The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

Chapter Six
The Later Bronze Age
Timothy Champion
INTRODUCTION
The later part of the second millennium BC was a period of major change in Britain and elsewhere
in Europe. The earlier period of the Bronze Age had been characterized by evidence for burials
and ritual monuments, but both of these cease at this time. The tradition of individual burial in
a barrow died out, and in many parts of Britain there is relatively little evidence for human burial
for more than a millennium thereafter. There is also little evidence for any significant activity at
the major ceremonial monuments of the Late Neolithic and Earlier Bronze Age after the middle
of the second millennium BC.
Instead, the focus of archaeological attention turns to the rapidly increasing evidence for
human settlement and for the division and exploitation of the agricultural landscape. There was
a significant change in the nature and organization of settlement, resulting in more substantial
and more visible sites, and traces of them are now found in much greater numbers in many areas
of Britain. Settlements, their structures, and related finds, such as pottery and domestic food
waste, now form one of the two main sources of information about Later Bronze Age societies.
The other main source is finds of metalwork, especially bronze: these are rare in the settlements,
but single finds or collections of items, called hoards, often without any archaeological context,
are very numerous.
The Later Bronze Age was a period of radical change in the nature of prehistoric society. It is
not necessary to think of a new population arriving from elsewhere with new ideas, but rather to
consider a fundamental transformation in the culture of Bronze Age society, with the
reorganization of the physical landscape and the introduction of new forms of social interaction.
CHRONOLOGY
The cessation of the series of burials containing associations of pottery, metalwork and other
items, and the fact that much of the metalwork of the Later Bronze Age is found unassociated
with other material, mean that chronologies have to be constructed in different ways from
previously.
The scheme introduced in the previous chapter can be extended to one final period:
• the Knighton Heath phase (1400–1250 BC): end of the burial sequence, predominantly cremations
with pottery and few other finds; pottery of the Deverel-Rimbury tradition; metalwork of the
Taunton phase.