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Iron Age
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During the Iron Age, there was a general consolidation of territories and kingdoms. Most of these territories had a defended hilltop fort as their centre of power. However, a number of very large-scale works were undertaken. Referred to as the 'royal sites', these consisted of earthworks of various kinds, burial mounds and enclosures. Most of these were constructed around the 2nd century BC.
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The Iron Age is part of the Three Age System, which was invented in the early 19th century by Danish museum director C.J. Thomsen to attempt to make sense out of his collections (the others are the Stone Age and Bronze Age). In reality, the technology of iron smelting was developed at different times throughout the Old World, and in some cases (like Africa) the Bronze Age was entirely skipped. The technique of iron smelting provided access to efficient and durable metal tools and weapons.
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Fascinating evidence of the ritual and religious framework through which Iron Age people understood their world is provided by bodies recovered from peat bogs, where anaerobic conditions have almost perfectly preserved them. In 1950 peat-cutters at Tollund Fen in Denmark saw a human face protruding from the peat. The body, which became known as the Tollund Man, was naked except for a leather cap and belt, the legs drawn up in the foetal position. The man's eyes were closed; around his neck was the rope by which he was hanged about 2,000 years ago. Hundreds of bog bodies have been discovered in northern Europe, most of them by local peat cutters decades or centuries ago. Most of them seem to have died violent deaths, often from strangulation (hanging or garotting), blows to the head, or stabbing (and sometimes from more than one of these).
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The Iron Age roughly corresponds to the stage at which iron production was the most sophisticated form of metalworking. Iron's hardness, high melting point and the abundance of iron ore sources made iron more desirable and "cheaper" than bronze and contributed greatly to its adoption as the most commonly used metal. The arrival of iron use in various areas is listed below, broadly in chronological order. Because iron working was introduced directly to the Americas and Australasia by European colonization, there was never an iron age in either location.
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In the middle Iron Age, the layout of the interior of the hillfort was reorganised. Once randomly arranged houses were now built in regimented rows, with traffic guided along roads. This reorganisation suggests some control existed over social life within the fort.
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During the Iron Age, Orkney was far from isolated, with discoveries of Roman pottery and artefacts are a number of broch sites as well as Minehowe in Tankerness. The accounts of Pytheas in 325BC shows that the islands were at least known in the Mediterranean.
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Iron Age