5.3 Clothes

Very few clothes have been preserved from Iron Age Britain, so we know little about the clothes that people wore at this time. Clothes made from wool, linen, skin or leather are preserved only in particular kinds of wet, cold or dry conditions. In Britain, archaeologists do not normally find clothes preserved on the sites of Iron Age farms and villages. All that normally survives are some of the tools needed to make clothes, and the pins, brooches and other ornaments that Iron Age people used to hold their clothes together or for show.

The types of clothes Iron Age Britons were likely to have worn can be inferred from rare discoveries from other parts of Europe, and from descriptions and pictures of Iron Age peoples made by the Romans who met these 'barbarians'.

It is likely that women wore a simple, long, sleeveless dress, possibly a simple tube of cloth pinned or sewn together at the shoulders. This might have been worn over a blouse or shirt. Women's leines (tunics) went to the ankles and were belted.  

Men had been wearing trousers in northern and western Europe since the Late Bronze Age when horse riding became common and these would have been worn along with a shirt. Romans, wearing tunics, found them rather strange, but they were nice for the climate. They were typically made with a drawstring, and tended to reach from just above the knee at the shortest, to the ankles at the longest, with length generally increasing in Celtic tribes living further north.

 The aristocracy wore a tunic (leine) to the knees, or longer, which was belted.

Both sexes would have also worn cloaks, rectangular, made of wool, fastened with a brooch. Brooches were often very simple and little more than safety pins for holding clothes together. But some people did own brooches with decoration that could include red or white coral, or red glass. Glass beads were only made in a few places in Iron Age Britain. To own a necklace with many beads was very unusual. Most women would have only worn one or two glass beads, if any at all. These were often not worn around the neck, but as earrings or in the hair.

Celtic love of personal adornment was remarked upon by Greek and Roman commentators.

Bangles could have been worn around the wrists, but in some parts of northern Europe they were worn as anklets. They could be made out of bronze, but could also be carved out of soft stone such as shale or jet. Rings were also very uncommon, and might be worn on a finger or a toe.

Clothes were made from woven wool and sometimes from linen made from flax. Spindle whorls would have been used to weight a spindle, a tool used to spin wool into threads. The threads were woven into cloth on a loom. The range of colours available to die these fabrics was very limited - brown, reds, green and blue. Rarely found items of clothing indicate the types and quality of the weaves used. The needles were mostly made of bones.

Leather was being made at this time. This and other animal hides could have been used for clothes, caps and for shoes. Sheep skin could also be used to make clothing, especially cloaks. Wild animal fur and the feathers from birds were also used for clothing or for decoration.

Everybody knows today such type of clothes as kilt. It is a traditional garment of Scottish, and by extension Celtic, culture that exists in various modern forms and forms inspired by the historical garment. Scottish kilts almost always have tartans, that is a specific pattern. In contrast to the Scottish kilt, the Irish kilt traditionally was made from solid colour cloth, with saffron being the most widely used colour.

The Celtic tradition of making and decorating circular bronze mirrors produced some of the finest abstract patterns in Celtic art. And those made in Britain are particularly amazing. While the viewing surface of the mirror was polished, the back, round and flat, was decorated with fine engraving, chasing, or hatching in which swirling patterns sometimes give the fleeting illusion of human or animal heads. Recent archaeologists have suggested that mirrors should be seen as symbols of female status and power, making as significant a statement for women as swords did for men. However, there is very little evidence to tell us which sex used mirrors, or if they were used exclusively by one sex or another. Mirrors are mysterious and magic objects in many cultures, and indeed they have curious properties: they are like water, but portable; they reflect an image with left and right reversed; when you look into a mirror you can see in two directions at once. The polished plate can be used to reflect a bright beam of light and heat onto a person or object, and even to signal over distances.