During the 7th century BC, iron tools and weapons appear for the first time. Longer, sharper and stronger, these were the weapons of the military aristocracy with the wealth and power to control vast regional populations and to define and defend political boundaries. We learn from Roman historians of the rivalries and alliances which dominated the region in the 1st century BC.

The Trinovantes tribe had been conquered by the Catuvellauni in Southern Suffolk. Meanwhile, across the impenetrable forests of the central claylands, the Iceni held sway to the North. Whatever their political or feudal loyalties, ordinary people lived and worked in farmsteads and fields, farming the land as their ancestors had done for centuries.