Bronze Age Britain: metal and trade
History · Key Stage 2 · The School
A metal that needed trade
BRONZE is made by mixing two metals: copper and tin. Britain had good tin, found in Cornwall. It had some copper too. But the two rarely sat in the same place. Making bronze meant trading over real distances. It was not as simple as digging locally. This trade linked Britain to lands many hundreds of miles away, across the sea.
Burying people alone, with belongings
Bronze Age burial customs were different from before. Round earth mounds became common. These are called BARROWS. Older tombs were shared by many people. Now, people were often buried alone. They were buried with their own belongings. Pottery. Tools. Sometimes fine metalwork too. This shift tells us something changed in how people saw themselves.
A grave near Stonehenge
In 2002, archaeologists found a rich grave near Stonehenge. It became known as the AMESBURY ARCHER. He was buried with gold hair ornaments. He had copper knives too. He also had archery equipment. It is one of the richest Bronze Age graves ever found in Britain. The grave lay just a short walk from the stones themselves.
Scientists tested the enamel in the Archer's teeth. Enamel forms when a child is young. It absorbs traces from local water and food. His enamel did not match Britain at all. It matched somewhere in the Alps. That is likely modern Switzerland or Germany. This man, buried beside Stonehenge, had travelled hundreds of miles to get there. No written record could ever have told us that. Only his own teeth could. Nobody expected teeth to reveal something like that.