ABSTRACT
This chapter explores notions of Boudica as an iconic woman within a context of evidence from Iron Age and Roman Britain and Europe. In this quest to find other Boudicca, one look beyond the Graeco-Roman literature and explore, as well, the archaeological evidence for women of high rank in the centuries leading up to Boudica's Rebellion. The whole issue of empowered and high-status females, on a par with Boudica, is enlivened by new research into a Romano-British community who lived and died at Brougham in Cumbria between about ad 220 and 300. Brougham was a Roman fort and attached to it was a civilian settlement, a vicus; when they died, the inhabitants were cremated and placed in a communal cemetery. In 1834 a body was discovered in a peatbog at Haraldskaer near Vejle, a small town in central Jutland. Both Tacitus and Dio, the two main chroniclers of the Boudican Rebellion, allude to the Icenian ruler's appearance in a war-chariot.
