OPPOSITE Testing a reconstructed chariot revealed that the charioteers had to be highly skilled and that the horses had to be intensively trained. Here, Jonathan Waterer drives a pair of Fiord ponies while Mike Loades tests the stability of the ride.

Bring me my chariot: investigating burial practices in Iron Age Yorkshire

What sparked the unusual chariot burials associated with the Arras Culture in East Yorkshire? Migration has been proposed as an explanation, but a new book asks whether there are other ways by which chariot-making knowledge and burial practices could have been transferred. The reality is perhaps more mundane but, at the same time, highly informative about the diversity of lifestyles and burial practices in the British Iron Age and the ways in which people expressed their regional identity. Chris Catling reports.

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Current Archaeology

April 21, 2020

Between 1815 and 1817, a group of Yorkshire antiquaries investigated a monument at Arras Farm, near Market Weighton, in East Yorkshire. Their discoveries included two burials containing the remains of chariots. One was dubbed the ‘King’s Barrow’ on account of the richness of the harness fittings and the two horses buried in the grave. Another was named the ‘Charioteer’s Barrow’. A third grave – the ‘Queen’s Barrow’ – contained the remains of a woman buried with a gold ring, bronze brooches, iron mirror, and glass-bead necklace. Exactly 200 years later, in 2017, another chariot burial was found at Burnby Lane, Pocklington, some seven miles north-west of Arras Farm (se

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