2200-800 BC Bronze Age

During this period tools, weapons and ornaments were made of bronze – an alloy of copper and tin. The dominance of bronze lasted until about 800 BC when there was the first significant production of iron. Even so, there was a phase of overlap with continuing use of bronze for some tools and weapons until after 700 BC.

It is now thought that there were many and substantial changes in the character of society over this long period. Everyday life was conducted against a ritual framework which helped people understand their place in the limited world they knew.

People were buried beneath round barrows and cairns – thousands are known to have dotted the landscape. This burial tradition continued the burial practice of the late Neolithic Beaker-users and at first, Beaker styles of pot were still dominant. Soon, however, entirely new pots emerged for funerary and domestic use.

Most people occupied small individual farmsteads with occasional clusters of dwellings. They cleared woodland and altered the landscape by creating field systems using low stone and earth walls. There were a few high status sites enclosed or defended by stout earthworks (‘ringworks’), but even these were not villages. Towards the end of the Bronze Age many hilltops were occupied, or used as special places for metalworking, but hillforts were rarely built around them.