Warfare & Warriors of Iron Age Britain

The game period spans two distinct phases of the British Iron Age: Middle and Late. The two are very different. In the following post, I shall be dealing with the hillfort-dominated zone of Southern Britain. I would suggest that this be where the British faction starts, for two main reasons:

a) It is the area which we know most about, because it has undergone the most study and was most in contact with the Roman world.
b) It had a high population density; many more people lived in central Southern Britain than lived in Wales, Scotland, or Northern or Central England, for example.

So, the faction should start off in one of these two provinces, with one of these names:

a) Camulodunom ("settlement of warriors"), province Cantiom (+/- Kent). Faction name: Cantiacoi.
This simply means "inhabitants of Kent".
b) Maisodunom ("greatest settlement"), province Dixsoua ("the South"). Faction name: Pritanoi, Durotriges.
Pritanoi is the name that EB2 are using for their British faction, because it is definitely contemporary to our period, and is pretty generally applicable. The problem is, it probably did mean "Britons", not just a single tribe.
Durotriges is the name of the tribe that lived in the area of Dorset in the Late Iron Age (LIA). There is no evidence for this name in the MIA; however, there is strong continuity in the archaeological record between the MIA and LIA in this region. It is possible that the same tribe survived the social turmoil of 150-100 BCE.

I am making this post just to try and sum up in a nutshell how the British units should be, roughly.

MIA

The only weapons in the archaeological record are spears and slings. Axes are also known, and they could have been pressed into service. There are no swords in the hillfort zone, and I cannot think of any from anywhere else except the Arras culture. This strongly suggests a more egalitarian society, deliberately at odds with the powerful hunter-magician chiefs vs peasant farmers system of the Bronze Age. The settlement pattern - some hillforts and many open settlements - is not in keeping with the common belief that this period was characterised by raiding; you would expect fewer, more strongly defended settlements. Battles were probably pre-arranged organised battles between polities.

There should therefore be only three types of units available: spearmen, slingers, and a few axemen. The melee troops should/could have light javelins too - not pila, mind (!), just sharpened sticks. However, there should be a trigger fairly early (first minor city built? Wales and Northern England conquered?) which sets off a reform, bringing you into the Late Iron Age, with its warrior-chieftains and golden torques and what-not, parallel to the overthrow of the old system and the institution of the timarchies which we more often associate with the Celts.

LIA

This is where warfare becomes more varied and interesting. You now have two distinct classes: the farmers, and the warriors. The farmers are still the spearmen and slingers (and axemen) of the earlier period; but we now have the nobles too. They will have swords, chain mail, horses, and chariots, as characteristics - no helmets, only one has ever been found in Britain and it's too small to be worn by an adult man and too flimsy to offer protection in battle. From these you can make a great variety of units. Iron also comes into wider circulation in this period, so iron spears will be more common - in the MIA spearheads were probably mostly fire-hardened wood, as not very many iron spearheads have been found. Again, javelins were probably used by all melee troops; the richer the social class, the better the javelin.

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That's it, in nutshell. Hope it helps.