1. Bronze Age
People still used stone tools, but bronze was increasingly used for weapons and tools, and gold for jewellery. Different types of pottery were also introduced.
In the early Bronze Age some people were buried with valuable and exotic things.
Later on, people started to live in round houses and lay out field systems.
The origins of the countryside we see today lie in the later Bronze Age.
Use the first slides as an introduction to help pupils find out more about the Bronze Age in general.
Then explore the map to find out more about specific archaeological sites in Britain.
Historic England education

2. The Bronze Age dates from the first appearance of bronze in around 2200 BC to the introduction of iron around 800 BC.
Bronze is a mixture of copper and tin, making it much harder and more useful than the pure copper found with the Amesbury Archer.
Historic England education

3. Metal objects were usually cast in moulds
Metal objects were usually cast in moulds. They include tools (especially axes), weapons and ornaments. Bronze axes look very different to the stone axes produced in the Mesolithic and Neolithic and were much sharper than stone.
Metal axes were given their shape by making a mould and then pouring molten metal into it.
There were many different shapes of axe head and different ways of fixing them to wooden handles. As well as axes, a range of other items were produced in bronze, including tools (chisels, sickles), weapons (swords, spearheads) and ornaments (pins, rings).
The Great Orme, Llandudno, is the site of a 4000-year-old copper mine. Copper ore (rock rich in metal minerals) was collected on the surface and in deep underground mine shafts. The mines covered an area of at least 240m by 130m, and were up to 70m deep. 6.5km of Bronze Age tunnels have been identified so far. Over 33,000 bone tools and 2400 stone hammers used for mining have been recovered. Conditions would have been very unpleasant in the narrow tunnels.
Britain was also one of the only sources of tin ore in north-west Europe. Tin is essential to make bronze, and is found in Cornwall and Devon. It would have been traded across Europe in the Bronze Age.
QUESTION: Some of the passages in the mines are very narrow, and children may have worked in them. How would you feel about being a Bronze Age copper miner?
QUESTION:
Ask members of your family if they can tell you about any new kinds of technology that have changed their lives?
IMAGE:
Experimental bronzeworking. © Wessex Archaeology
  Bronze Age Metalwork
Historic England education

4. Lots of different types of pottery were used throughout the Bronze Age.
One of the most important – and the earliest - is Beaker pottery, which is usually highly decorated. Beakers are so-called because they are thought to have been used for drinking, possibly beer!
This type of pottery first appeared in the Late Neolithic period and is found across much of western Europe, including in the burial of the Amesbury Archer.
This suggests trade or movement of people across Europe.
In Bronze Age Britain local styles of Beaker pottery developed. Archaeologists mainly find ‘Beaker’ pots in graves, rather than in places where people lived everyday.
Later on, Bronze Age people used other types of pottery, which archaeologists have named after either their shapes (eg Collared Urns), what they may have been used for (eg Food Vessels),
or the places they were discovered (eg Deverel-Rimbury ware).
QUESTION:
If you were to make a Bronze Age pot how would you decorate it and why?
ACTIVITY:
Use clay to make your own ‘Beaker’-shaped pot then add your decorations to it.
IMAGE:
LEFT - Bronze age Beaker [DP158771]
RIGHT - pottery
  Bronze Age pottery
Historic England education

5. In the early Bronze Age human burials were often covered by large circular mounds of earth or stone, known as round barrows.
Many barrows are surrounded by a ditch and in some cases where the mounds have been destroyed by modern ploughing these ring-ditches are all that survive.
Round barrows are very common across many parts of Britain. For example, there are over 350 in the landscape around Stonehenge.
At first most of the people buried under round barrows were buried as whole bodies in a crouched position, sometimes in a coffin. Over time cremation became more common, with the ashes being collected and put in a pottery urn, which was often placed upside down within the barrow.
IMAGES:
Different phases in the construction of Amesbury 51, a round barrow near Stonehenge.
LINKS
Pastscape
  Round Barrows
Use Pastscape to find out if there are any round barrows or ring-ditches near you.
Historic England education

6. The origins of our countryside of villages, fields, hedgerows and trackways lie in the middle part of the Bronze Age, around 1500 BC.
This is when field systems were laid out and the first roundhouses built.
In many areas these small Bronze Age fields have long since been replaced but in some places prehistoric field patterns still survive.
At Halshanger Common, Devon, remains of Bronze Age fields are preserved, with banks running in long parallel lines across the photographs.
The individual fields are then divided within these strips, so they look a bit like brickwork in a wall.
Within the area of the fields on Halshanger Common are seven settlements (villages), the largest with at least 15 stone roundhouses, a type of house typical of the late Bronze Age and Iron Age (see Grimspound).
QUESTION:
Why do you think Bronze Age people divided the land into fields?
IMAGEs:
Air photographs of Halshanger Common, Devon. © Historic England
  Farming and fields
Historic England education

7. Iron Age settlements Seahenge Mold Must Farm and Flag Fen Dover
Click on the red dots to learn more about each location
Seahenge
Mold
Must Farm and Flag Fen
Dover
Near Lewes
Whitehorse Hill
Cliffs End Farm
  Iron Age settlements
Grimspound
Historic England education

8. Iron Age
Iron tools and weapons are found for the first time, while gold and other metals continued to be used for jewellery and ornaments.
Towards the end of the period coins started to be made.
People lived in roundhouses like those of the Bronze Age but settlements became bigger.
Some sites have evidence for defence, such as hillforts and brochs.
Use the first slides as an introduction to help pupils find out more about the Iron Age in general.
Then explore the map to find out more about specific archaeological sites in Britain.
Historic England education

9. The Iron Age dates from the start of the use of iron for tools around 800 BC and ends with the Roman invasion in AD 43.
The end of the Iron Age is the end of prehistory because we start to get written records – history.
Historic England education

10. Iron Age settlements Broch of Gurness Yorkshire Lindow Moss Snettisham
Life in the Iron Age was probably very similar to the late Bronze Age.
People still lived in roundhouses, farmed the land, practised crafts like weaving and traded goods such as pottery, metals and salt.
However, the population was increasing and people lived in larger settlements, sometimes surrounded by circular or rectangular banks and ditches.
In parts of northern and western Britain the houses were built partly of stone and their remains can still be seen (see Carn Euny).
In other areas archaeological excavations have revealed information about how people lived in roundhouses.
Click on the red dots to learn more about each location
QUESTION: Can you imagine living in a house that was round – how would you arrange your belongings?
ACTIVITY: Use some chalk to draw a circle 5m in diameter on the playground – this will help you to imagine living in a roundhouse
Yorkshire
Lindow Moss
Snettisham
Hallaton
Glastonbury Lake Village
Battersea
Carn Euny
Maiden Castle
  Iron Age settlements
Historic England education

11. By the end of the Iron Age Britain was divided into a number of tribal territories. The first Britons whose names we know were tribal rulers at this time, their names recorded by Roman writers or on coins.
After 100 BC southern Britain came increasingly under the influence of the Roman Empire. New types of object started to appear, including wheel-made pottery and coins. There were also new kinds of settlements, especially large ones known as ‘oppida’ (singly ‘oppidum’), which were often enclosed by large ditches.
Examples of oppida include Camulodunum (Colchester) in Essex, Silchester in Hampshire and Stanwick in Yorkshire. They often formed the ‘capitals’ of tribal territories: late Iron Age Britain was divided between a number of different tribes including the Brigantes at Stanwick, the Atrebates at Silchester and the Catuvellauni at Colchester.
Oppida were important trading centres at a time when links to the continent were developing. The British tribal leaders may have enhanced their status by acquiring exotic goods from the Roman Empire.
QUESTION:
What sort of things do you think Iron Age Britons wanted from the Roman Empire, and why?
IMAGE:
Map showing the location of the Oppida mentioned and some of the Iron Age tribes.
Inset: a typical Iron Age coin, showing an ear of corn on one side and a horse on the other.
  Oppida
Historic England education