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

• 78 • Mike Parker Pearson
different theoretical and empirical perspectives and with different emphases and for various
audiences. The following chapter is a brief outline of the various types of evidence and the ways
in which archaeologists have used them to understand and write about the lives of these vanished
and anonymous people. It adopts the methodology of a contextual analysis, examining the various
threads of evidence independently and also weaving them together.
METALLURGY, METAL AND STONE TOOLS, AND ORNAMENTS
The earliest metal tools in Britain were copper and bronze axes, daggers, awls and halberds
(dagger-shaped blades hafted like axes). A bronze axe, associated with a radiocarbon date of c.
2300 BC, was found just above the primary silts of the Late Neolithic henge at Mount Pleasant,
Dorchester, Dorset (see Chapter 4). However, copper metallurgy in the British Isles seems to
have first developed in Ireland.
The earliest true calendar date for metal tools is 2268–2251 BC, established by
dendrochronology on a wooden trackway at Corlea, in Ireland, the timbers of which were felled
with a metal axe. The introduction of copper, bronze and gold metallurgy to the British Isles has
long been considered to have been associated with people using Beaker pottery. Yet there are
signs that metal items may have arrived earlier; in a hoard of copper axes from Castletown Roche
in Ireland was a continental import of a form that may pre-date the Beaker horizon.
Various chronological schemes have been proposed for metal and stone artefacts within this
period (Burgess 1980; Needham 1988; Roe 1979) (Figure 5.1). There are broad similarities between
Burgess’s eight industrial stages (1980) and Needham’s six metalwork assemblages. Burgess’s
broad, threefold chronology for the Earlier Bronze Age (1980) defines three periods:
• the Mount Pleasant phase (2700–2000 BC) when people used flat axes and Beaker pottery, whilst
inhuming rather than cremating their dead. During this period, an arrangement of Welsh
bluestones was erected at Stonehenge (Stonehenge Phase 3i), followed by the sarsens (Phase 3ii).
• the Overton phase (2000–1700 BC) when people used flanged axes, flat-tanged daggers, Food
Vessels, Collared Urns and Beakers. Some people were buried under mounds with gold and
elaborate grave goods (known as the Wessex I phase). There were minor changes at Stonehenge
(Phase 3v).
• the Bedd Branwen phase (1700–1400 BC) when pottery styles became increasingly regionalized
within Britain. Most people were cremated and there were a few with occasional grave goods
but not of gold (Wessex II burials).
Though backward in terms of the European adoption of metallurgy, Britain and Ireland were
rich in deposits of copper and tin. Early Bronze Age radiocarbon dates for copper extraction
have been obtained from charcoal in mining tip deposits at Mount Gabriel in Ireland (c.1800 BC)
and at Cwmystwyth in Wales (c.1500 BC) (Blick 1991, 51–59). Mineral exploitation probably
began much earlier, but such remains have yet to be found. Similarly, the search is on for Early
Bronze Age tin extraction in Cornwall and Devon. The smelting of copper ores can be achieved
using bellows in small, charcoal-fired, open-bowl furnaces. The molten metal collects in the bottom
in the form of a ‘cake’. The earliest flat axes of copper were made by melting this cake and
pouring the liquid into a single-piece open mould of stone or fired clay. Bronze was made by
adding one part tin to eight parts copper. Two-part moulds enabled the casting of more elaborate
axe and dagger forms. Decoration was also employed, notably on axes (Figure 5.2).
There were certain changes in flint knapping from the Late Neolithic. Although Early Bronze
Age knapping debris, with its relatively short blades, cannot be easily distinguished from Late
Neolithic assemblages, the flintwork includes certain diagnostic items such as thumbnail scrapers,