Chapter 1: The Stone Age and Early Metal Working

The last Ice Age ended about 10,000 years ago. At that time the British Isles formed a peninsula of continental Europe, and the English Channel was a broad plain. As the ice retreated, people and animals from southern Europe travelled across this plain and made their home in the forests that covered Britain. The first people to move back into the UK were nomadic hunter-gatherers. Using tools made from flint, bone, wood, antler and other organic materials they hunted horses, deer, aurochs, wild boar and the few remaining reindeer. They gathered fruits, nuts, wild cereal crops and fungi from the dense woodland covering the landscape whilst living in caves and temporary camps. They bleonged to a period known as the Mesolithic or “Middle Stone Age.” Moving in relatively small extended family groups, the Mesolithic people made use of rivers as much as possible. It is along the banks of these waterways that most of the archaeological evidence of their existence is found. Meanwhile in the Middle East, people began to experiment with methods of controlling their supply of food. This led to the beginning of farming.

Mesolthic hunter-gatherer

Over time the sea rose and the land subsided, and Ireland was separated from Britain. Later the sea flowed into the narrow Strait of Dover and made Britain also an island. New waves of colonists crossed over from the east. The people advanced slowly to the New Stone Age or Neolithic. In this period they mined flints for their weapons and polished them to give a sharp cutting edge. They buried their dead in long or round chambers called barrows and heaped over them mounds of earth and stone. The remains found in these barrows reveal that these people tamed horses, sheep, goats, cattle, dogs, and pigs and grew wheat and barley and, later, flax to make linen.

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Neolithic flint mines

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............Neolithic Burial Chamber (earth cover mound eroded away)................................................................West Kennet Long Barrow entrance

Near to Worcestershire, evidence for human presence during the Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic has been found at several cave shelter sites at Symonds Yat, Hereford. Later Mesolithic flint flakes, microliths, perforated shell beads, food vessel pottery and animal bones dating to approximately 6,900 BC have been recorded. Within Worcestershire, the site of a henge monument near Bredon Hill has recently (2004) been investigated. Human burial pits, animal bones, stone tools and pottery were all discovered at the site. These are believed to date to between 2,700BC to 2,000BC. As a result of the field walking in Wichenford, a flint arrow head and Neolithic handaxe have been found. The presence of ‘napped’ flint in an otherwise flint-free area is evidence of trading activity.

Neolithic Handaxes

By about 11,000 BC, people had discovered how to make pottery. Before that time, they used animal skins or bark containers to hold water. To boil water, early cooks had to drop hot stones into the water, because they could not hang animal skins or bark over a fire. Pottery containers enabled people to hold and boil water easily. After the rise of agriculture, people used pottery to store grain and other food.

The first farmers originated in areas where there were enough wild plants and animals to provide food for large populations. At the end of the Ice Age, the climate became warmer and affected the food supply. New plants, such as grains, replaced older plants. Today we believe that Upper Palaeolithic people were able to remain in permanent settlements because they discovered how to control these new plants and increase the amount of food in their area. They learned that they could plant seeds from the plants that they ate. They also learned that they could domesticate animals, perhaps by capturing young ones from the wild and rearing them. In time, people began to depend on these planted crops and domestic animals for a steady supply of food.

Neolithic farmers had a way of life that differed greatly from that of Upper Palaeolithic people. In some ways, farming made life easier. It provided a steady supply of food and enabled people to stay in one place for a long time. As a result, people often settled in permanent villages for years at a time. However, farmers also had to work longer and harder than did hunters and gatherers.

Between 8000 and 3000 BC, people from what is now Spain and from Brittany in northwestern France settled on hilltops in southern England. These peoples made flint tools, grew crops, made pottery, and raised cattle and sheep.

'Primative' type Sheep

Prehistoric farmers set up villages near their fields and lived there as long as their crops grew well. Most fields produced good crops for only a few years. The land then became unproductive because continuous planting used up nutrients in the soil. The early farmers did not know about fertilizers that could replace these nutrients. They shifted their crops to new fields until none of the land near their village was fertile. Then they moved to a new area and built another village. In this way, farmers settled many new areas.

Neolithic people made inventions and discoveries at an even faster rate than did the people of the Upper Palaeolithic. Early farmers developed a number of useful tools. These implements included sickles to cut grain, millstones to grind flour, and polished stone axe heads. They also learned to build fences to confine and protect their livestock.

No one knows when people made the first objects out of metal. But metals became important only after metalworkers learned to make bronze, an alloy of copper and tin, and a substance hard and durable enough to make lasting tools. People of Mesopotamia (now southeastern Iraq) made bronze as early as 3500 BC but in the British Isles another 1000 years were to elapse until bronze appeared. The new technology was brought to Britain by the 'Beaker People'; so called after the destinctive style of pottery they introduced. These people came from the Rhine and Danube river regions of mainland Europe. They built large circular monuments with stones. Scholars believe these monuments were religious structures. Stonehenge, the most famous monument, still stands near Salisbury, Wiltshire.

Stonehenge

In the near east people continued to use bronze until sometime between 1500 and 1000 BC when iron became common in that region before spreading over much of Asia, Africa, and Europe. The great advantage of iron was its cheapness, because iron ore is abundant and widespread. In the Iron Age, carpenters and masons abandoned the crude tools of the Bronze Age. Craft workers could then affordmetal tools, and made wide use of iron, including iron ploughs. The Bronze Age in most regions overlapped an earlier Stone Age and a later Iron Age, because people did not stop using one material all at once.

Evidence of early human activity in Holt and Little Witley comes mainly from archaeological digs carried out in the 1970's. These digs were carried out in advance of gravel extraction to the west of Holt Castle and around Top Barn Farm. The oldest artifacts recovered were late Neolithic flints and pottery possibly dating to about 2000 BC. Sherds (pieces of pottery) from the 'Beaker' period (c2000-1900 BC), when beaker shaped pots were often buried with the dead, were also found.

Beaker Period pottery

The bulk of the archaeological evidence related to the early Bronze Age (c1700-1450 BC) and consisted of traces of low barrows and enclosures with associated cremations. Although there was a concentration of these features no dwellings were identified. In 1844 a bronze axe was found during dredging operations in the Severn below the site of Holt Lock. Perhaps it was a ritual offering to the river, made at a time when natural water features were believed to have divine powers?

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.........................................................................................Bronze Age pot.......................................................................Bronze Axes and Spear

During excavations at Holt, Iron Age (1500 BC - 40 AD) finds were less in evidence although crop-marks indicated iron-age farming activity and a rectangular enclosure was partly uncovered. A few sherds from that period have been recovered at other times, along with an iron pin also from the area of Holt Lock. Little Witley's chapel once had a circular graveyard suggesting that it was based on an Iron Age barrow. With the proximity of the Iron Age Hill fort at Woodbury Hill, Little Witley could have been the site of an Iron Age village.

During the Iron Age, many inventions, such as the alphabet, came into general use. People also began to use coins. Improved trade, transportation, and communication helped civilisation expand and progress. The British Isles were first settled by nomadic tribes who entered an uninhabited land. The first invaders of England were the Celts. They used iron and mined tin. They also made woollen cloth, which they dyed bright colours. The Celts traded with the Gauls in what is now France and with Celtic tribes in Ireland. They began crossing the English Channel about 500 BC .

Iron Age Metal Working