Bronze Age Britain Research Articles

A Catalogue of British Bronze Age Axes, Including Basic Typology, Compositional Analyses and Associated Radiocarbon Dates

A Catalogue of British Bronze Age Axes, Including Basic Typology, Compositional Analyses and Associated Radiocarbon Dates

Holme I (Seahenge) and Holme II: ritual responses to climate change in Early Bronze Age Britain

Holme I and II were contemporary, adjacent Early Bronze Age (EBA) oak-timber enclosures exposed intertidally at Holme-next-the-sea, Norfolk, England, in 1998. Holme I enclosed a central upturned tree-stump, its function and intent unknown. Holme II is thought a mortuary structure. Both are proposed here best explained as independent ritual responses to reverse a period of severe climate deterioration recorded before 2049 BC when their timbers were felled. Holme I is thought erected on the summer-solstice, when the cuckoo traditionally stopped singing, departing to the ‘Otherworld’. It replicated the cuckoo’s supposed overwintering quarters: a tree-hole or the ‘bowers of the Otherworld’ represented by the tree-stump, remembered in folklore as ‘penning-the-cuckoo’ where a cuckoo is confined to keep singing and maintain summer. The cuckoo symbolised male-fertility being associated with several Indo-European goddesses of fertility that deified Venus - one previously identified in EBA Britain. Some mortal consorts of these goddesses appear to have been ritually sacrificed at Samhain. Holme II may be an enclosure for the body of one such ‘sacral king’. These hypotheses are considered, using abductive reasoning, as ‘inferences to the best explanations’ from the available evidence. They are supported with environmental data, astronomic and biological evidence, regional folklore, toponymy, and an ethnographic analogy with indigenous Late Iron Age practices that indirect evidence indicates were undertaken in EBA Britain. Cultural and religious continuity is supported by textual sources, the material record and ancient DNA (aDNA) studies.

Living with the dead: mummification and post-mortem treatment in Bronze Age Britain

A long-recognised problem in British prehistory is the replacement of formal cemeteries and burials from 1600 bce onwards by deposits with disarticulated human remains, many of them found on settlements. At the Bronze Age settlement site of Cladh Hallan in the Outer Hebrides the human remains include cremation deposits, inhumations, disarticulated bones and body parts of formerly mummified remains recombined as composite skeletons. These mortuary practices, including exhumation, curation and reburial, reveal an intimate relationship between the living and the dead. The burial of mummies beneath house floors and the deposition of other human remains within Cladh Hallan’s roundhouses demonstrate how dwellings were places of spiritual and cosmological meaning as well as practical utility. While later Bronze Age mortuary practices generally provide little indication of the social inequalities apparent in other lines of evidence, the practice of mummification may have served as an indicator of social status.

Materials in movement: gold and stone in process in the Upton Lovell G2a burial

Excavated over two centuries ago, the Upton Lovell G2a ‘Wessex Culture’ burial has held a prominent place in research on Bronze Age Britain. In particular, was it the grave of a ‘shaman’ or a metalworker? We take a new approach to the grave goods, employing microwear analysis and scanning electron microscopy to map a history of interactions between people and materials, identifying evidence for the presence of Bronze Age gold on five artefacts, four for the first time. Advancing a new materialist approach, we identify a goldworking toolkit, linking gold, stone and copper objects within a chaîne opératoire, concluding that modern categorisations of these materials miss much of their complexity.

The Ambivalent Dead: Curation, Excarnation and Complex Post-mortem Trajectories in Middle and Late Bronze Age Britain

This paper sets out the results of radiocarbon, histological, and contextual analysis of human remains from non-mortuary contexts in Middle and Late Bronze Age Britain. In the latter period in particular, human bone (much of it fragmentary and disarticulated) has frequently been recovered from settlement contexts and from other locations, such as waterholes, across the wider landscape. However, the source and post-mortem trajectories of such finds are poorly understood. The results of our analyses indicate that some of these finds come from primary burials while others were the result of post-mortem processes such as excarnation. Certain fragments appear to have been curated for lengthy periods of time but there is much less evidence for deliberate curation of bone than there is in Early Bronze Age graves, although other forms of manipulation, such as cutting and shaping of bone fragments, have been recorded. In contrast to the Early Bronze Age, where it has been argued that curated bones may have belonged to venerated ancestors, some of the individuals from the sites discussed in this paper had suffered violent deaths, suggesting that bones selected for manipulation, curation, and deposition may have belonged to a variety of different categories of person.

Direct detection of natural selection in Bronze Age Britain.

We developed a novel method for efficiently estimating time-varying selection coefficients from genome-wide ancient DNA data. In simulations, our method accurately recovers selective trajectories and is robust to misspecification of population size. We applied it to a large data set of ancient and present-day human genomes from Britain and identified seven loci with genome-wide significant evidence of selection in the past 4500 yr. Almost all of them can be related to increased vitamin D or calcium levels, suggesting strong selective pressure on these or related phenotypes. However, the strength of selection on individual loci varied substantially over time, suggesting that cultural or environmental factors moderated the genetic response. Of 28 complex anthropometric and metabolic traits, skin pigmentation was the only one with significant evidence of polygenic selection, further underscoring the importance of phenotypes related to vitamin D. Our approach illustrates the power of ancient DNA to characterize selection in human populations and illuminates the recent evolutionary history of Britain.

The Power of Relics: The Curation of Human Bone in British Bronze Age Burials

In this article, the authors examine radiocarbon, histo-taphonomic, and contextual evidence for the deliberate curation, manipulation, and redeposition of human bone in British Bronze Age mortuary contexts. New radiocarbon dates and histological analyses are combined with existing data to explore the processes and practices that resulted in the incorporation of ‘relic’ fragments of bone in later graves, including evidence for the deliberate re-opening of previous burials and for funerary treatments such as excarnation and mummification. In some cases, fragments of human bone were curated outside the mortuary context. The authors consider what the treatment of human remains reveals about mortuary complexity in the Bronze Age, about relations between the living and the dead, and about attitudes to the body and concepts of the self.

Weight regulation in British and Irish Bronze Age gold objects: a reanalysis and reinterpretation

Sophisticated metrological systems were common in the European Bronze Age and mass-regulation has been argued for various classes of object, including gold artefacts. A recent study published in Antiquity used Cosine Quantogram Analysis to demonstrate mass-regulation in a small sample of gold objects from Britain, Ireland and France. Since then, substantial quantities of new data from British Bronze Age gold objects have been collated. Here, the author presents the results of Cosine Quantogram Analysis on nearly 1000 such objects—the largest sample analysed to date. The results demonstrate that, even though some regularities can be discerned, mass-regulation is no longer a tenable interpretation of gold objects from Bronze Age Britain.

Ancient DNA at the edge of the world: Continental immigration and the persistence of Neolithic male lineages in Bronze Age Orkney

Orkney was a major cultural center during the Neolithic, 3800 to 2500 BC. Farming flourished, permanent stone settlements and chambered tombs were constructed, and long-range contacts were sustained. From ∼3200 BC, the number, density, and extravagance of settlements increased, and new ceremonial monuments and ceramic styles, possibly originating in Orkney, spread across Britain and Ireland. By ∼2800 BC, this phenomenon was waning, although Neolithic traditions persisted to at least 2500 BC. Unlike elsewhere in Britain, there is little material evidence to suggest a Beaker presence, suggesting that Orkney may have developed along an insular trajectory during the second millennium BC. We tested this by comparing new genomic evidence from 22 Bronze Age and 3 Iron Age burials in northwest Orkney with Neolithic burials from across the archipelago. We identified signals of inward migration on a scale unsuspected from the archaeological record: As elsewhere in Bronze Age Britain, much of the population displayed significant genome-wide ancestry deriving ultimately from the Pontic-Caspian Steppe. However, uniquely in northern and central Europe, most of the male lineages were inherited from the local Neolithic. This suggests that some male descendants of Neolithic Orkney may have remained distinct well into the Bronze Age, although there are signs that this had dwindled by the Iron Age. Furthermore, although the majority of mitochondrial DNA lineages evidently arrived afresh with the Bronze Age, we also find evidence for continuity in the female line of descent from Mesolithic Britain into the Bronze Age and even to the present day.

Copper Mining in the Bronze Age at Mynydd Parys, Anglesey, Wales

The Bronze Age in Britain is now a term often used to include both the first use of copper c. 2400 bc and also tin-bronze from c. 2100 bc, all of which required the extensive use of copper. Prehistoric mining for this metal has been identified in surface and underground workings in Parys Mine, Mynydd Parys, Anglesey, although almost all of the surface workings are now obscured by the extensive deep spoil from more recent mining in the industrial period. These copper-bearing ores are in bedded lodes, together with some intruded vein deposits. The Bronze Age workings have been exposed underground where they have been intersected by the early 19th century industrial workings on and above the 16 fathom and 20 fathom levels in the Parys Mine. Spoil exposures contain stone hammers (‘mauls’), wood fragments, and charcoal; samples of the latter have been radiocarbon dated with chronological modelling suggesting activity took place in the first half of the 2nd millennium cal bc. Although relatively limited in extent, these important prehistoric mining sites are among the earliest found in the UK. They have survived due to their protection from surface erosion and limited accessibility.

Tales from the Supplementary Information: Ancestry Change in Chalcolithic–Early Bronze Age Britain Was Gradual with Varied Kinship Organization

Large-scale archaeogenetic studies of people from prehistoric Europe tend to be broad in scope and difficult to resolve with local archaeologies. However, accompanying supplementary information often contains useful finer-scale information that is comprehensible without specific genetics expertise. Here, we show how undiscussed details provided in supplementary information of aDNA papers can provide crucial insight into patterns of ancestry change and genetic relatedness in the past by examining details relating to a >90 per cent shift in the genetic ancestry of populations who inhabited Chalcolithic and Early Bronze Age Britain (c. 2450–1600bc). While this outcome was certainly influenced by movements of communities carrying novel ancestries into Britain from continental Europe, it was unlikely to have been a simple, rapid process, potentially taking up to 16 generations, during which time there is evidence for the synchronous persistence of groups largely descended from the Neolithic populations. Insofar as genetic relationships can be assumed to have had social meaning, identification of genetic relatives in cemeteries suggests paternal relationships were important, but there is substantial variability in how genetic ties were referenced and little evidence for strict patrilocality or female exogamy.

Ancient DNA, kinship and relational identities in Bronze Age Britain

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Thinking outside the cist: interpreting a unique artefact assemblage from an Early Bronze Age burial on the Isle of Man

Recent analysis of Early Bronze Age human remains from Staarvey Farm on the Isle of Man has revealed a rare bone knife pommel and 20 other bone objects, offering insight into the importance of bone ornaments and artefact fittings at this time. This article adopts a relational typological approach to analyse the Staarvey burial and comparable assemblages, identifying patterns in the deposition of knife pommels in central and southern Britain. In exploring regional interaction in Early Bronze Age Britain and Ireland, the authors refine and move beyond traditional typologies to trace types of both objects and practice. This approach allows them to consider multiple, overlapping spheres of funerary practice and their relation to identities at different regional scales.

Death is not the end: radiocarbon and histo-taphonomic evidence for the curation and excarnation of human remains in Bronze Age Britain

Cremated and unburnt human remains have been recovered from a variety of British Bronze and earliest Iron Age archaeological contexts (c. 2500–600 BC). Chronological modelling of 189 new and extant radiocarbon dates from a selection of these deposits provides evidence for the curation of human remains for an average of two generations following death, while histological analysis of bone samples indicates mortuary treatment involving both excarnation and the exhumation of primary burials. Curated bones came from people who had been alive within living or cultural memory, and their power probably derived from relationships between the living and the dead.

The Use and Significance of Early Bronze Age Stone Battle-axes and Axe-hammers from Northern Britain and the Isle of Man

The perforated stone battle-axes and axe-hammers of Early Bronze Age Britain have been used either to interpret the status of individuals they were buried with or have been overlooked; this is especially the case with axe-hammers. Previous understandings have assumed battle-axes were purely ceremonial, while the rougher axe-hammers were neither functional nor prestigious, being too large and too crude to be prestige items. Studies of the 20th century were focused on creating a typology and understanding the manufacture and petrological sources of the stone, concluding that haphazard exploitation of stone was used to create a variety of different shapes of both implements. This paper revisits the question of how these artefacts were used. It presents the results of the first large-scale application of use-wear analysis to British Early Bronze Age battle-axes and axe-hammers, from northern Britain and the Isle of Man. Combining the results of the wear analysis with experimental archaeology and contextual analysis, it is argued that these objects were functional tools, some of which saw prolonged use that might have spanned multiple users. The evidence shows that the few implements found in burial contexts were both functional and symbolic; their inclusion in burial contexts drawing upon relational links which developed through the itineraries of these objects. It is also apparent that use and treatment were similar across all types of battle-axe and axe-hammer, with some regional variation in the deposition of axe-hammers in south-west Scotland. It is concluded that battle-axes and axe-hammers had varied and multiple roles and significances and that it is possible to discover what each artefact was used for by deploying a use-wear analysis methodology.

Boom and bust in Bronze Age Britain: major copper production from the Great Orme mine and European trade, c. 1600–1400 BC

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Relational Identities and Other-Than-Human Agency in Archaeology

Relational Identities and Other-Than-Human Agency in Archaeology

Scales, weights and weight-regulated artefacts in Middle and Late Bronze Age Britain

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The social organisation of metalworking in southern England during the Beaker period and Bronze Age: absence of evidence or evidence of absence?

This paper attempts to consider the social dimensions of metalworking during the Beaker period and Bronze Age in southern England. However, any attempt to discuss the social context of metalworking in these periods, i.e. who was working metals and where these activities occurred, is confronted with an extremely low evidence base of excavated archaeological sites where metalworking is known to have taken place. This lack of data and subsequent understanding of metalworking locations stands in stark contrast to the thousands of Beaker and Bronze Age metal artefacts housed in museum archives across Britain. These metal artefacts bear witness to the ability of people in Beaker and Bronze Age societies in Britain, and particularly southern England, to obtain, transform and use metals since the introduction of copper at c.2450 BC. Such metal artefacts have been subject to detailed analytical programmes, which have revealed information on the supply and recycling of metals. Likewise, there have also been significant advances in our understanding of the prehistoric mining of metals across the British Isles, with Beaker and Bronze Age mines identified in locations such as Ross Island (Ireland), the Great Orme (UK) and Alderley Edge (UK). Consequently, there is detailed archaeological knowledge about the two ends of the metalworking spectrum: the obtaining of the metal ores from the ground and the finished artefacts. However, the evidence for who was working metals and where is almost completely lacking. This paper discusses the archaeological evidence of the location of metalworking areas in these periods and dissects the reasons why so few have been found within archaeological excavation, with the evidence for early metallurgy likely to be slight and ambiguous, and possibly not identifiable as metalworking remains during excavation. Suggestions are made as to where such metalworking activities could have taken place in the Beaker period and Bronze Age, and what techniques can be applied to discover some of this evidence of metalworking activity, to allow access to the social dimensions of early metalworking and metalworkers.

Reassessing Community Cemeteries: Cremation Burials in Britain during the Middle Bronze Age (c.1600–1150 calbc)

The Middle Bronze Age (c. 1600–1150 calbc) 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 calbc) and a further decrease in the proceeding Late Bronze Age (c. 1150–800 calbc) in Britain. This is comparable in form, and partially in sequence, to Bronze Age funerary practices in Ireland and several regions in North-west Europe.