8. On the whole, however, it seems the Iron Age dead were not left to rest in peace- because bones meant power.
While Iron Age sacrificial victims may have been deliberately preserved in peat bogs and left in peace, it seems it was quite usual to disturb the rest of the Iron Age dead. Archaeologists examining pre-Roman burials in Britain have found that it was common for people to interact with the dead- not by visiting the graveside and leaving flowers- but by digging up the deceased after they had lain in peace for a few years and making off with a body part or two.
Formal cemeteries don’t seem to have existed in the Iron Age, and archaeologists have only found the remains of what they estimate to be a small proportion of the Iron Age population. Initially, archaeologists thought this was because the bodies did not survive in the archaeological record. It was believed Iron Age people left the dead exposed to the elements to rot, a practice known as sky burial or else consigned them to a watery grave with their possessions- which is one way of explaining the many swords, jewellery and cups found in lakes and ponds and dating to this period.
Curiously, archaeologists found the human remains they did discover in iron age settlements, often quite close to houses- stored in grain storage pits. However, most of these bodies were incomplete skeletons. So a team of researchers from Cardiff University decided to subject twenty bones from Suddern Farm and Danebury hill forts to intense analysis. The archaeologists discovered that only one of the bones belonged to a sky buried individual. The rest had been buried in the old grain storage pits and left to decompose.
However, several years after burial, people- presumably relatives- uncovered the bodies and helped themselves to some of the bones. Dr Richard Madgewick believes these bones were probably ancestral relics that were meant to bestow the living with the qualities of the deceased- or aid them in times of need. If this is a valid interpretation, Iron Age people prized the disarticulated remains of their dead in very much in the same way as medieval Christians valued the bodily relics of their saints.