Beneath the peaceful green hill fort of Fin Cop lies a segregated mass grave of women and children, providing an intriguing narrative into one of the earliest examples of warfare in Iron Age Britain.
(read more)18.43
Pottery fragment
DERSB : 2009.48.1131
Fragment of pottery found inside the hillfort at Fin Cop, around 400BCE (Iron age).
Pieces of pieces of this broken jar were amongst the only objects found in the same context as the skeletons at Fin Cop. It might have been thrown into the fort ditch at the same time as bodies of the women and children, before the wall was pushed down over the top. The condition of the jar is poor and it may have been in a fire before it was buried.
The hilltop of Fin Cop has been visited by people for over 12,000 years. Around 10,000 years ago, people at Fin Cop quarried chert, a hard stone that can be made into hunting barbs, as well as scrapers and piercers for working hides. Many years later, about 4,000 years ago, local farming communities buried their dead here in rock-cut graves covered by a barrow.
Around 400BCE, the hilltop was fortified by a massive stone rampart. Between 2009 and 2012, a community archaeology project uncovered some more secrets of Fin Cop. They found a second, hastily-built bank and ditch which suggests that the people were responding to an immediate threat. It seems this became reality when the women and children were massacred. The bodies were thrown into the hillfort's ditch and the stone ramparts pushed over on top of them.
The community excavations at Fin Cop in 2009 and 2010 were supported by the Heritage Lottery Fund. The project was managed by Longstone Local History Group with professional supervision from Archaeological Research Services. Among many who helped were pupils and staff from local schools in Longstone, Bakewell and Buxton, and the amateur archaeologists of Arteamus. The dig won Best Community Archaeological Project at the 2010 British Archaeological Awards.
Wonders linked to these objects:
Twisted: a story of Fin Cop
The end of a people: The wall had collapsed, a tumbled, toppled mass of rocks half filling the ditch. There was a smell of smoke but no trails rising into the still evening air, rather the bitter scent of fires doused fast. And still there was silence.
(read more)