The Ancient Artefacts And Architecture Of Loch Tay - BBC Timestamp

Look at that. It's a modern reconstruction of a building called a crannog, which is a large house built on a platform that sits above the waters of the Loch. This would have been the home 2,000 years ago of a local chieftain. A building like that is about status and prestige. It's visible from miles around. You're essentially saying to people, here I am, and if you think you can take this from me, do your best. In this world of Celtic tribes, leaders needed to be more than powerful warriors. They needed diplomatic skills and political nous too. And artefacts found here in Loch Tay bear testament to how Iron Age politics were conducted. This is a small circular wooden plate recovered from the Loch. Look, in Iron Age Britain, status wasn't just about items of jewellery and personal adornment. It was about your ability to draw people to you. Men fighting men who were loyal to you, who would do your bidding. And a key way of getting to them was, as they say, through their stomachs, the way to a man's heart. And so you have to picture a chieftain, perhaps the chieftain of the area, gathering men to him. And they would be fed by him to show that he was a big man. So the story here, from this little wooden plate, is that feasting was a key part of power-broking in late Iron Age Britain. Barry-Anne Ryan, who helped create the crannog, is an expert in feasting. And many of the same wild plants that would have been eaten 2,000 years ago still grow around the area today. They didn't have access to the kind of vegetables that we have today. Nothing like onions and potatoes and our kind of staples. So foraging would have been a very, very important source of food for them. Lots of edible greens here. Things like chickweed and sorrel, which is a lemony taste. See what you think. It's got a very definite flavour. This is sorrel. I'm going to put that in the stew. Just to give it a kick. That's a real acid-y, citrus-y. That's a strong flavour. The scale and variety of food offered by a chieftain would have been a mark of his status and, by extension, his power. Over the hearth, a masterpiece of decorative wrought ironwork would have supported a spit roast and proclaimed the standing of its owner. This is an example or a representation of a fire dog. And the fire dog would have been a high-status, really classy piece of art. And you can see the curve of the back of the head. It's maybe a horse or a bull with the horns sticking out, or even maybe a wild boar. But obviously something important, something symbolic. And if you look at the craftsmanship, these are meant to represent wealth and power. So it's another symbol of status. It's food for show, isn't it? It's food as a performance. Absolutely. They definitely weren't hiding.