Following the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, the levels of the North Sea began to rise as waters formerly locked up in great ice sheets melted. Sometime after about 8200 BC the last dry 'land bridge' from Lincolnshire and East Anglia to Holland was taken over by salt marsh. By 6000 BC even the marshes had largely gone, drowned by the sea.
Following the end of the last Ice Age, around 10,000 years ago, the levels of the North Sea began to rise as waters formerly locked up in great ice sheets melted. Sometime after about 8200 BC the last dry 'land bridge' from Lincolnshire and East Anglia to Holland was taken over by salt marsh. By 6000 BC even the marshes had largely gone, drowned by the sea.
Before circa 4500 BC, Palaeolithic and Mesolithic (Early and Middle Stone Age) people were nomads, hunting and gathering wild plants. In the middle of the fifth millennium BC, a new way of life, based on farming plants and animals, was introduced from the continent. The replacement of hunting and gathering was gradual and wasn't completed until the latter part of the third millennium BC in Britain. Once farming was established, communities began to settle down.
The manufacture of pottery requires the control of high temperatures and is an important early technological development. Pottery arrived in Britain with the first farmers. Early pottery vessels were generally undecorated with heavy rims and rounded bases. From about 3500 BC the upper parts of some pottery vessels were decorated with patterns made while the clay was still soft. Pottery is important to archaeologists because it is very durable, surviving in the soil for thousands of years.
Throughout the Stone Age (Palaeolithic to Neolithic), stone tools were fashioned by chipping or 'knapping'. This involved the removal of flakes using either a hammer stone or a 'soft hammer' of bone or antler. In the Neolithic, axes and knives were first roughed-out by knapping, but were then polished using abrasive sand and water, or a shaped 'polissoir' (rubbing stone). This time-consuming process produced a more durable cutting edge that could easily be sharpened.
Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age) houses were mainly light structures suited to a nomadic lifestyle. Neolithic (Late Stone Age) houses were more permanent with thatched roofs and walls of woven hazel or willow rods, wind-proofed with a mixture of clay, straw and dung. Earlier Neolithic houses were often rectangular, but by about 3000 BC roundhouses may have become more important. This coincides with the appearance of circular ritual monuments, such as henges and passage graves.
The hollowing out of trees for log-boats began in the Mesolithic (Middle Stone Age), but carpentry (using large structural timbers for building) was a Neolithic (Late Stone Age) innovation. Coppicing is the regular cutting back of a tree or shrub to stimulate the rapid growth of shoots. The polished flint axe was the main tool used. Large trees were felled with axes and split into planks. Smaller rods and poles, cut from coppiced hazel, alder and willow, were woven to make fences and hurdles.
Axes made from polished flint and stone were important throughout the Neolithic (Late Stone Age) and Early Bronze Age. Fine-grained stone was quarried from hillsides in Cumbria, Wales, Cornwall and Northern Ireland. Mined flint is of better quality than surface flint. Mines are known in Northern Ireland, Scotland and East Anglia, but the majority of flint mines were on the chalk hills of southern England, with underground galleries following the seams of flint reached by shafts up to 15m deep.
There are fewer earlier Neolithic (Late Stone Age) settlements in England and Wales - which may reflect a more mobile lifestyle among early farmers in these areas - than in Scotland and Ireland. Most earlier Neolithic settlements in Britain were of about one to three houses with possibly a few outbuildings. They were rarely defended, except in Cornwall. Most settlements were placed at some distance from areas of barrows.
Earlier Neolithic (Late Stone Age) communities buried their dead in chambered tombs. The earliest tradition, from about 4000 BC, of long barrows had chambers made of large stones (megaliths) or timbers inside a long trapezoidal mound with a forecourt in which funerary rites took place. Later (from circa 3000 BC), 'passage' graves developed. Communal burial probably helped to unite communities in thinly-populated landscapes.
The Sweet Track in the Somerset Levels consists of a wooden footpath raised above boggy ground on crossed timber supports. It extended across a marsh between what was then an island and an area of high ground. It was excavated between 1970 and 1982 and its precise age revealed by tree-ring dating (dendrochronology).
The first ceremonial meetings where different communities came together took place inside 'causewayed' enclosures, named from the roughly circular ditches that defined their limits, dug in segments separated by 'causeways'. Most of the ditches were filled in and re-opened at intervals, and the ditch fillings included offerings like human and animal skulls, meat bones, pottery and unused stone axes. In many cases the areas around the enclosures subsequently developed into 'ritual landscapes'.
Although stone circles occur on the European mainland, 'henges' are a uniquely British and Irish phenomenon. They consist of a circular ditch and an external bank, usually surrounding settings of posts or standing stones. They are entered by way of one, two or four entranceways. Most henges lie within specialised 'ritual landscapes' and may be linked to avenues marked out by standing stones or banks and ditches. The best known are at Stonehenge and Avebury in Wiltshire.
The earliest tradition (from circa 4000 BC) was of long barrows, but around 3000 BC 'passage' graves developed. They consisted of a central stone-built 'hall' with three or more side chambers, reached by a long, low passage from which the name is derived. The passage and chambers were concealed within a large round barrow. The passage was often aligned on the midwinter sunrise.
Technology changed at the start of the Bronze Age (2500 BC in Britain), but the basic way of life continued much as before. The greater frequency of known settlements, allied to evidence for increasing clearance of land for farming, indicates steady population growth. From circa 2500 BC, roundhouses were the main form of domestic building. From circa 2000 BC there is evidence of field systems, often aligned on pre-existing barrows which suggests they followed earlier systems of land partition.
From circa 3000 BC some areas that were ritually important in earlier times gained added significance. There is evidence for smaller and more specialised ceremonial sites such as henges. A huge variety of Bronze Age round barrows began to proliferate after 2500 BC. Ritual landscapes were usually in flat or undulating countryside like Salisbury Plain, or in river valleys. They often clustered around earlier causewayed enclosures and there were dozens or even hundreds of different monuments.
The dominant practice of communal burial was overtaken by a new rite of graves within round barrows. The burial for which the barrow was originally made is known as the 'primary', but often a series of secondary burials or cremations were inserted. These suggests that barrows marked an important presence in the landscape and that they were significant to one family, clan or tribe. Sometimes the primary was furnished with valuable grave goods, suggesting an increasingly hierarchical society.
Following the introduction of pottery two millennia previously, the appearance of metalworking was another important technological step in the control of heat and the production of ever-higher temperatures using small furnaces and hide bellows. The earliest British metalwork was made of pure copper, bronze (an alloy of about 90% copper, 10% tin) or gold. Gold was used for ornaments and jewellery, bronze and copper for spearheads, axes, knives and daggers.
Early Bronze Age (2500-1500 BC) saw the regular production of more sophisticated metalwork, consisting mainly of axes, daggers and 'tanged' spearheads (attached to the shaft by a prong).
The introduction of metal tools around 2500 BC did not lead to the sudden abandonment of flint as a material for making the light tools of everyday life. In the late Neolithic (Late Stone Age), flint knapping shifted away from long blades towards shorter flakes that were sharp and strong. After about 1500 BC there was another change, towards piercing and boring implements used to work bone and hide. This tradition may well have continued into the early Iron Age.
Knowledge of Bronze Age woodworking has recently rapidly increased thanks to the discovery of important waterlogged sites across Britain and Ireland. (Waterlogging can preserve wood for centuries.) Timber was the principal building material of the Bronze Age and the introduction of metal axes was a major technological advance. It was originally believed that bronze axes replaced stone gradually and over many centuries, but recent evidence suggests the process was rapid.
While household pottery was probably produced domestically, the appearance of metalwork and new, highly-decorated forms of drinking vessels called (by archaeologists) 'beakers' indicate the presence of 'specialists' in Britain. The very first makers of beaker pottery probably came from the continent, but after a short interval these specialists were local. It seems probable that with metalworking went certain religious practices that may have marked the smiths out from other members of society.
A 2003 excavation at Amesbury in Wiltshire found the body of a man and about 100 artefacts, including copper knives, gold hair ornaments, highly decorated pottery vessels and many flint arrowheads. Analysis of his teeth showed that he grew up in central Europe. Individuals found in two other nearby graves of the same period probably came from west Wales. These discoveries show that long-distance travel was an important part of Early Bronze Age life and belief.
In 1998 a small elliptical 'circle' of 55 oak posts surrounding a large inverted oak tree was discovered at Holme-next-the-Sea. There was a blocked entranceway to the south west which faced onto the midwinter sunset. About 50 different bronze axes had been used and woodchips found within the post sockets showed the timbers had been shaped in situ, probably as part of a communal effort. Tree-rings provided precise felling dates and showed that construction was a single event.
A series of burials of individuals beneath round barrows and with elaborate grave-goods, including special funerary pottery, bronze and copper daggers and gold and amber objects, were discovered in the 19th century in the Wessex area (Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Berkshire), and then in the 20th century as far afield as Norfolk. There are strong parallels with Brittany, France, suggesting regular contact between the two areas.
A 1993 excavation in Leicestershire revealed a small barrow cemetery which included a pit with a hoard of Early Bronze Age objects. This came to be known as the Lockington Gold Hoard. These consisted of two pottery vessels, a fine copper dagger (which probably originated in Brittany, France) and two fine decorated gold armlets. The discovery was important because it showed that rich objects of this sort were not confined to Wessex and the area around Stonehenge, as was once believed.
Shortly after 2000 BC the first deep copper mines were dug. Two of the best known are at Mount Gabriel in County Cork, Ireland, and Great Orme, north Wales. Another major area of prehistoric mining was in mid-Wales. Most Bronze Age mines went out of use in the Iron Age. The scale of metal production was truly industrial. Mount Gabriel is thought to have produced about 370 tonnes of copper and Great Orme 175 to 235 tonnes.
In the Middle Bronze Age (1500-1200 BC) smaller forms of axes (palstaves) began to appear alongside the first 'socketed' spearheads (attached to the shaft by a hole in the base). Thrusting weapons (dirks, rapiers) appeared, as well as elaborate bronze pins and bracelets.
Before about 1500 BC, rituals, ceremonies and religion followed practices established in the later Neolithic (Late Stone Age). After that date, burial in round barrows was replaced by cremation in cemeteries, with or without barrows. From about 1500 BC, hoards of metal items occur with increasing frequency, often placed in or near wet places as votive offerings - a practice that continued through the Iron Age.
Prior to the 1970s, the smaller, lighter 'socketed' axes (attached to the shaft through a hole) of the Late Bronze Age were regarded as being functionally inefficient. They are known in huge numbers from hoards found across the British Isles. But recent evidence from preserved timbers and complete wooden hafts (shafts or handles), has shown they were both effective and adaptable tools, with the heavy, well-balanced hafts compensating for the relative lightness of the axe head.
The scale of later Bronze Age settlement was poorly understood until about 1970, when it became possible to differentiate pottery of the period from that of the Iron Age. This coincided with increased aerial survey data and excavation ahead of commercial development. Current knowledge suggests that this was the period when the major lowland river valleys were extensively settled.
In the Late Bronze Age (1200-800 BC) both forms and quantities of metalwork increased rapidly. Major innovations were smaller 'socketed' axes (attached to the shaft through a hole) and swords with leaf-shaped blades intended for slashing.
Changes in religion, ceremonial and burial practices imply social change. The new structure persisted through the Iron Age and has been labelled as 'Celtic'. It seems probable that the later Bronze Age controlling elites comprised a larger proportion of society and may have been centred upon a 'warrior aristocracy'. This is the period when the numerous tribes of Britain began to combine into the larger groupings that became the named tribal kingdoms of the Iron Age.
Roundhouses were the dominant form of house in the later Bronze and Iron Ages. Iron Age houses were usually built without internal roof support posts, so the walls carried the thatch. Many Bronze Age houses were constructed in the same way, but some were built with a circle of internal roof-support posts, suggesting they had a heavier roof-covering such as turf.
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