Arras Culture

The Arras culture is a name given by archaeologists to an Iron Age culture from what is today eastern Yorkshire. It is named after the cemetery site of Arras near Market Weighton in East Yorkshire which was discovered in the nineteenth century. It entered the historical record during the Roman occupation as the Parisii tribe.

It is characterised by a method of inhumation not found elsewhere in the British Isles and is thought to represent a culturally distinct group of people who inhabited the area at the time. Parallels exist with continental burial rites however.

Their lands stretched from the banks of the River Humber to the Vale of Pickering and they differed from the other British peoples of the period in three ways. Firstly they used large inhumation cemeteries when elsewhere cremation and smaller graveyards were prevalent. Secondly they defined the barrows built over their graves with a rectangular ditched enclosure and finally high-status burials were made with (usually dismantled) two-wheeled vehicles left in the tomb along with the deceased. Examples include the burials at Wetwang. These vehicles have given them the name of chariot burials.

These practices were also used in a distinct group of later Iron Age burials in northern France and Belgium; the only difference being the lack of fineware pottery in the richest British graves.

Traditionally, this similarity was explained by means of a migration of people, the Parisii, moving northwards from the continent to settle in eastern Britain c. 450 BC. An alternative explanation is that the British Arras culture was an attempt by some of the natives to ape continental society. It may be that the upper echelons of British society were trying to distinguish themselves by copying foreign ways. The vehicle burial aspect of the culture developed in Britain only in the third and second centuries BC which suggests it was adopted independently or that they were forgotten and then re-introduced by the immigrants.

Either way, the Arras culture indicates strong cultural and economic links between the two regions during the period.

Even today, links between the Parisii settlements and Paris can be seen in the East Yorkshire area. Indeed, Market Weighton's Market Place bears a resemblance to Paris' Champs Elysees.