Iron Age Grainstore

YAC Attack 149! Agricultural Revolutions

Britain’s agricultural revolution occurred during the Neolithic when the population started to change from hunter-gathers to farmers.

• What was an Iron Age Grainstore?
• What was it used for?

For hundreds of thousands of years our ancestors were hunter-gatherers. They would rely on wild animals for meat, at first simply scavenging from carcasses that they found and then learning to hunt for themselves.

From foragers to farmers

They would also collect wild plants, gathering edible nuts and berries. In order to stay close to their food sources, huntergatherers had to be mobile. They set up temporary camps, lived there for a while, and moved on when the food supply began to run out. The groups tended to be small, made up of just a few families, but feeding everyone would still have been a struggle. Then, one of the most important changes in human history began; the introduction of farming.

The change from a hunter-gatherer to a farming way of life marks the start of the Neolithic or New Stone Age and is sometimes known as the ‘Neolithic Revolution’. It was not a change that happened quickly; it is estimated that it took around 2000 years for the idea of farming to spread across the whole of the British Isles. In fact, the concept of farming that reached Britain between about 5000 BC and 4500 BC had spread across Europe from origins in Syria and Iraq between about 11000 BC and 9000 BC.

Archaeological evidence brought to life by experiments done at Butser Ancient Farm have shown that in the Iron Age, one of the most effective ways of storing grain would have been using pits in the ground. Our activity is inspired by the method that we think people used.

ACTIVITY: Why not try and make your own Iron Age Grainstore?

• Grainstore Activity Sheet