Yorkshire Museum

Teacher Notes

The Bronze Age 2500 BC – 800 BC When was the Bronze Age? The Bronze Age began with migration. People arriving in Britain from mainland Europe brought with them new technologies, new ideas and new ways of burying their dead. Archaeologists call them the ‘Beaker people’ because of their distinctive pottery styles. They seem to have mixed with the existing Neolithic culture they found in Britain as their pottery has been found at Neolithic monuments. Archaeologists disagree about how much migration there was, but it’s possible a relatively small number of migrants could have had a significant impact. The first metal objects were made from copper but soon people discovered that they could make a much stronger metal, bronze, by mixing copper with a small amount of tin (about 10% tin to 90% copper). In Britain tin was mined in Cornwall and the South West and copper was found in Ireland and Wales, though metals were also imported from mainland Europe. Metal production took place at an industrial level: it’s estimated that the mine at Great Orme in North Wales could have produced between 175 and 235 tonnes of copper. At first it’s likely that the new bronze tools were mainly used to impress and as a sign of status. The new material must have seemed amazing to people who had never seen it before. Over time bronze gradually replaced stone as the main material for making tools, though this change was very gradual. People also began to work gold, making beautiful ornaments and jewellery. After about 800 BC iron began to replace bronze as the main metal used to make tools, heralding the beginning of the Iron Age.

What were Bronze Age people’s lives like? Initially the arrival of bronze does not seem to have brought a big change to the way people lived their lives. Bronze Age people lived in small communities. By the later Bronze Age the roundhouse was the main house style. Roundhouses were built from wooden posts and wattle-and-daub walls with a roof of turf or thatch. It seems likely that the population of Britain increased during the Bronze Age with people settling lowland river valleys and beginning to define field systems for agriculture. Towards the end of the Bronze Age, population groups began to combine into the larger groups that became the tribal kingdoms of the Iron Age.

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Bronze Age people increasingly used pottery, particularly the beautifully decorated drinking cups that archaeologists call ‘beakers’. The skill levels involved in making this pottery suggest that it was made by specialist potters. Similarly the metal and stone tools made by Bronze Age people must have been made by specialists. This suggests some level of social organisation, with some people farming the land and producing food and others doing specialists tasks.

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The Bronze Age is also the first time we have evidence for people processing wool in Britain. Archaeologists find spindle whorls, used to spin wool into thread, as well as the stone or clay weights used to weight the warp (vertical) threads on a loom. People would have worn clothes made of wool as well as animal skins. People also wore beautiful jewellery, made of a variety of different materials. There is evidence that they pierced their ears and some archaeologists think it’s very likely they would have had tattoos. People were often buried with grave goods. In some areas, wealthy or important people were buried underneath barrows (mounds of earth) with elaborate grave goods that could include special pottery, bronze daggers and gold and amber jewellery. Archaeologists have found similar burials in the south of England, Norfolk and Brittany in France, suggesting that people in these areas might have been in regular contact. Burying people with special objects suggests both that Bronze Age people might have had religious beliefs and that they had a system of social organisation in which some people were more powerful and important than others. Bronze Age people continued to use and modify the henge monuments of the Neolithic. During the Bronze Age many round barrows were constructed in the area around Stonehenge, some of them deliberately placed on hilltops that were visible from Stonehenge itself suggesting that it remained an important site. Later in the Bronze Age, after about 1500 BC, burial practices changed. Instead of burying the dead in round barrows people began to cremate (burn) their dead and bury them in large open cemeteries behind their settlements. The ashes were buried in specially-made pottery urns which archaeologists call ‘cremation urns’. During the later Bronze Age archaeologists have also found increasing numbers of metalwork hoards, where dozens of bronze weapons are found buried together often in wet or boggy ground. This practice continued through the Iron Age.

What was Yorkshire like in the Bronze Age? There are numerous Bronze Age barrows and standing stones in the Yorkshire region which suggests that the area was reasonably well populated. The Thornborough Henges, known as a Neolithic landscape, remained in use into the Bronze Age. People mined jet from Whitby to use in jewellery and other objects and exchanged it across long distances.

Links British Museum: A Bronze Age burial near Stonehenge www.teachinghistory100.org/objects/mace_head The ‘Amesbury Archer’ – The richest Bronze Age burial found in Britain www.salisburymuseum.org.uk/collections/ stonehenge-prehistory/amesbury-archer www.bbc.co.uk/history/ancient/archaeology/ king_stonehenge_01.shtml The Beaker People Project, University College London www.ucl.ac.uk/archaeology/research/ directory/beaker-people-parkerpearson