point of view.

So we certainly have coins in the very late Iron Age.

So after really after the period of Caesar's

contact with the Romans, we have coins with the term Echen on, which people tend to think probably is referring to the Acheni.

But these sorts of labels, it's a really interesting aspect.

When labels applied by others almost start to become also modes of self-identification, people take on those labels as well.

So I think paradoxically, it may have been the Romans christening or sort of labelling this region

as the Acheni that perhaps may have given

people

more of a sense of a cohesive identity that they might not have had before that.

So I do think it's

a two-way process.

And just a bit of context.

So Julius Caesar 55-54 BC, his two invasions of Britain and that early contact.

And has the archaeology here revealed much about the nature of the Achani settlement that was here before the Romans take over?

Do we know much about that?

In this particular site, we don't actually have much in the way of actual settlement evidence.

What we have is a sort of halo, if you like, around the site of Iron Age pottery, metalwork, and coins.

Generally, in the territory of the territory of the Achani, which seems to be current Norfolk and bits of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk, the general settlement pattern seems to be fairly small enclosed settlements with

small groups of roundhouses.

We don't really have the sense of large central places that we have at places like St Albans, Colchester, Silchester, these big so-called opida, where they're almost sort of proto-towns.

Proto-Tampians

argue about that sort of terminology, but certainly there are groups coalescing and craft specialisations and large systems of defences.

There's not so much of that in the territory of the Akeni.

Yeah, there's some interesting, quite large monuments, but

the jury is still out really on whether the equivalents of those sorts of opida really existed in this area.

So, should we be thinking that most Icani groups were living in smallish settlements, with a few roundhouses?

They're farmers, they're living off the land, maybe extended family groups as well?

Yeah,

I think that's right.

That's certainly what the sort of limited evidence of Icani settlement is telling us, telling us.

So, I think we can envisage families, perhaps extended kin groups, coming together perhaps in

times of conflict.

One of the best sources for the structure, the social structure of the Achani is the coin evidence.

The Icani are making coins

really in the sort of first century BC into the first century AD.

So

quite late in their history.

But what we're seeing is that there are several different centers minting coins at the same time.

So the idea of a sort of single king or single queen of the Achene is not reflected in the coin evidence.

What we've probably got are

a range of different groups and as I say at least

four or five of them are minting coins at any one time.

So we can imagine perhaps several

important groups or leaders.

But do we think, I mean, because I immediately think of the Boudican revolt and the figure of Boudicca and her husband Prosutagus or Prasutagus

as you like really but the Romans labelled him almost as like the king so do we get could there potentially have been a hierarchy of chieftains as well or any idea around that there could have been we certainly don't see that in the we certainly don't see that really in the archaeology and I think the importance of Prasutagus and and Boudicca

is perhaps more to do with the Roman narrative of the revolt rather than the actual situation as it might have been on the ground.

They're the big figures for the great narrative story of how they overcome this massive

thinking, is it?

I must also ask, before we go post-Boudica Icani,

another amazing part of the Achani story, which is the beautiful treasures, the art that has survived from Achani lands, like those beautiful talks, isn't it, and other works of art?

Talk to us about these beautiful works of Icani art because they are stunning.

Yeah, I mean, one of the amazing things that we do get in this region are the some of the extraordinary treasures, particularly you know, the Snetisham torques, which are these wonderful, you know, huge gold objects.

They're very heavy, aren't they?

They're very, very heavy.

There's a lot of there's a lot of metal in those, and they're being put into the ground for particular,

you know, particular, you know, possibly ritual reasons.

But it's something that I think is a characteristic of the Achani.

Probably

power and status

is reflected in portable wealth and also

probably in things like livestock,

large herds

and this sort of thing.

And I think that's something that we actually see carrying on into the Roman period.

I think part of

how the Acheni view wealth and status is reflected subsequently in how they respond to the new material coming in from the rest of the Roman world.

Can we say that they are a warrior society, a warrior culture?

I think I would say no more so than any other Iron Age people.

I mean, they certainly revolt first against Rome, apparently

on the grounds

their weapons are removed.

and this is the first the first revolt.

This is pre-Boudica.

This is another one.

This is pre-boudica.

And

we know that it's a very equine-focused society.

There's a lot of horses.

A lot of the metal work is about decorated, you know, horse decoration and also chariot fitments.

So the idea of the Acadia and chariots is at least reflected to some extent in the archaeology.

And you see that elsewhere as well, don't you?

The recently unearthed Melsonby Horde and the like, the amount of beautiful chariot gear there.

I'd also like to ask a bit about Akani death and burial and religion, because I know in other Iron Age groups a lot of the information about the people themselves comes from burials and how they were buried and so on.

Do we know much about that in regards to the Akani?

Yeah, it's a real problem in that we have very little in the way of burial from the Iron Age.

I mean the numbers might have gone up now but I think for the entirety of the sort of 800 year history of Iron Age Norfolk we've probably got around 100 individuals.

So what's happening is that they are certainly disposing of the dead in a way that is not leaving much in the way of

archaeological traces, whether that is excarnation, so sort of laying the laying the bodies out to nature or to wild animals, we don't really know.

But whatever they're doing, we're not really finding it.

So we get to the big year of 60 or 61, is it?

60, 61.

It's debated.

The debate sort of ranges around

how long the

events depicted in the revolt should have taken, how long it gets people to go from

one part of the country to another.

So

the revolt sort of gets rather telescoped in

the sources, but some people would argue it goes on longer.

And can you explain briefly, we've done whole podcast episodes on Boudicca's revolt and the battles, but but why this revolt is so important and intertwined with the story of the Acani and what happens to them?

Yeah, I mean a lot of the time we see the Acani through the lens of the Boudicca revolt.

This famous episode when the Akani under Boudica revolt against

Rome, burning Colchester, London, St Albans, before apparently being defeated at an unknown location.

The so-called Wattling Street.

The so-called Battle of Wattling Street, which is a whole other wormhole that we probably won't

go down right now.

But what are the consequences of the failed revolt?

Because isn't it

I know Romans do exaggerate it in the sources, over a hundred thousand people, presumably lots from the area of the Acani.

What are the consequences for the Acani people being the losers of this revolt?

Yeah, this is a really, a really tricky question.

We have the sources which tell us of huge casualty numbers.

I would say that is a very, very typical thing of Roman battle descriptions.

The victory against overwhelming odds with very minimal casualties on the Roman side and huge casualties

on the

standard part of what Roman audiences would expect from a battle narrative we also have Tacitus telling us that you know following the revolt there was retribution against the Ichani they were you know the the Harrod with fire and sword and that the Ichani suffered from famine because they had failed to plant their crops before the before the revolt now

I would say that that is none of this is really reflected archaeologically.

The aftermath of the revolt, the effect of the revolt, I would go as so far as to say if we didn't have those textual sources, we would not see the effect of the revolt in the territory of the Acani.

It is not archaeologically visible.

So it is not showing at a site like this that there was severe stress on crops or famine or anything at that time.

That's amazing.

No, there's very little in the way of a Roman military presence in the territory of the Acania after the revolt.

And in terms of material culture, the sorts of things that the Acania are wearing and where they are, we see enormous continuity.

There is no sign of a great sort of discontinuity in the area following the revolt.

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So, what does the archaeology show?

What happens in this area of Britain in those decades after the Boudican revolt?

What seems to happen to the Achaeni?

Well, as far as we can tell, they carry on, and a lot of the things that we see in the pre-Roman period, so an interest in portable material culture, a lack of interest in

imported materials from other parts of the Roman world.

We see that carrying on into the Roman period.

Before the revolt, the Acani are picking and choosing the aspects of the Roman world that they're interested in.

So, coins coming from the Roman world, absolutely, the Acani will have those.

Wine as well?

Wine less so.

The Acani aren't really into, we don't get much in the way of consumption of wine or olive oil, actually, at this site.

And whereas other places like the Opida at St Albans, Colchester, Silchester,

those are people who are sort of really fully engaging with the Roman world as it exists in Gaul.

So importing wine, shiny red pottery, this sort of thing.

That kind of engagement with the Roman world we don't really see in the pre-Roman period and so in many ways it's not surprising that we don't get very much of it in the post-revolt period.

At Venter Icinorum, so the town, which is the only major town in the territory of the Achaenian, it seems to be their sort of regional capital, founded in the post-revolt period, principally for the collection of tax, because that's what the Romans were ultimately interested in.

That town is quite small.

It's one of the smallest regional capitals in Roman Britain.

Its forum is one of the smallest in Roman Britain.

And for a long time, it was thought that this is because the Acheni are impoverished after the Boudicca revolt.

They have an impoverished local elite who cannot afford to put up big buildings and this sort of thing.

Whereas when we sort of get under the surface of that, to my mind, it's actually not that they couldn't afford it, but they simply weren't very interested in doing those sorts of in creating that sort of urban environment.

Do the Romans still see this part of Britain as very much on the periphery?

It's in the east, far northeast, you know, in East Anglia.

Do you think there's just not much interest in building a lot of Roman towns in the area, even after the Boudican revolt?

It's an interesting aspect, this idea of it being on the edge, in the east a long way away.

And I think to some extent

that's

a modern conception of Norfolk.

And for a long time I sort of fell into that trap, I think, of thinking about

what's going on in Norfolk, thinking about what's going on at Venter in relation to

what's going on in the southeast, in London and Colchester.

But actually, I think for much of the Roman period, the important focus for Venter is looking eastwards towards the North Sea, towards the Wash, towards maritime connections,

ultimately going across to the, in the late Roman period, certainly going across to the Rhineland and up to the northern frontiers.

So, what is your research here?

What has it revealed actually about

the topography, the climate that was this area of Britain back in the first, second, third centuries AD?

Certainly, the landscape around here was quite different.

The riverine system of Norfolk was much more open.

We have this so-called Great Estuary whereby the sea I suppose came much...

the Yarmouth sandbar didn't really didn't exist so great Yarmouth is not there and you could sail large vessels sort of much further into Norfolk.

That silts up really in the post-Roman period and becomes peat deposits which are then subsequently quarried out and that's what creates the Norfolk Broads.

So the Norfolk Broads are a sort of relic of this estuary system but largely a result of peat peat quarry.

But

we are in an area which is much more open to the sea.

Our work here suggests that you certainly couldn't sail your ocean going vessel as far as Venter Icinorum.

It's on the river, it's on the river Taz, but

probably goods are being transshipped further upriver and then possibly moved down to Caesar on small flat bottom vessels.

But it's definitely, I think, a landscape which is looking out towards the sea.

And as I say, we certainly really see that in the late Roman period.

Oh, because I was going to ask if that feels unusual then as a position for the Romans to build their only kind of Roman-looking town in this region, that it is not right next to a navigable river, which normally seems one of the the biggest priorities on their on their list when looking for a new place to found a town yeah i think it's perhaps the fundamental thing about about venturikenorum is it's in the wrong place a more obvious place for a town is where present-day norwich sits it does have better riverine communications and

yeah that's almost certainly why Caesar stops or Venter Ikenorum stops being a political centre in the mid-Saxon period and it's why the Roman town is now an open field with sheep in it which gives us the chance to investigate it as

we can.

But the reason for the town being here is I think something that we've puzzled over for since the project started and I think it really reflects what was here before.

We're now fairly certain that there is an Iron Age cult centre

not underneath the present Roman town but at a large temple site

fairly close by and I think that is why the town is founded here because it was an important place for the Acani.

So the Romans are basically even though they're not building towns everywhere they're just doing it here but they're building it in a place that they know is important to the Acani people and so is it effectively the Romans showing their overlordship, their supremacy, that they're putting their mark, they're stamping their authority on this important area of the Achaene?

Potentially.

I'm always a little bit wary of

the Roman boot founding towns as a sort of ideological statement.

I mean,

certainly that happened.

But I think the fact that the town is founded adjacent to this cult site

rather than on top of it, and the major cult site clearly continues in the Roman period, is monumentalised in the Roman period and becomes,

clearly continues as a major cult centre in the Roman period.

So I think it is less of the Roman boot than perhaps a pragmatic acknowledgement that this is a place of power.

for the Acheni and so it's a sensible place to have a centre.

So Achani beliefs, the archaeology suggests from that site nearby, certainly do seem to continue into the the Roman period, do they?

Absolutely, and I think there's no reason to imagine that they shouldn't.

Generally, the Romans weren't that bothered about what belief systems were adopted and could be

most of these belief systems, you know, gods,

gods, goddesses are highly localized and could be easily absorbed into the Roman pantheon.

The syncretism is the synthesis.

Yes, that's right.

And we certainly have a lot of

Roman gods and goddesses at this site.

We've got certainly evidence of Venus, of Mercury, of

Neptune, all being worshipped or venerated at Ventura Iconorum.

So whichever god or goddess was worshipped at that site before the Romans came, the Romans could have said that deity seems very similar to Venus or Mercury.

So do you get it like you have in...

Isn't it Bath where they have Aquae Sulis and the mixture of Minerva and Sulis?

Do you we think it could have been a similar case here?

A certain Roman deity is basically likened, is joined to the local deity that was worshipped here?

Yeah,

we could have a syncretic situation or

we could have multiple deities worshipped at the same site.

It's very hard to tell and annoyingly because we have no good stone around here, we don't get any inscriptions, so we have nothing to really tell us about that kind of behavior beyond beyond the material culture.

And in regard to the layout of the town itself, the archaeological work that you've done over the years is it reflective of, you know, you mentioned there's a forum right in the centre, so is it very much the traditional layout of a Roman town from anywhere in the empire?

To some extent and I think perhaps superficially, it has that aspect.

It's got a gridded street system.

The evidence that we have suggests that street system develops over time rather than being sort of laid out in one big act of Roman planning.

And we have the sorts of buildings that we expect in towns in Roman Britain.

We have the forum,

temples, a bathhouse.

Generally in Roman Britain

there's not actually

much adoption of some of the key aspects of urbanism.

In the Mediterranean you'll get lots of

local worthies erecting inscriptions and statues and making donations to

their local town.

And we have tons of epigraphic evidence from

Gaul, but also more particularly from Italy of this sort of behavior.

That never really takes off in Roman Britain.

There's very far less of that kind of behaviour going on in Britain.

And so I think the reason that Ventura Icinorum has

is quite the small civic centre

is partly that kind of lack of interest in this kind of civic behaviour.

Conversely, the major temple sites that is always this seems to be this focus of the Acani, that does get really monumentalised in the second century particularly.

So while we have one of the, I think, the smallest forum in Roman Britain, we have, I think, the second largest Romano-Celtic temple.

So it's not that the Achani perhaps didn't have the resources, but that's where they were spending it, not on building a big forum.

And do we have at all any like inscriptions survive from the temple site that might mention a person who is an Achani, maybe making a donation or an offering at the temple or anything like that, which might give us more names of Achani people during this Roman period?

The only really good textual text we have is a

curse tablet or difficio that comes from the river and it's it's brilliant it's my absolutely my favorite thing from the site because it really humanizes sort of brings everything down to a human level and it's uh the dedicated it's I think a chap called something like nasenius and

or nase is on the defixio and he's had a series of items stolen from him it includes ten pewter vessels

a headdress,

which is quite an interesting idea in itself, and a pair of leggings.

And he says, you know, Neptune, bring me the blood of the culprit and I'll give you the leggings.

And so this is, I love this because the idea that

what's going to swing it for an all-powerful oceanic deity is a pair of secondhand leggings from Norfolk.

It just brings everything to a really, really human, human level.

But this is, you know, it's one of the only,

I think, this is the only sort of voice,

I think the only example of a sort of voice

of a local person that we have from this period.

So far.

So far.

Because it sounds like are there still quite a few...

or quite a lot of unanswered questions that you'd love to find the answer to through the archaeology being done here and in future years as well that might reveal more about the nature of the Acheni relationship with Rome and how long the whole identity of someone being an Icani endures during the Roman period.

Yeah I think there's a lot that could still come up.

We certainly know that the people living here in the Roman period,

there was a great deal of literacy.

We find a lot of writing equipment and to some extent that's expected.

It's a center of administration, it's a centre of record keeping of tax collection, but we know that all sorts of people are writing.

We get

scratched graffiti on pots,

not only on pots that we're finding in the ground, but clearly there is graffiti being made by the potters, by the potters themselves.

And so I think the more we have of that level of literacy, the more we might see voices of local people.

But how long an Acheni identity lasts is a really interesting question.

The town is still ventura iconorum in the fourth, certainly in the fourth century.

It's recorded as such in the Antonine itineraries, which is a sort of a kind of guide to how you move around the Roman Empire.

And so the town is certainly still has that name.

Whether that identity is still present, Clearly by the fourth century everyone is Roman in one sense or another.

But people can have multiple, you know, multiple identities.

People can be Roman, but people can still be Akani.

And I think certainly as we enter into the sort of challenging period of the late fourth and fifth century, those sorts of local identities

quite often re-emerge.

They have a resurgence in times of stress and so you know I see no reason why an Icani identity could not be persisting in that period.

So you could actually see a revival of people claiming their Icani ancestry in like the fifth century when all the troubles come and I guess also in this part of the world where you probably get more the threat of Saxons or Franks or whoever coming from across the seas, you've got the so-called shore fort at Burr Castle not too far away, don't you?

With those threats, you know, maybe it could have, and I know we're in a big period of speculation now, a big topic of speculation, but that could have elevated the possibilities of people really stretching back to the Achaene identity of old.

I think that's right.

And certainly here we have very strong evidence of an early, you know, let's say Anglo-Saxon presence.

We've got very early cemeteries here dating to the fifth century which are full of new material culture and we see new settlement developing here.

Who those people are

is a really big question but it's certainly something that we do see in Roman Britain as a whole in this period.

We see new regional identities emerging.

So in the southwest you know people are choosing I think to become Roman in a way that they probably actually weren't during the Roman period.

There's a newly emergent Roman identity but in other parts of the country we're going to see other different local identities emerging.

Well, Will, it's such a pleasure to be here and to see how the archaeology is adding more to you know the story of the Akani.

And I guess it's pushing aside this old idea that the Akeni they disappear once Boudicca is defeated.

They don't, they're still here, and it's remarkable to see all this new evidence emerging.

Absolutely, I think if there's one thing that we can achieve here is to try and move the Ichani away from the Boudicca and revolt narrative because the survival of that narrative is a peculiar combination of circumstances and the utility of Boudicca as a woman leader to those Roman writers in the narrative that they

want to create.

Even though it wasn't unusual for women to be powerful in Iron Age Britain?

No, we've got several examples, but we know that there are probably quite a lot of revolts in Roman Britain but this is the one that is particularly attractive to Roman sources and it's also particularly attractive to the people who are looking at Roman sources later on.

So we have our Boudicca tinted spectacles if you like that we tend to look at the Akani through and so I'm hoping that fun as the Boudicca revolt is as a hook for people I think it's important that the entire sort of 800,000 year history of this region is not looked at solely through the window of that particular year.

Will, thank you so much for your time.

Pleasure.

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The work of William and the Caster Roman project has already revealed so much about the Akani, showing how their story is is so much more than just Boudicca.

And it's exciting to think about what new finds they'll unearth in the future.

Now, with all the archaeology around me, before I left the dig, I couldn't resist having a look at some of their latest discoveries, fresh out of the ground.

To talk me through them, I sat down with the project's chairman, Andy Woodman.

We'll put a link in the description where you can see photos of the objects.

Andy, it is great to have you on the podcast today.

Very welcome thank you you and thanks for coming to see us well it's a pleasure to be here we've had a chat with will already yes yeah about the bikini and now you've brought us out a select choice a select a choice selection selection of sexy bits

so what have we got let's get straight into it what's this first object let's let's go early right this early object is an early saxon barbed and tongued tanged arrowhead early saxon did you say no i didn't i I said early Bronze Age.

Early Bronze Age.

Your ears are just going funny Tristan.

And you can see it's translucent, it's made out of fine flint.

So this is a very fine flake which has then been shaped using an antler tool to get the tangs.

And obviously the point about a barbed and tanged arrowhead is once it goes in it stays in.

So that's showing that people were here long before mentions of the Yacani by the Romans.

Absolutely here.

There are Bronze Age barrows and stuff in the vicinity, and there's a henge about two miles away.

So around the lowland rivers, we're going to be having prehistoric people.

I think there are other people who are going through the earlier ages of the Stone Age, the Paleolithic, the Mesolithic, around rivers.

And this site is near the confluence of rivers.

So that's often a significant piece of work.

But that's a lovely, a lovely piece of work.

It's a nice precipice, isn't it?

It's the nicest I've ever seen come out of the ground.

and i'm going to put it back in the bag before i get told off and next

so we have got

it's a coin next we've got is a coin and we find a fair amount of coins here all of our meadows and fields have been very thoroughly metal detected but metal detection only goes to a certain level

and even so we still find we get night hawked um but the local Norfolk policeman who is the night hawk policeman is also one of our members so that so that that helps and he also makes reproduction of Roman pottery which is a bizarre combination but once the turf is off and we get down below the the range of a metal detector then we start to find a significant amount of coins most of the coins we find are middle fourth middle fourth century Constantinian Constantine okay right yeah

around about the 330 to 350 tiny coins,

easy to lose,

probably of relatively low value, probably dating to the time when the town was resurgent, possibly due to the export of grain and wool to the Rhine frontier, which was under stress at that time from the barbarians across the river.

What's interesting about this coin is that it's silver plated.

Okay.

It's the first one that we're aware of that isn't solid gold or solid silver.

The Acadi weren't going to be, weren't minting, minting coins is a, weren't striking coins that much.

Coinage is obviously comes in through contact with Roman economies across the channel.

And

they won't be used as a coin economy as such.

It would have had a

specific value.

But this one is different because it's a copper alloy coin

with

thin sheets of silver on either side before it's struck.

So is it almost a, in this time where a coin's worth is the value of like its metal composition, is this almost a rip-off coin or a car?

Well that's the question.

We haven't found one like it before so our coin expert will be digging into his comparatives to find out.

But it could be a hooky coin.

or it could be that they were struck to give to people for commemorative reasons rather than for you know coinage value so but an interesting one nonetheless and do we know what it says what it shows on it what are the images on it on the reverse it has a typically iron age collection of stylized horses so it's

so it's a classic zoomorphic art on on on the reverse side so a lovely a lovely piece and potentially i guess a theorization isn't it but if it was a there was a time of difficulty for these people before the Romans take full control of this region maybe this coin is evidence of it, but as you say, more evidence needs to be done on it.

But it's still interesting to theorise.

It's still interesting because it's different.

And, you know, as you know, with all these things, there are hundreds, tens of thousands of pieces of

pottery and brickwork, etc.

But it's when you find something different and it makes you think.

Well, shall we now turn our attention to this object right here?

It's a small face.

It's a smart.

It's a small face.

It's about the size of

five centimetres tall.

I'd say it's, yeah, it's a couple of five centimetres.

Slightly hollowed at the back.

Right.

It's of a bearded and hair suit man with possibly braided hair.

Or

it looks a tad like the Emperor Hadrian.

I was in the way.

I was actually thinking that.

It looks like the hairstyling with a beard of the body.

Doesn't it just?

He's lost a bit of his nose, so he may have had a more Roman nose before he was in the plow soil for 2,000 years.

But wouldn't we all, frankly?

And it's either going to be on a building, although it's quite small if you want to see it from a long distance or it's going to be on a on a large vessel a large urn or something it's been suggested it might be one of the four winds but not seen one before it's made out of pretty horrid clay and fired it's been fired in a kiln but it's not

and the details still survive you know the clear features of a face the ear the beard the nose the eyes the hair and everything they're all there so again we're going to have to look into some parallels for that.

But that's a beautiful piece.

And do we think that would date to the Roman period?

I think,

given its context, I think we're talking early second century.

And certainly with the hairstyle and everything.

Certainly with the hairstyle, and that looks kind of Hadrianic.

It looks very quite Roman, yes, indeed.

It absolutely does.

Well, what have we got next?

What have we got next?

From a similar period, we've got this delightful little what's called a fly brooch,

and it looks just like a house fly, like a house fly.

So, I've never ever heard of an ancient decoration in the form of a fly me neither yeah and it's dead cute you know you can imagine 2000 years ago when it hasn't been in in the dirt for the last two thousand years that's going to be shiny and polished one of my guys has looked into parallels and found some pictures of some similar fly brooches with some enamel blobs on it covering this one doesn't look like it has because had it been there would have been some little recesses I suspect in there.

And to describe it so you can see two clear very thin wings.

Very thin wings.

It's like a Y-shaped tail at the right of the back.

Yes and a sort of pointed mouth with a almost with a proboscis.

Is that the right word?

Proboscus?

I forget my...

Well it's either a beak or a proboscis isn't it?

But like it's yeah.

And on the back there would have been a very thin pin joining it together.

But clearly this is what, a centimetre or more?

A centimetre, centimetre and a half in total size.

So that's not going to hold a piece of clothing together this is bling this is decoration this is something whether it's associated as someone might have suggested with mercury i don't know or whether it's someone who liked house flies i'd

the person who liked house flies exactly is to iconorum yeah we get a lot of horse flies around here so maybe maybe maybe it's to ward off horse flies i don't know but that's a very sweet little thing that really is isn't it and i guess it's also i mean the the skill and the detail to craft that the metalworking

which you get associated with the Akane quite a lot and evidently continues.

We do and we know that just to the other side of that field there's evidence of brooch making

in the pre-boudicon period and one of the reasons we're in this field because we know there are kilns and furnaces in here.

We just haven't landed on top of one just yet.

Not just yet.

Not just yet but we will and we're going to at some point in the future we're going to reinvestigate the area that Surgeon Commander Mann discovered the brooch making.

It's a scheduled area now.

But that's a sweetie.

Arrowhead coin, head and brooch, fly brooch.

Yep.

What's next?

We'll do a couple more, I think.

We've got loads and loads of coins, as I said, from the middle fourth century.

Yep.

As lots of Roman sites do.

The Age of Constantine.

Yeah, the Age of Constantine, where there's rampant inflation, where huge coin loss.

also an area of great uncertainty with the Constantinian change and the British emperor that declared himself and roamed around.

But I've chosen some things which kind of illustrate what it might be like to have a Roman-influenced town in the middle of a rural population.

Not near the rest of Roman society, right?

We don't have a whole series of villas with mosaics and dancing nymphs.

The biggest town near to here is Colchester.

Yet we have Roman Rwana British temples that would have been the largest building this side of this side of Colchester so the majority of people here they're Iron Age people still in their their roundhouses and so on exactly the same absolutely and the elite would become more Romanized than the non-elite but I agree with you it's the same population that was here through the Bronze Age and the Iron Age and would have been here throughout until the post-Roman period.

And they probably still lived lived in the same way they did before but they would gradually adopt some Roman techniques like wheel-based pottery,

better kilns and the elite would start acquiring some nice Roman bling and we tend to find this.

So what is this pointy object we have?

This pointy object is a very pretty stylus.

It's just missing the point there and probably yeah and at the top there might have been a flat piece just to smooth out any mistakes in the wax.

But it's got some beautiful decoration at the top there.

So that's almost like the equivalent of a rubber on a pencil today.

I think so.

I think this is the Mont Blanc of

the early Roman period.

So it's got right at the...

So once again, this is about...

I'm trying to think of a 30 centimetre ruler.

It's about 10 centimetres.

I think that's about 10 centimetres.

10 centimetres.

It's a size of a trowel.

And right at the top, maybe half a centimetre, you have a little bit of decoration.

The rest are just kind of black in colour.

It's black, but shiny.

Black, shiny.

Been polished.

Been polished.

And then the decoration is horizontal bands and then a few vertical, well, diagonal.

Vertical diagonal, yeah, sort of trellis shape.

So what do we know about it?

What do we think then?

What do you think it's?

Do we think the material is local, that kind of blackish material?

It's hard to say.

It's originally thought to be a copper alloy.

And I think it is, rather than a piece of jet or something.

I think it'd be hard to get a piece of jet that fine.

So I think it's that and then coloured, and I think it's metal, but it's it's a lovely little piece and what it illustrates clearly is literacy.

In a totally non-literate population,

in a region of the country that's non-literate, we've got the introduction of literacy.

And do we think that would be centered on the Roman towns?

Within the wall would there be more people?

I think within the wall, I think within the wall you've got

Roman administrators.

I think the purpose of the town is to control the market, to control import and export export, and

to control taxation.

And somebody is keeping a score and I think that's what that illustrates.

And so do we think that some members of the local population, you know, they would have adapted to Roman, I guess, Roman lifestyle.

Some local RNA people, some Ichini people would be living within the walls of

the French Icanorum and they would have learned things like writing.

We would think that at its peak you've got two or three thousand people.

Which is that's a large number at a time when the population of the whole island was what two million yes something like that so there is a concentration and wealth concentrates and

work opportunities concentrate so that's typically why I think we'll see that we have one more we have one

we have we have one more

in typical show and tell

tradition and this talks a little bit about what people do in their spare time.

Amazing.

This is a polished bone gaming counter.

It's about a centimeter and a half in diameter and it's been inscribed with perfect concentric circles.

It's very tactile.

So it's a clear gaming piece isn't it?

You know that design...

It has no other purpose.

You've got some kind of a board with counters on that you're moving around.

This is a gaming counter.

That's a gaming counter and someone has made that specifically for that game.

I love it when archaeologists find these sorts of artefacts because they do give you an insight into the downtime almost.

It's people.

It's people stuff, exactly.

I mean you get the beautiful heads of you know maybe an emperor or a god or so on but to get something like that, you know what they did together around a fire or a half or something like that,

they're really special those ones.

I think so.

That's what makes it special.

In and amongst the mountains of pottery and brickwork and bones and everything else.

And do we think that is made out of bone?

I mean what types of bone would they have been using?

It's hard to say.

It's been polished.

I mean, this came out of the ground two hours ago.

Two hours ago.

So we are on the scene.

This is breaking news.

Absolutely on the scene.

So you'll appreciate there's not been an awful lot of work done on it.

But we will clearly look into it and we will look into parallels around the rest of Britain.

But were there particular animals whose bones were used more than others at this site?

I'm not sure.

I mean, antler gets used for quite sweet stuff.

But I think this is probably...

Sheep, maybe?

Sheep?

yeah sheep is the most predominant bone so that suggests it's the most predominant bone cow bones are bigger so perhaps they're more resilient to being worked i mean that looks like it's been put on lathes doesn't it i mean it's that precise that looks like there's been lathe worked um you wouldn't put a brittle bone on there well andy it's such a pleasure to have you on especially as you've got a strong connection to history here

and and in the many years you've been working here i mean are there any particular artefacts that you've discovered over the years that are you know really close to your hearts that you'd like to mention?

Well I haven't talked about that.

I think finding the temple complex just across the road.

It's a big building.

Which is the second largest Ramona British temple in the country and the largest one,

only one that's larger than this is at Silchester.

which is an order of magnitude bigger and Silchester is really is built on top of Kivitas,

a section of main thoroughfares and roads etc.

And when we investigated it we found actually there were two phases and below the very first phase was a beautiful gold coin a Trinivantian gold coin so from the the next tribe along

that temple was demolished and a much bigger blingier temple was put on its place and underneath the foundations of that replacement count temple were a line of nine coins each of different emperors from Nero to Hadrian.

Wow.

Now that doesn't sound like an accident.

It's just continuous.

Yeah, it's just one afternoon.

It's got every single emperor except for Titus.

And he was quite transient anyway.

He wasn't there for long.

So someone has made a point that says we've taken down the old temple, which was probably put on top of a sacred tree or something sacred to the local population.

And we're placing it with this bigger, better temple, but we don't want to anger anyone.

So we're going to redeposit this line of coins, each for a different emperor.

Unfortunately, one is smaller than a than ten and ten construmes constitutes a hoard and we'd have to go through a whole faff if you've got if you've got a hoard so it's not a faff we can we don't have to go through that well andy you're a great character and just looking at these particular artifacts it just shows the great you know the the variety of objects that have been uncovered here these digs over the years and i mean for you in particular i know you'll be here many more years in the future too but is there i suspect so is there any dream objects you'd love to find icane object that that you'd like to find in the ground one day?

Well one we've not found any any real evidence of military

stuff here.

Not that I'm desperately looking to do that.

I cut my teeth on the Roman wall in the north so

you get enough stuff up there of military stuff.

But it would be interesting to find something to prove it or otherwise.

And I think it's just to understand that cultural transition from the Iron Age into a Romanized society and at the other end to understand

the transition from a Roman administration to a

well to whatever that post-Roman age was and how it evolved and we know that there's some early Saxon settlement around here and there's an early Saxon graveyard cemetery over there and we know that by the middle Saxon period they've moved to the modern opinion of Norwich but

that's I think what we ideally what we'd like to know some more about that transition at each end of the Roman period.

There's loads of places you can find about peak Roman period.

We're never going to find the dancing nymphs.

We're never going to find a full...

You tell me you're not...

Have you given up hope of finding a complete mosaic of an elaborate Greek myth?

I think so.

We've found a lot of tessellated floors and we found what we thought was a

Pompeii of Norfolk is not beneath these fields.

It's hard to say, isn't it?

I mean, the Pompeii of Norfolk, we found lots of aqueducts.

Well, what we found is a series of iron collars,

where the wooden has already rotted away.

But, yeah, I'd like to understand more about that.

And I'd like to transform our organisation to something which is more self-sustaining.

We've been funded by donations and funds for the last period of time.

And that way of working is dying now.

There aren't charities giving out money in the same way as there were.

So we have to transform ourselves into something which is more sustaining, and that's going to be a challenge to us.

And as the next chairman, it's

all going to fall on me somehow.

Well, Andy, hopefully, you'll get much more interest in this now with this episode all about the Acana.

I'm hoping so.

And if anyone is interested in joining us, then they can apply for membership to our website, which is CasterRomanProject.org.

Caster Roman Project.

Well, there we go.

Andy, thank you so much once again for showing me these artefacts and giving me a part of your time to talk all about it.

You're most welcome.

It's been a pleasure.

Thank you.

Well, I've had the most wonderful day here at Caesar St.

Edmunds, or Venta Iconorum if you prefer.

My thanks to the project team, to Andy Woodman and Professor William Bowden at Nottingham University for inviting us today.

The teams here, including multiple volunteers, are doing incredible work piecing together fragments of history, finding the lost stories that lie hidden beneath the soil for nearly 2,000 years, from gaming pieces to that amazing Roman stylus.

You can find out more about the Caesar Roman project at their website, which has detailed maps of the site and photographs of key finds.

We've put the link in the show notes.

I'll also put images of the objects we looked at on my social media page on my Instagram so you can look at that as well.

Now if you want to hear more about the Achani and Daboudica, well we have some great episodes in our ancient archive.

You'll find links to them too in the show notes of this episode.

This is one of my favourite parts of the job.

Getting right up close to history, touching the same items families and even warriors of the Akane would have touched almost 2,000 years ago.

And to actually come here, to come here to the excavation itself, to do an ancients recording on site.

It's such a pleasure to do, and I really do hope you've enjoyed the episode.

I hope the Akane and Boudica herself will be happy to know that they haven't been forgotten.

This has been the Ancients from History Git.

Thanks for joining us, and I'll see you in the next episode.

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