Some of the more important sites from 3400 years ago!
- Dartmoor, Devon
- Dartmoor has one of the most extensive, and impressive remains of a prehistoric farming landscape in Britain. There are 5,000 round houses and 400 kilometres of field boundaries. Some houses are single farms, others occur in small villages. The field boundaries are known locally as ‘reaves’. The cooling of the climate and exhaustion of the soils led to most of the land being abandoned by 3,000 years ago. Since then it has not been farmed intensively, allowing the houses and walls to survive for us to see.
- Flag Fen, Cambridgeshire
- The landscape here has round houses, droveways and fields for livestock farming at the edge of wet, low-lying fenland. There is a 1 kilometre long causeway across the damp fen leading to a wooden platform, used 3300 to 2900 years ago. There were 300,000 separate pieces of wood with over 300 deliberately deposited metal, bone and stone artefacts. These include the oldest wheel in England, a set of metal shears in their original wooden case, one of the finest collections of Bronze Age swords and daggers in Britain, and fragments of bronze helmets.
- Great Orme, Gwynedd
- By the Late Bronze Age people were digging shafts and galleries deep underground to get the copper ores here. The mine was used this way from 3,500 to 3,100 years ago. Bone and stone tools were used for getting the ore out of the surrounding rock. Harder rocks were burnt with fire first to make them easier to work.
- Mam Tor, Derbyshire
- Deep inside the Peak District, and 520 metres above sea-level, Mam Tor is a classic hill fort with a bank and ditch enclosing the hill top. What makes it more interesting is that there are around 100 flat ledges dug into the top where houses, workshops and storehouses would have been built. These have been radio-carbon dated to 3,400 years ago. This is far earlier than most other hill forts, which are Iron Age in date. The bank and ditch may be much later than the ledges, but they have not yet been dated.
- Salcombe, Devon
- Divers recently found the remains of a shipwreck off the Devon coast. Rather than the boat, they found its cargo. It was carrying bronze swords, axes, chisels, other tools, and ornaments, many from northern France. It must have sunk around 3,200 years ago, probably in a storm, while going to Devon to trade with people there.
- Walton on the Naze, Essex
- Salt was being made here by heating sea water around 3200 years ago.
- Wilsford Shaft, Wiltshire
- This is a 2 metre wide shaft, going down 33 metres into the ground. It contained a lot of wooden artefacts such as tubs, bowls and barrels in water at the bottom. Some archaeologists have interpreted Wilsford as a ritual shaft where offerings were made to the earth. Others point out that archaeologists are far too quick to describe things as ritual, and in fact it is probably just a well for raising water.
