About
The Museum of the Iron Age is a specialist archaeology museum dedicated to exploring life in Iron Age Britain through the extraordinary finds from Danebury hillfort and other prehistoric sites in Hampshire. Housed at 6 Church Close in Andover alongside Andover Museum, this large and exceptionally well-curated museum brings to life one of the most intensively excavated and important Iron Age hillforts in Europe, offering visitors an unparalleled window into the Celtic world of 2,500 years ago.
Danebury hillfort, located on a prominent chalk hill five miles south of Andover, was excavated over twenty seasons (1969-1988) by Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe and his team from the University of Oxford in one of the most comprehensive archaeological investigations ever undertaken in Britain. The excavations revealed an Iron Age community that thrived from around 600 BC to 100 BC, with remarkable preservation of buildings, storage pits, defensive structures, and thousands of artefacts that provide unprecedented insights into Iron Age society, economy, religion, warfare, and daily life. The Museum of the Iron Age was purpose-built in 1986 to display these exceptional finds and interpret the results of this groundbreaking archaeological research.
The museum's galleries present a comprehensive picture of Iron Age life reconstructed from archaeological evidence. Displays explore how Danebury's inhabitants farmed the surrounding downland, stored grain in hundreds of pits, worked iron and bronze to create tools and weapons, traded with communities across southern Britain and even continental Europe, defended their hillfort with massive ramparts and gates, practiced religious rituals involving special deposits and animal sacrifices, and organized their society with evidence suggesting hierarchical leadership. The collections include beautifully preserved Iron Age pottery showing sophisticated decorative techniques, iron weapons and tools demonstrating advanced metalworking skills, bronze ornaments and personal items revealing artistic sensibilities, animal bones providing evidence for diet and farming practices, and rare organic materials including carbonized grain and textiles that rarely survive from this period.
What makes the Museum of the Iron Age particularly special is how it translates complex archaeological evidence into accessible and engaging displays that bring the prehistoric past vividly to life. Full-scale reconstructions including a roundhouse interior, audiovisual presentations, hands-on activities, and clear interpretation help visitors understand how archaeologists piece together ancient lives from fragmentary evidence. With free admission and close proximity to Andover Museum in the same building, the Museum of the Iron Age offers an exceptional cultural experience that takes visitors on a journey from prehistoric Hampshire to the modern town, making it an essential destination for anyone interested in Britain's ancient past.
Categories:
Plan Your Visit
⏱️ Recommended Visit Duration
📅 Best Times to Visit
Quietest: Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday
Busiest: Saturday
💡 Weekday mornings for quietest experience
💡 Visitor Tips
- Visit both the Museum of the Iron Age and Andover Museum in the same building - together they take you from prehistoric times through to the modern era, providing comprehensive historical context.
- Allow 90 minutes minimum to appreciate the Iron Age displays properly - there's a lot of detailed information and fascinating objects that reward careful viewing and reading.
- The reconstructed roundhouse is particularly engaging for children and families - it helps make the prehistoric past tangible and imaginable rather than abstract.
- After visiting the museum, drive or cycle to Danebury hillfort itself (5 miles south) - walking the ramparts and seeing the landscape brings the archaeology to life and helps you visualize the hillfort in its prime.
- The museum offers excellent schools' programmes with handling collections of replica Iron Age objects - book in advance if you're visiting as a school group or home education family.
- Ask about temporary exhibitions and special events - the museum regularly hosts talks by archaeologists, craft demonstrations, and family activity days that enhance understanding of the Iron Age.
- The museum shop stocks good archaeology books for all levels from children's titles to academic publications - it's one of the best sources for Iron Age Britain reading.
- Photography is permitted throughout the galleries - the displays and reconstructions make excellent educational photographs for students and enthusiasts documenting their visit.
Highlights
Danebury Hillfort Model and Context
An impressive scale model of Danebury hillfort as it would have appeared in its Iron Age heyday around 400 BC, providing essential context for understanding this remarkable archaeological site. The model shows the hillfort's commanding position on a chalk promontory, the massive defensive ramparts and ditches encircling the 13-acre interior, the complex entrance gates with guardhouses, the densely packed roundhouses where people lived, areas for craft working and storage, and the open spaces where community activities took place.
The hillfort could have housed a population of 200-350 people, making it a substantial Iron Age community and regional centre.
Interpretation panels explain why hillforts were built - combining defensive functions with social, economic, and symbolic purposes as central places in the Iron Age landscape. The display explores Danebury's relationship with the surrounding territory, its role in trade networks, and how it fits into the broader pattern of Iron Age settlement in southern Britain.
Iron Age Pottery Collection
An exceptional collection of Iron Age pottery from Danebury and other local sites, demonstrating the sophisticated ceramic technology and decorative artistry of Iron Age potters. The collection includes hundreds of complete or reconstructable vessels ranging from large storage jars (pithoi) that held grain and other foodstuffs, to cooking pots with soot-blackened exteriors from use over fires, to fine table wares with decorative geometric patterns, stamped designs, and burnished surfaces.
The pottery styles changed over the six centuries of Danebury's occupation, allowing archaeologists to date different phases of activity and trace connections with other regions through shared pottery styles.
Display panels explain how pottery was made without potter's wheels using coiling and hand-forming techniques, how different clay preparations and firing temperatures affected the final product, and what pottery can reveal about diet, cooking methods, storage practices, and trade. The collection represents one of the largest and most comprehensively studied assemblages of Iron Age pottery from Britain.
Weapons and Warfare
A fascinating collection of Iron Age weapons and defensive equipment revealing the reality of warfare and violence in prehistoric Britain. The display includes iron spearheads of various sizes from light javelins to heavy thrusting spears, sword fragments showing sophisticated ironworking techniques, slingstones that were stockpiled in thousands at Danebury for use against attackers, and shield fittings.
Evidence of violent death from skeletal remains is sensitively presented, including individuals who died from sword cuts, slingstone impacts, and spear wounds.
The exhibition explores who fought in Iron Age warfare - whether professional warriors or the general population - what motivated conflicts over territory, resources, and prestige, how hillforts were defended and attacked, and the role of warrior culture in Iron Age society.
Display panels discuss how archaeologists interpret evidence for violence and warfare, and what this reveals about social organization, power structures, and inter-community relations in the Iron Age.
Reconstructed Iron Age Roundhouse
A full-scale reconstruction of an Iron Age roundhouse interior showing how Danebury's inhabitants lived, worked, and organized their domestic spaces. The reconstruction is based on archaeological evidence from post-holes, floor deposits, and artefact distributions excavated at Danebury. The circular house features a conical thatched roof supported by a ring of wooden posts, wattle-and-daub walls, a central hearth providing heat, light, and cooking facilities, and furnishings including sleeping platforms, storage containers, and working areas.
Replica objects including pottery, tools, textiles, and food items create an immersive environment that helps visitors imagine daily life 2,500 years ago. Interpretation explains how roundhouses were constructed using local materials and traditional techniques, how families organized their living space with cooking, sleeping, and working areas, how smoke from the central fire blackened the thatch while also preserving it, and how these buildings were surprisingly comfortable and well-adapted to the British climate.
Collections
The Museum of the Iron Age houses the extraordinary archaeological collections from Professor Sir Barry Cunliffe's twenty-season excavation of Danebury hillfort (1969-1988), representing one of the most comprehensive assemblages from any British Iron Age site. The collections include tens of thousands of pottery sherds (many reconstructable into complete vessels), iron and bronze objects including weapons, tools, ornaments, and craft-working debris, animal bones from domestic and wild species providing evidence for diet and farming, carbonized plant remains including grain and seeds revealing agricultural practices, human skeletal material raising questions about Iron Age mortuary customs and violence, objects of bone, antler, and stone, and rare organic materials including textile fragments.
The museum also holds finds from other Iron Age sites in Hampshire, contextualizing Danebury within its regional landscape.
All collections are fully catalogued and published in the comprehensive Danebury research reports, making them available to scholars worldwide. The collections continue to yield new insights as analysis techniques improve, ensuring ongoing research value beyond their display and educational functions.
Life at Danebury: Six Centuries of an Iron Age Community
The main chronological and thematic exhibition exploring all aspects of life at Danebury hillfort from its foundation around 600 BC to its abandonment around 100 BC. The exhibition is organized thematically with sections on building and defending the hillfort, farming and food production, craft working and technology, trade and exchange, social organization and hierarchy, warfare and violence, religion and ritual, and daily domestic life.
Each theme uses archaeological evidence from Danebury to build a comprehensive picture of Iron Age society.
Interactive elements, reconstructions, hands-on activities, and multimedia presentations engage diverse audiences from school children to adult enthusiasts, making complex archaeological interpretation accessible and engaging.
📍 Main Gallery
Archaeology Uncovered: How We Know What We Know
An innovative exhibition explaining archaeological methods and how researchers interpret fragmentary evidence to reconstruct past lives. The display covers excavation techniques, how archaeologists record and analyse finds and features, scientific methods including radiocarbon dating and environmental analysis, how pottery is studied and dated, what animal bones reveal about diet and farming, computer modelling of hillforts and buildings, and how different types of evidence are synthesised to create comprehensive interpretations.
The exhibition demystifies archaeology and helps visitors understand that our knowledge of the Iron Age comes from careful scientific work rather than guesswork.
It also acknowledges uncertainties and debates in Iron Age archaeology, showing that interpretation is an ongoing process as new evidence and techniques emerge.
📍 Methods Gallery
Hampshire in the Iron Age
A contextual exhibition placing Danebury within the broader landscape of Iron Age Hampshire, showing how hillforts, farmsteads, field systems, and ritual sites formed an integrated cultural landscape. The display uses maps, finds from other local sites, and landscape reconstruction to show settlement patterns, territorial organization, trade routes, and how different communities interacted.
The exhibition demonstrates that Danebury was not isolated but part of a complex settlement system across Hampshire and southern Britain, with connections extending to continental Europe through trade in prestige goods, raw materials, and ideas.
📍 Regional Gallery
Themes
Time Periods
Current Exhibitions
No current exhibitions. Please check the museum website for updates.