It was soon accepted as the new metal of the period and was readily accepted as the new material for tools & weapons

Iron was cheaper & more readily available than bronze, it was far easier to work with & it wasn’t long before everybody was using it.

So flexible was the material that it soon became used for many things & by the end of the iron age & into the roman period it was being used just about everywhere.

Even today many of our iron tools are similar in shape & form to those of the earlier periods throughout history.

The iron age people built hill forts to protect themselves and their animals, these were used in times of trouble & some of them became permanent settlements.

Even though the period was known as the iron age materials such as copper, bronze, tin & other metals were still in use especially for such things as ornamentation, jewellery, bridal fittings & religious artefacts & it is these items which survive best in the ground due to their resistance to soil acids & chemicals.

Another important type of material to survive from this period is stone & in particular items such as quern stones which were used for the grinding of grain to produce the flour for making bread.

These have been recovered from the Warburton site & can be seen in the Iron Age Gallery below.