2200-800 BC Bronze Age

The landscape of central England is exceptionally varied with broad valleys, ridges of hills, and boggy plains. Large rivers such as the Severn, the Trent and the Thames, as well as numerous smaller rivers flow through the region and out into the seas to the east and west.

Large parts of this zone forming the ‘Midland Plain’ have traditionally been regarded as having been a backwater during the Bronze Age, but recent surveys and excavations are beginning to reveal much more. Though very little is known regarding political or religious boundaries, the local and regional patterns in settlement, monuments and objects imply that groups of people lived in close communication with each other along river valleys and their environs. There is, however, little evidence for a single regional identity in central England. The communities appear instead to relate more to the various neighbouring regions than to each other. For example, the upper Thames Valley had strong connections with Wessex or with the lower Thames Valley at different times. Meanwhile the western Midlands probably belonged to a community which straddled the modern Welsh/English border.