Bronze Age Britain

The Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600–1150 cal BC) in Britain is traditionally understood to represent a major funerary transition. This is a transformation from a heterogeneous funerary rite, largely encompassing inhumations and cremations in burial mounds and often accompanied by grave goods, to a homogeneous and unadorned cremation-based practice. Despite a huge expansion in the number of well excavated, radiocarbon dated, and osteologically analysed sites in the last three decades, current interpretations of Middle Bronze Age cremation burials still rely upon a seminal paper by Ellison (1980), which proposed that they comprise and represent an entire community. This paper analyses 378 cremation sites containing at least 3133 burials which represent all those that can be confidently dated to the Middle Bronze Age in Britain. The new analysis demonstrates that relatively few sites can be characterised as community cemeteries and that there are substantially more contemporary settlement sites, though few contemporary settlements are in close proximity to the cemeteries. The identifiable characteristics of cremation-based funerary practices are consistent across Britain with little evidence for social differentiation at the point of burial. It is also evident that only a minority of the population received a cremation burial. There is a substantial decrease in archaeologically visible funerary activity from the preceding Early Bronze Age (c. 2200–1600 cal BC) and a further decrease in the proceeding Late Bronze Age (c. 1150–800 cal BC) in Britain. This is comparable in form, and partially in sequence, to Bronze Age funerary practices in Ireland and several regions in Northwest Europe.

The discovery of 373 intact and broken tin-bronze socketed axes accompanied by 404 fragments in four pits at Langton Matravers collectively represents one of the largest hoards found to date in prehistoric Britain and Ireland. They were very probably never meant to be used as axes as they contain very high levels of tin.  Many were poorly finished with the majority still containing their casting cores. The axes are typologically dated to the Llyn Fawr metalwork phase (c. 800-600 BC) and span the Bronze Age/Iron Age transition, when the production, circulation and deposition of bronze appears to have been substantially reduced throughout north-west Europe. By placing the Langton Matravers hoard(s) in a broader metallurgical, material and archaeological context, existing theories for this phenomenon, such as the preference for iron, a collapse in bronze supply, or the sharp devaluation of a social or ritual ‘bronze standard’ are evaluated. It is proposed that the Langton Matravers axes belong to a short phase in the centuries-long processes underlying the changing roles of bronze and iron.

This paper is a first attempt to synthesise work on gender in British prehistory and aims to discover something of the nature of prehistoric gender identities from the archaeology. Recognising a failure in British settlement studies to move beyond unenlightened ideas surrounding sex as binary, with female as domestic; we turn instead to the mortuary evidence in an attempt to recognise specifically prehistoric gender identities through graveside practices and artefacts associated with sexed bodies. In the later 20th century, British prehistoric studies exchanged an over-reliance on functionalist and historical interpretation for an over-reliance instead on anthropology. From reading in feminist theory, it is now clear that we cannot project our assumptions about sex and gender back onto the past, as has so often been the case in archaeology in the creation of imaginary reconstructions of gendered labour in prehistoric settlements.

As critical archaeologists, we can again attempt an objective, contextual study of our material evidence – working from the ground up, in our rejection of top-down social modelling and the uncritical use of analogy. As part of this trajectory, the present authors turn to gender archaeology in the hope of identifying distinctly prehistoric gender identities in the mortuary evidence – Brück’s (1999) ‘prehistoric rationality’. As such, the paper necessarily focuses on those periods whose traditions preserved skeletal material: the Earlier Neolithic long barrows and Chalcolithic/Early Bronze Age round barrows of Wessex (central southern Britain); and the Middle Iron Age inhumations of southern and eastern Britain , in its aim to discover something of the nature of prehistoric gender identities in these periods.

Radiocarbon dates have been obtained from a log-coffin burial excavated in 1864 by Canon William Greenwell from a ditched round barrow at Scale House, near Rylstone, North Yorkshire. The oak tree-trunk coffin had contained an extended body wrapped in a wool textile. The body had entirely decayed and there were no other extant grave goods. In the absence of other grave goods, Greenwell attributed the burial to the Bronze Age because it lay under a ditched round barrow and had similarities with log-coffin burials from Britain and Denmark. This attribution has not been questioned since 1864 despite a number of early medieval log-coffin burials subsequently being found in northern Britain. Crucially, the example excavated near Quernmore, Lancashire in 1973, was published as Bronze Age but subsequently radiocarbon dated to ad 430–970. The Rylstone coffin and textile were radiocarbon dated to confirm that the burial was Early Bronze Age and not an early medieval coffin inserted into an earlier funerary monument. Unexpectedly, the dates were neither Early Bronze Age nor early medieval but c. 800 bc, the cusp of the Bronze Age–Iron Age transition in Britain. The burial at Rylstone is, therefore, one of only two sites in Britain, and is unparalleled elsewhere in north-western Europe at a time when disposal of the dead was primarily through dispersed cremated or unburnt disarticulated remains.

The Later Prehistory of North-West Europe provides a unique, up-to-date, and easily accessible synthesis of the later prehistoric archaeology of north-west Europe, transcending political and language barriers that can hinder understanding. By surveying changes in social forms, landscape organization, monument types, and ritual practices over six millennia, the volume reassesses the prehistory of north-west Europe from the late Mesolithic to the end of the pre-Roman Iron Age. It explores how far common patterns of social development are apparent across north-west Europe, and whether there were periods when local differences were emphasized instead. In relation to this, it also examines changes through time in the main axes of contact between the various regions of continental Europe, Britain, and Ireland.

Key to the volume's broad scope is its focus on the vast mass of new evidence provided by recent development-led excavations. The authors collate data that has been gathered on thousands of sites across Britain, Ireland, northern France, the Low Countries, western Germany, and Denmark, using sources including unpublished 'grey literature' reports. The results challenge many aspects of previous narratives of later prehistory, allowing the volume to present a distinctively fresh perspective.

Several Middle Bronze Age dirks and rapiers from Scotland are fully published for the first time; these include relatively recent discoveries from Loch Glashan, Argyll, and Skares, Ayrshire, and previously unpublished 19th-century finds from Blair Drummond, Perthshire, and Poolewe, Rossshire. Attention is also drawn to several other dirks and rapiers from Scotland additional to the corpus of ; the net result is not only a reinforcement but also a significant widening of the Scottish distribution of such weaponry.

Reports excavations during 2005 which uncovered an Early Neolithic pit cluster overlain by a later Bronze Age field system. A Late Iron Age ditch and part of a rectilinear enclosure of possible medieval date were also found, together with an undated cremation burial and two undated posthole alignments.

A series of archaeological investigations, carried out in 2009 and 2010 along the route of the Sittingbourne Northern Relief Road, identified a multi-period site dating from the earlier prehistoric to the Roman periods.
While a small assemblage of residual Palaeolithic and Mesolithic/Early Neolithic flint artefacts represented the oldest activity, the earliest archaeological features were Neolithic/Early Bronze Age pits, waterlogged alluvial deposits and an occupation horizon. A Middle Bronze Age ring ditch with central cremation burial was found on Kemsley Down and was probably contemporary with the Bronze Age settlement previously identified nearby at the Kemsley Fields site. The ring ditch seems to have remained a landscape feature for a considerable time with Late Iron Age field boundary ditches respecting its location and finds of Roman pottery from the upper fills. 
The Late Bronze Age/Early Iron Age period was poorly represented although recovery of pyramidal loom weights suggest that a domestic building was probably in the near vicinity. The upper alluvial deposits in the Kemsley Marsh were broadly dated to the Iron Age. In the Late Iron Age/early Roman period a field-system and possible enclosed settlement were established on Kemsley Down and the majority of finds and features dated to this period. The enclosure was recut and expanded northwards on at least two occasions. The settlement was ideally located on the higher and drier land overlooking the creek with the opportunity to exploit the resources of both the marsh and the surrounding fields.
By the 2nd century AD, the settlement was abandoned and the area by the ring ditch used as a small cremation cemetery. In addition, a salt-evaporation hearth or saltern was also identified on the edge of the marsh. Considering the importance of the Roman salt-production industry in the Thames Estuary, surprisingly few sites have been subject to modern archaeological excavation techniques, and this saltern is a rare find in the region. In a wider context, the possible exploitation of the natural resources of the foreshore being controlled by the local villa estates is explored.     
 

My paper will deal with an iconography of ideal warrior in the Bronze Age; should we treat it symbolically and ideologically or should we see it as a consequence of continental climatic changes. Should we differentiate between the warrior and the army? And what does it mean to be a warrior? What is warriorship’s importance for the Bronze Age? I will try to explain these and many more questions by looking at the discussed period in a wide spectrum.

An old and previously unknown photograph allows us to rediscover a missing bronze spearhead found in the
late nineteenth century on a site dubbed “Castro Nemenzo”, a poetic name created by Eduardo Pondal for an
Iron Age hill fort located at an unspecified site somewhere in the northwestern tip of Galicia. Its dimensions and
form make this spearhead a scarce and interesting exemplar of weapons assignable to the beginning of the Late
Bronze Age in northwest Iberia and also makes clear its filiation with Atlantic metallurgy, probably a specific
British or Irish concept, spearheads with a rapier-shaped blade.

Discussion of a probable 10th c. BC-lead alloy weight found in close association with one of the inhumations in the main burial pit at Cliffs End. Although no morphological comparisons have been found, a possible link to weight systems in use in the Circum-Alpine region is discussed.

This paper reviews the evidence from two barrow excavations carried out by Hubert Savory in south east Wales: Sant-y-Nyll and Mount Pleasant, Newton Nottage. Drawing on the Dwelling perspective of Tim Ingold and reassessment of archive records and the artefacts from both sites, it is suggested that two different ways of dwelling can be identified at different dates. It is suggested that Mount Pleasant was initially a Neolithic round mound with a central open space before being re-used for burial in the Early Bronze Age. By contrast Sant-y-Nyll seems to have been a Early Bronze Age settlement site with at least three relatively slight circular buildings which was then covered by a round barrow.