The Bronze Age

What was it and what effects did it cause to humanity

Bronze Age Britain

Introduction

The beginning of the Bronze Age in Britain can be put around 2,000 BC. Although not certain, it is generally thought that the new bronze tools and weapons identified with this age were brought over from continental Europe. The skulls recovered from burial sites from the Bronze Age are different in shape from Stone Age skulls. This would suggest that new ideas and new blood were brought over from the continent. Stone and bronze can be used together, subject to the availability of both materials. True bronze is a combination of 10% tin and 90% copper. Both materials were readily available in Britain at this time.

Before its entry into Britain, the Bronze Age was in full swing in Europe.The island of Crete was centre for the expansion of the bronze trade to Europe. The Mycenaeans created the finest bronze weapons. They came from southern Russia at around 2,000 BC, and settled in the lowlands of Greece. There they began to trade with the Minoans. They built a large navy, and began to attack nearby lands. Over time they adapted to the Minoan way of life, and eventually, around 1,400 BC, became the major power in the Aegean Sea.

The Beaker people

It is widely thought, although not certain, that bronze was first brought over to Britain by the Bell Beaker folk. They were so named because of their distinctive bell-shaped pottery drinking vessels. They probably came up through the south-west coast of Britain, which at the time had rich deposits of copper and tin.

The Bell Beaker folk readily mixed with any new culture they encountered, including the Neolithic farmers they found in Britain, and Bell beakers have been found in megalithic tombs, with the henge temples of the Neolithics.

They improved the existing temple at Stonehenge, which is proof that they got on well with the original inhabitants, and at Avebury they made another great henge monument. This is a large circular ditch and bank, and within it was a ring of standing stones - although these have now gone. Nearby, at Silbury Hill, stands the largest man-made mound in prehistoric Britain, again thought to have been made by the Beaker people. No burial has been found inside it.

The emergence of the Beaker people in Britain gave rise to what is now termed the Wessex Culture. This is the name given to a number of very rich grave goods under round barrows in southern Britain. The grave goods include well made stone battle axes, metal daggers with elaborately decorated hilts, and precious ornaments of gold and amber - these are some of the loveliest prehistoric objects ever to be found in Britain. Among the golden cups found in the graves, some were found that were so like those of the Mycenae that they are used as examples to prove the existence of trade between Wessex and Greece.

Later Bronze Age

Textile production had also got under way by this time. Women would wear long woollen skirts and short tunics. The men wore knee-length wrap-around skirts, or kilt-like woollens, as well as tunics, cloaks and even one-piece garments. They were also clean-shaven, long-haired and wore round woollen hats.

The standard farming household consisted of two houses, a main living house and an out-house for cooking and textile production. The dead were cremated, and buried in small cemeteries behind each settlement. The large burial sites of the early Bronze Age were a thing of the past, as the land was now needed for agriculture.

The late Bronze Age was also signatured by advanced pottery-making techniques, and more sophisticated weapon-making. The Iron Age that followed it did not happen suddenly, but is thought to have started in Britain around 650 BC and finished around AD 43. Again, the knowledge of iron-making was brought to Britain by Europeans, who had already started to build the first blast furnaces.

To sum up, the period of Bronze Age man lasted for almost 1,500 years, a time that took the giant step from the Stone Age to the Iron Age.