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4.THE IRON AGE IN BRITAIN AND BEYOND

In this Iron Age experience, pupils explore daily life in roundhouses, the power and prestige of warriors and hillforts, and the rich visual language of Celtic art, combining lively discussions and archaeological evidence with hands-on activities, from building miniature homes and crafting shields to designing intricate La Tène-style brooches, offering a vivid, creative, and evidence-based journey into Iron Age Britain and Europe.

KEY

Session 1.1 Carefully designed sessions led by academics experienced in bringing the latest research into the classroom. Available in person or online.

Workshop 1.1 Hands-on workshops that engage pupils in experimental archaeology, designed to help them test hypotheses, explore processes, and evaluate evidence. Available only in person.

4.1 - Daily Life in Iron Age Britain

In this lesson, pupils uncover how Iron age communities in Britain lived, built their homes, and connected with the wider world. Through engaging discussion, vivid visual reconstructions, and expert storytelling, they examine archaeological evidence of housing, domestic life, and social organisation. Pupils investigate roundhouse construction, revealing how its design reflects family structures, social roles, and climate adaptation.

Duration: 1 hour
Price: £50
Level: KS2
Delivery: This session can be delivered either in school or online.

This AI generate image is for illustration purposes to reflect the nature of the workhsop offered.

4.2 - Unpacking the Roundhouse

During the workshop, pupils experiment with different materials and shapes to explore Iron Age housing, its features and construction techniques, and what these can reveal about family life but also about circular economy, climate adaptation and resilience. Pupils then design their own mini roundhouse models using natural and craft materials, reinforcing their understanding of how Iron Age homes were built and used by their communities.

Duration: 1.5 hours.
Price: £120
Level: KS2
Session requirements: a room with a projector for presentations and tables for the workshop.
Delivery: This session can be delivered in school.

4.3 - Warriors, Weapons, and Hillforts. Power and Conflict in the Iron Age

This lesson invites pupils to uncover what archaeology reveals about conflict, status, and identity in Iron Age societies. Drawing on evidence from Britain and continental Europe, they investigate how power, territorial control, and social hierarchy were expressed through burials, weaponry, and settlement layouts. Pupils examine elite graves to gain insight into identity and status. Handling replica artefacts, they explore the tools and symbols of Iron Age warfare. Using maps, photos, and digital reconstructions, they investigate hillforts to understand their design and strategic role in landscape control.

Duration: 1 hour
Price: £50
Level: KS2
Delivery: This session can be delivered either in school or online.

This AI generate image is for illustration purposes to reflect the nature of the workhsop offered.

4.4 - Weapons, warriors and what we know about fighting in Iron Age Britain.

During the workshop, pupils explore Iron Age weapons to understand who used them, why they appear in the archaeological record, and what they reveal about Iron Age society and fighting techniques. By examining spears, swords, and shields, pupils learn how shape and design help archaeologists understand how weapons were used in combat. Pupils then design and decorate their own replica warrior’s shield, applying what they have learned about Iron Age warfare in Britain, while also exploring how Iron Age fighting was represented by other cultures, particularly the Greeks and the Romans, developing an understanding of different perspectives and how to evaluate historical and archaeological sources critically.

Duration: 1.5 hours.
Price: £120
Level: KS2
Session requirements: a room with a projector for presentations and tables for the workshop.
Delivery: This session can be delivered in school.

4.5 - Celtic Art and Identity

The lesson examines how trade, warfare, and mercenary service shaped and transformed Iron Age visual culture across Britain and Europe. Pupils investigate iconic Celtic symbols, patterns, and motifs by examining artefacts such as torcs, mirrors, coins, and pottery from Britain and continental Europe. We then discuss, in an age-appropriate way, how the objects we use and decorate reflect cultural identity and how contact with external societies—such as the Romans and Greeks—sometimes influenced craftsmanship and visual art.

Duration: 1 hour
Price: £50
Level: KS2
Delivery: This session can be delivered either in school or online.

This AI generate image is for illustration purposes to reflect the nature of the workhsop offered.

4.6 - Celtic Art, jewellery and Identity

In this hands-on workshop, pupils explore Celtic jewellery as a specialised craft that required training, practice, and expert knowledge in Iron Age societies. By examining La Tène designs, pupils learn how skilled craftspeople planned complex patterns, controlled tools, and worked materials carefully to achieve detailed and balanced decoration. Pupils then experiment with techniques such as shaping, pressing, incising, and assembling before creating their own Celtic-style brooch, discovering how skill develops through repetition and practice. The workshop shows that jewellery-making was not simply decoration, but a learned craft that expressed identity, status, and belonging, and demonstrates how archaeologists recognise specialist skill through tool marks, design choices in surviving objects, and experimental archaeology.

Duration: 1.5 hours.
Price: £150
Level: KS2
Session requirements: a room with a projector for presentations and tables for the workshop.
Delivery: This session can be delivered in school.

4.7 - The Iron Age beyond Britain: Europe and the Mediterranean

Discover the Iron age communities from Britain to Central Europe, Italy, and Spain, and explore how they traded goods, moved people, and exchanged ideas across Britain and continental Europe, forming one of the earliest Europe-wide networks that connected Iron Age societies to the Mediterranean, including Sicily, Greece, and even Türkiye!

Duration: 1 hour
Price: £50
Level: KS2
Delivery: This session can be delivered either in school or online.

4.8 - Life as ... a woman in the Iron Age NEW IN 2026

Step into the Iron Age and discover a world in which women were far more than background figures: they were expert weavers, managers of households and land, ritual specialists, and in some regions even warriors buried with bows, daggers, and armour! Using archaeology, skeletal evidence, and extraordinary graves from Britain, Italy, Greece, and the Eurasian steppe, this session explores how women’s lives were shaped by labour, status, belief, and mobility, revealing a past far more varied, powerful, and surprising than old stereotypes ever allowed.

Duration: 1 hour
Price: £50
Level: KS2
Delivery: This session can be delivered either in school or online.

Prices

Prices include all equipment, teaching and workshop materials and FREE preparatory and follow up activities for your classroom.

Discounts are applied when three or more sessions/workshops are booked together.

Travel costs may apply for schools located more than 20 miles from Newcastle upon Tyne (UK).

Number of pupils: Each in person session is designed for one classroom, typically around 30 pupils. Online sessions can be extended to larger groups.

Info and Booking

To contact us for more info and for booking please check our Contact Us page or write us at archaeotrek@gmail.com

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