dropped below a level sufficient to sustain the settlement, at which point the community moved on to clear new land and start afresh. Land that was abandoned then reverted to scrub and woodland, before the cycle started again and it was cleared once more.
The climate was warm and wet, and primitive species of wheat – emmer and einkhorn – were easily grown, as were barley, beans and pulse. Neolithic man was also heavily dependent on the early spring growth of wild plants that thrive near human habitation, such as nettles, orache, fat hen and Good King Henry. Soil preparation involved scratching the ground with an ard – a primitive plough consisting of a frame mounting a nearly vertical wooden spike, dragged through the soil by human effort. Rather than cutting and turning the soil to produce furrows, it breaks up a narrow strip of soil, leaving intervening strips undisturbed. Cross-ploughing was often used, where the soil is ploughed again at right angles to the original direction. Harvested crops were stored in pits which allowed surplus produce to be used in times of need.
Storage, more than anything else, allowed the development of farming and, ultimately, civilisation. Sheep, goats and cattle were kept as well as domesticated wild pigs. Within the limitations of stone knives and axes, the wildwood conterminous with settlements was coppiced. Towards the end of the Neolithic period, settlements became permanent enough for causeway enclosures to be built as communal meeting places, for example at Coombe Hill, near Jevington in Sussex, or Flagstones in Dorset. Chambered long barrows were also constructed to house the dead, such as the one on Gussage Down in the Cranborne Chase area of Dorset, Barclodiad y Gawres in Anglesea, Belas Knap near Cheltenham, Maeshowe on Orkney, or Stoney Littleton Long Barrow. The first of the henges were painstakingly erected – testaments to Neolithic man’s commitment to settling where these were built, including Ballymeanoch, in Kilmartin Glen, Scotland; King Arthur’s Round Table and Mayburgh henge, near the village of Eamont Bridge, Cumbria; the Ring of Brodgar in Orkney; Thornborough Henges, near Masham in North Yorkshire; Maumbury Rings, near Dorchester in Dorset and, of course, Stonehenge in Wiltshire.
During the 1,500 years of the Bronze Age, from roughly 2100 to 750 BC, there was significant population growth as agriculture expanded throughout most of the country. Recent research suggests that the population may have exceeded a million by 2,000 BC. However, within the huge time period of this age, population growth and subsequent decline could have occurred many times as the fertility of farmland became exhausted and food production fell. In the 2,000 years since the first farmers arrived, large tracts of the wild wood had been cleared and agriculture was transforming the landscape.
For much of the Bronze Age the climate was considerably warmer than today – probably by as much as 2 degrees Centigrade. This warmth had a significant effect on agricultural land use and farming was able to extend into the moors and uplands of Britain. Wheat and barley were the main crops, grown for flour, straw, animal feed and, for the first time, malt for alcoholic drinks. Oats, rye, peas and beans and some hay for animal feed were grown, while straw was used for bedding, thatching and winter fodder. Cattle had always been important to prehistoric farmers, but there was an increase in the importance of sheep through the Bronze Age as people had learnt the art of weaving and basic woollen clothing was becoming commonplace. Large livestock farms developed in the lowlands and appear to have contributed to economic growth and inspired increasing forest clearances. Goats and pigs both had an important place in Bronze Age communities, because they were foragers and easy to keep. Evidence shows that large areas of the countryside were laid out in unenclosed square fields, reflecting ploughing in two directions, whilst in other parts of Britain fields were enclosed by earthen banks. Traces of Bronze Age field systems and their ‘reeves’, or earth banks, and raised parallel boundary banks are particularly visible on Dartmoor or the Lizard and Land’s End in Cornwall. Tracks and ways across the countryside allowed localised trade and some exchange of animals to prevent in-breeding. The Ridgeway, Britain’s oldest road, which can be followed from Overton Hill, near Avebury, and Ivinghoe Beacon, in Buckinghamshire, is a surviving example and was almost certainly used to traverse the entire chalk escarpment that runs from Dorset to Lincolnshire.
Many famous henges that date from this period show society was well structured and able to call upon a significant population resource to build the many public monuments, where religion or ritual was an inseparable part of everyday life. Pottery was now decorated and noticeably finer and the arrival of metallurgy and the production of bronze led to new tools as well as ornaments and symbols of status. Late in the Bronze Age, around 1000 BC, the climate cooled and became wetter and many of the farming settlements of the upland areas were abandoned, not to be resettled for some 2,500 years. The Bronze Age was a peaceful and very prosperous period. Society was well structured and able to call upon a significant population resource for building projects such as enlarging Stonehenge and the erection of many other monuments: Seahenge, just off the coast of Norfolk at Holme-next-the-Sea; Achavanich, near Loch Stemster in Caithness; Beckhampton Avenue, in Witshire; Birkrigg, in Cumbria; Doll Tor and the Nine Ladies, in the Derbyshire Peak District; Rollright Stones, on the borders of Oxfordshire and Warwickshire; Tregeseal East and Men-an-Tol, in Cornwall; Gors Fawr, Meini Gwyr, Cerrig Duon, Maen Mawr, Nant Tarw Group and Grayhill in Wales. There are hundreds and hundreds of Bronze Age megaliths across Britain, and Northern Ireland has over sixty, all indicating a cosy and settled population.
HOW FARMING ALTERED THE LANDSCAPE
The Celts started to migrate to Britain in the eighth century BC, bringing with them advanced agricultural techniques in both grain and livestock farming, and within a hundred years many parts of the country were already owned, managed and planned in much the same way that they are now. Little wildwood remained in southern Britain and the land resource was well planned with field systems in rotation, pasture and coppiced woodland. Hill forts became common and acted as local centres of administration, power and refuge.
The range of crops grown had widened considerably since the early Bronze Age and although the most important were emmer, einkorn and spelt, varieties of wheat, barley, oats, tic beans, vetch, peas, rye, flax, wode and fat hen were regularly grown. The earliest written information about Britain records that the Celts of southern and eastern Britain were skilled arable farmers. Archaeological evidence indicates that a mixture of pastoral and arable farming was practised throughout the country. Nevertheless, the balance between these farming methods in any given area would have been dependent, to some extent, upon the geographical location and trading relationships of the different tribes. As grain farmers theyin among the Bronze Age reaves were surprisingly advanced; according to the Roman reporter, Pliny the Elder, British farmers invented the practice of manuring the soil with various kinds of mast, loam and chalk. He described how chalk was dug out from ‘pits several hundred feet in depth, narrow at the mouth, but widening towards the bottom’. In 70 AD he wrote: ‘The chalk is sought from a deep place, wells being frequently sunk to IOO foot, narrowed at the mouth, the vein spreading out within as in mines. This is the kind most used in Britain. It lasts for eighty years and there is no instance of anyone putting it on twice in his lifetime.’ There are hundreds if not thousands of the remains of ‘Deneholes’ in the chalk uplands of Kent, where chalk had been extracted to spread on local fields as top dressing.
Until destroyed by modern agriculture, small, irregular, squarish, Celtic fields covered thousands of square kilometres of chalk downland and other terrain which had escaped medieval and later cultivations. Although often less than half a hectare, they were surrounded by great earth banks, the product of countless man hours. The square shape expresses the custom of ploughing in two directions at right angles. On slopes, the action of the plough tended to move earth downhill, forming terraces called lynchets. Very good examples of these can be seen near Bishop stone and Great Wishford in Wiltshire; the Chess Valley near Rickmansworth; in among the
