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[Administration]

Reconstruction of the Wetwang Chariot unearthed in early 2001

Iron Age Chariot Burial Excavation at Wetwang, East Yorkshire

The first in the series was a lecture given by JD Hill and Tony Spence on the Wetwang Chariot Excavation in early 2001. There are three sections:


What did we find?
Dr JD Hill    Click here to listen


Reconstructing the Chariot
Tony Spence    Click here to listen


Who was she?
Dr JD Hill    Click here to listen

Speaker Biographies

Dr JD Hill is the curator of the Iron Age Collections in the Department of Prehistory and Europe at the British Museum. He was present at the Wetwang excavations and will be author of the final report.

Tony Spence is registrar in the Department of Prehistory and Europe and was the surveyor and co-director of the excavations at Wetwang.

Minimum System requirments

To access audio and video content contained in these lectures, you will need to have the RealOne Player web browser plug-in installed on your PC. This is freely available for download by clicking on the logo.

Credits

The British Museum would like to thank the following people for their assistance with the Wetwang Chariot project:

    * BBC Meet the Ancestors team
    * Hogg the Builders of York
    * English Heritage
    * The Guildhouse Consultancy
    * Peter Makey
    * Robert Hurford
    * Mike Loades
    * Richard Hopkins
    * Caroline Wilkinson

Also particular thanks to Northcote Internet Ltd for donating their services to make this broadcast possible.


Wetwang Chariot
Follow the reconstruction of the Wetwang Chariot stage by stage and then test yourself on how much you remember.
Play the game

[Administration]

In 1984, in a gravel pit at Wetwang in the East Riding of Yorkshire, a digger uncovered the first of a series of strange burials that offer an intriguing insight into Celtic migration. According to archaeologist Dr John Dent, �This valley in the Yorkshire Wolds has produced more chariots than virtually anywhere else. Of all the relatively few chariot burials that have been uncovered all over the world in the last 200 years, 20 were found in Britain and all but two of these were discovered on the Wolds.�

At Wetwang, they found three such burials in a row: at one end was a young man with his chariot, sword and shield; in the middle was a woman and her chariot; and beyond her, a second man with his sword and other weapons. If chariot burials are uncommon, female chariots burials are even more rare � only two have ever been found in Britain.

Buried along with the woman and her chariot in about 100 BC was a collection of extraordinary personal items, including an iron mirror and an iron pin with a piece of coral mounted on a gold strip. The horse harnesses and her finery were decorated in the familiar Celtic style and all were made in Britain, just like the chariot.

Burying the dead with a two-wheeled chariot is unknown anywhere else in Britain, but it was a common tradition among Celtic tribes in Europe. So is it possible that this was a tribe of Celtic settlers who had come from Europe, bringing their traditions with them? According to Dr Dent, �It does suggest that the ideas came from the Continent because there are many parallels to be found in parts of central and western Europe.�


A Celtic chariot in action

The most intriguing parallel is that the Romans called this local tribe �the Parisii� and a European tribe called the Parisii would eventually give Paris its name. And both tribes buried their dead with chariots.

[Administration]

BBC reconstruction: body in the chariotBBC reconstruction: body in the chariotBBC reconstruction: body in the chariot

The Wetwang Chariot Burial

In March 2001 an Iron Age grave was discovered in the village of Wetwang in East Yorkshire, England. It was found during the construction of a small housing development by Hogg the Builders of York. The grave was then excavated by a team of archaeologists from The Guildhouse Consultancy and the British Museum, and funded by English Heritage.


Excavating one of the wheels

The excavation showed that the grave was that of a woman who had died over 2,300 years ago and was buried with a chariot. Since the completion of the excavation, Hogg the Builders generously donated the finds to the British Museum, where they are being carefully conserved and studied. This is leading to new, and sometimes controversial, evidence of life in the Iron Age.

The BBC filmed throughout the excavation and subsequently, and funded a reconstruction of the chariot for Meet the Ancestors. This tour offers an introduction to what the archaeologists and conservators have so far discovered about the woman and her chariot.


Plan of the gravePlan of the grave

[Administration]

A Roman Chariot

Here is a Hollywood idea of a chariot race in the Colliseum, Rome.


Ben Hur

[Administration]

Britannia in Chariot as Boudicca


British war chariot


Celtic chariot on contemporary coin