The Essay: Unearthing Britannia's Tribes

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The Essay: Unearthing Britannia's Tribes: Lindow Man

Unearthing Britannia's Tribes

Lindow Man

BBC Radio 3 - The Essay, Unearthing Britannia's Tribes, Lindow Man

Novelist Sarah Moss considers the enduring impact of an early encounter with Lindow Man.

Unearthing the peoples of Iron Age Britain, from warrior queens to Lindow Man. Novelist Sarah Moss considers the enduring impact of an early encounter with Lindow Man.

The Essay unearths the peoples of Iron Age Britain from warrior queens to Lindow Man in a major new series.

"We are the last people on earth, and the last to be free: our very remoteness in a land known only to rumour has protected us up till this day. Today the furthest bounds of Britain lie open—and everything unknown is given an inflated worth. But now there is no people beyond us, nothing but tides and rocks and, more deadly than these, the Romans." Tacitus, Agricola

Explore the worlds of ancient Albion, from the western reaches of Cornwall to the tribes of Essex and across to the wilds of Scotland and Wales. Their stories, footprint and traces have been dug from the ground, pored over by archaeologists and historians, and informed by the accounts of travellers and conquerors who visited the far shores of exotic Britannia for trade or glory. With the arrival of Caesar's armies, nothing would be the same again.

Sarah Moss's fiction has been inspired by the ancient rituals of our Iron Age antecedents. In this essay she describes the impact of an encounter with Lindow Man on a school trip, and considers the insights we can glean from mysterious bog burials.

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The Essay unearths the peoples of Iron Age Britain, from warrior queens to Lindow Man.

Unearthing the peoples of Iron Age Britain, from warrior queens to Lindow Man, archaeologists, historians and writers reveal the tribes, rulers and those who encountered them.

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