Bronze Age

Early Bronze Age

4,700 - 3,700 years ago

A new form of burial rite, the so-called Beaker burials, began to appear around 4700 years ago. These are crouched inhumations accompanied by a particular pottery form known as a beaker and covered by a small round earthen mound.

An good example of this type of burial is Shrewton, Wiltshire., which has been dated to approximately 2600 BC

Above: Beaker from a male barrow burial. Gravelly Guy, Stanton Harcourt, Oxon. © Oxford Archaeology

The artefacts found in these burials tend to be much plainer than the spectacular items, such as the jewellery or metal found in some of the 'Wessex culture' barrows of the later Early Bronze Age.

Indeed in his book "Fragments from Antiquity", John Barrett suggests that artefacts found in Beaker graves would not have seemed particularly impressive at all at the funeral, and that the procession to the burial site and the subsequent raising of a mound may have been more important acts.

Frequently infact Beaker artefacts were hidden from view in the grave. At Hemp Knoll, a bone belt ring was hidden beneath the dead man's right thigh And his wristguard may have been hidden by the shroud. Only the Beaker may have been on display when the coffin was open, yet it disappeared once the lid was replaced. Even copper daggers - where they occur in Beaker graves - were typically concealed. In a barrow from the Shrewton barrow cemetery near Stonehenge, for example, the dagger was wrapped in mosses upon burial.

The question must be asked why were these objects buried at all, if only to be hidden? Possibly this shows that this was indeed a ritual of passage rather than a display of worldly power and wealth. These goods may have been considered items that the dead would need in the next life or somehow symbolically marking the end of the persons existence in this life.

The earliest examples of these 'beaker' burials tended to be situated some distance away from the earlier communal monuments and could represent a change in belief away from the community of the dead to a more personal view of the other world.

Later however, the earlier monuments began to attract cemeteries of round barrows - more than 260 are known within a two-mile radius of Stonehenge

The creation of these sacred landscapes seem to indicate that while the burials were individual, perhaps reflecting a change in the understanding of how the individual travels to the other land, the community of the dead was still central to the living community.

Late Bronze Age

5,000 to 2,600 years ago

During this period the Sacred landscapes were abandoned or reordered. Cremated remains were placed in pottery urns and buried under pre-existing mounds as secondary burials. Sometimes they are accompanied by smaller 'food vessel' urns. New mounds or cairns after 3800 years ago were considerably smaller than previously.

The archaeological evidence for this period suggests that there was a move away from the dead being a major part of the living community and that they were no longer at the center of life. The "landscape of the dead was replaced by a landscape of the living".

In the Late Bronze Age the practice of cremation continued, but after 3000 years ago ashes were deposited in shallow pits without a pottery vessel, although they may have been wrapped in perishable materials. By 2800 years ago, cremation had virtually disappeared. Very little is known about the disposal of the dead in this period.

An archaeological mystery is how the dead were 'disposed of' in the British late Bronze Age. In the Middle Bronze Age period, the usual rite was cremation, followed by burial in either a flat cemetery or barrow. From the end of this period to the Iron Age, however, no form of ritual deposition of the dead has been apparent. At least none that follows the established pattern of singular or communal burial in ritual sites.

In East Anglia, especially around Methwold, Burials in peat and fenland areas are known and a few of the intact skeletons of this period show evidence for violent ends. Also human skulls are found in association water deposits of weapons in and around the Thames, perhaps suggesting a move towards sacred water rites and the rise of local deities, genius loci, and the veneration of 'water' as a gateway to the other world.

Human remains are not of course totally absent from sites of this era. Bones have been found in contexts not suggestive of ritual burial, e.g. in places which symbolically emphasise cultural identity, boundaries or continuation of ancient sites. At Thwing in Yorkshire a single cremation deposit lay at the centre of a large and important building, implying perhaps a dedicatory burial.

Similarly, human remains are often found in boundary ditches, especially near entrances, such as at Harting Beacon, Sussex, where a skull lay in one end of the boundary ditch outside the entrance. Also, at Pimperne Down, Dorset, various human bones were deposited in pits around the entrance to the settlement.

However the fact that the majority of surviving remains consist of either skulls or long bones does suggest that the dead did still play a role in the land of the living. The disproportionate number of skulls and long bones surviving suggests that the dead were disposed of in some manner, possibly by cremation, and that the ritually important bones kept for ritual deposition. Interestingly the disproportionate number of skulls surviving does indicate that the human head was considered special long before the Celts.

One thing that we do see doring this time is the deposition of 'hoards'. Great wealth buried, we assume for safe keeping. Interestingly these are often found near 'watery places', again suggesting a link to a belief in local deities and water being spiritually important. One reason for the increase in hoards would be an increase in conflict and instability.This would also explain why there are fewer large scale communal burial spaces and a shift to burial practices that leave little or no trace in the archaeological record.

With changing climate, population pressure and the emergence of hillforts, the Late Bronze Age appears to have been a troubled time. These changes may explain why there was this shift from elaborate mortuary ritual to a form that leaves little or no record.