Study the past
(Inside the Great Roundhouse)
EUGENE FRASER
This is our great roundhouse. It has a diameter of about fifty feet and you can easily place about two hundred and fifty adults in here without any problems at all.
GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Now who would have lived here ?
EUGENE FRASER
The size of a dwelling in the Iron Age times was very much as it is today. It's a symbol of status, it's a symbol of power, a symbol of prestige. In other words, a person who would have lived in a house of this dimension would have been a very powerful man indeed.
GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
I think one of the popular images of that time is that it was made up entirely of warrior aristocrat type people who went around having battles the whole time. Is that the kind of person who would have lived in a settlement like this?
EUGENE FRASER
This is precisely the kind of misconception that we are trying to deal with really. What we mustn't forget about the Celts is that they were, by and large, a farming people.
We swallow this line that the Romans have been feeding us for centuries that they were dark men of the woods, you know, dressed in sheepskin and things like that. But far from it, they were not like that at all.
GUY DE LA BÉDOYÈRE
Does that mean Britain then was in a way quite a wealthy place in areas that made it attractive to Romans?
EUGENE FRASER
We believe so. We believe that's one of the reasons why the Romans came here in the first place.
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