Despite the changes caused by new metal technology, the everyday life of most people in northern and western Europe during the Bronze Age was very similar to that of Late Neolithic times (see Europe: Neolithic). Small-scale societies flourished in every location that had fertile soil and ample pastures. The principal difference was the increased interconnectedness among these societies due to trade, watercraft, and vehicles.
Architecture, Settlement, Economy
The mature agropastoral economy that emerged during the Late Neolithic throughout Europe continued into the Bronze Age. Rural farmsteads dotted the landscape. In some areas, they were clustered into villages, but for the most part they were dispersed. The pristine forested landscape encountered by the Neolithic farmers had long been transformed into fields and pastures, although woodlands still remained in abundance (see Europe: Neolithic).
Evidence from some areas indicates the large-scale organization of the landscape with field boundaries. Across Dartmoor in southwestern England, low walls of stone enclosed large rectangular fields over many square kilometers. The basis for such partitioning of the landscape is unclear, but for some reason it ceased abruptly around 1200 BC. Bronze Age landscape organization is also known from other parts of the British Isles. At Windy Dido near Quarley in Hampshire, fields were organized into blocks that shared long parallel boundaries, ditches dug into the Wessex chalk-lands that ran for several kilometers in some cases.
Bronze Age houses and settlements in northern and western Europe take a variety of forms, although the main settlement type is a small farmstead with one or more houses, presumably the residence of one or several families. The farmsteads were dispersed across the landscape, separated by fields, pastures, and woodland. Larger agglomerations of population are relatively rare, generally associated with particularly favorable habitats like the lakes of the Alpine Foreland or craft production centers.
Some of the best-studied Bronze Age houses in northern Europe are in Denmark. Early Bronze Age settlements saw a continuation of the use of long-houses with a single row of interior posts, known as ‘two-aisled’ longhouses. At Egehpj in Jutland, three houses were excavated. Each was 6 m wide and between 18 and 21m long. The walls were built from posts between which the spaces were filled with a mixture of twigs and mud plaster known as ‘wattle and daub’, while four large posts ran down the center of each house to support the roof. Later in the Bronze Age, the width of the houses was expanded to three aisles through the addition of a second row of interior posts. At Hpj’gtird, three-aisled houses were 8-9 m wide and 20-22 m long, dimensions that are generally consistent with other such Late Bronze Age houses from northern Europe. There is some evidence for a part of the interior space of these houses being divided into stalls for livestock.
In the Netherlands, three-aisled longhouses were also built, often over 20 m long and clearly divided into stables for livestock and living and working space for people. At Elp, there is evidence that the same farmstead site was used again and again over a period of several hundred years, sometimes after having been abandoned for decades. All this rebuilding occurred within a very small area, adjacent to a burial mound, suggesting that people returned repeatedly to a location inhabited by their ancestors.
In Switzerland and eastern France, the pattern of lakeside settlement in the Alpine foothills that began in the Neolithic continued into the Bronze Age, and in fact flourished during the second millennium BC. Houses were built either using a log-cabin method, as exemplified by those found at Zurich-Mozartstrasse, or with wattle and daub between posts, as at Auvernier on Lake Neuchiitel. Many of the Alpine lakeside Bronze Age settlements were abandoned just before 1000BC.
In Britain and Ireland, round houses were the norm, grouped together into small farmsteads of between two and ten buildings. Each house had approximately 100 m2 of floorspace. At Gwithian in Cornwall, the house walls were built from a double circle of stakes with two large posts defining the entrance. Around 1700-1600 BC, the farmstead at Shaugh Moor in Dartmoor was enclosed by a stone wall, within which several round stone structures were situated around its interior edge. High phosphate levels in one of the structures suggest that animals were kept in it, whereas the largest building was probably the house. Nearby, the Grimspound settlement also has round stone houses surrounded by a stone enclosure. Two well-studied settlements that date to the end of the second millennium BC are Blackpatch and Itford Hill in Sussex. At these sites, small clusters of round huts built from stakes were enclosed by fences to form household compounds.
At Clonfinlough, in County Offaly in Ireland, an oval palisade with ash posts enclosed an area about 50 by 40 m in a raised bog. Within this enclosure, four wooden platforms built of oak planks, ash posts, brush, sand, and gravel and connected with wooden trackways provided dry living surfaces above the wet bog. Several of the platforms supported round houses built with posts and wattle and with internal hearths. The platforms ranged from 4 to almost 10 m in diameter. Tree ring dating of timbers ranged between 917 and 886 BC. Interesting finds at Clonfinlough include two amber beads, possibly originating in the Baltic area, and two wooden paddles. The nearby river Shannon was a major communication route between the interior of Ireland and the west coast.
The agricultural economy of Bronze Age northern and western Europe saw a continuation of the mixed farming economy with field crops and livestock that emerged during the Neolithic period. Various types of wheat and barley were the most commonly cultivated plants, but millet and rye became economically important for the first time. The grains were made into bread, porridge, beer, and probably other fermented beverages. Legumes such as broad (also known as ‘Celtic’) beans were an important complement to grains, and they also fix nitrogen in the soil, thus enabling crops to be rotated for sustained yields. Oil plants such as flax and poppyseed were widely used.
Cattle, pigs, sheep, and goat were kept in proportions that varied from region to region. Not only were livestock kept for meat and hides, but in the case of sheep, goat, and cattle for their valuable ‘secondary products’ that could be provided by living animals such as milk and wool. Cattle also provided yet another important resource: traction, or pulling power. They could thus draw plows or wagons, both of which had crucial importance for the economy. Plows permitted the cultivation of more land and also of poorer soils, thus expanding the potential areas of settlement. Wagons enabled farmers to move large objects such as animal carcasses, timber, firewood, harvested crops, metals, and other bulky objects back to the farmstead and between settlements. Cattle, sheep, and goat thus became capital investments by a farming household and could be exchanged for other commodities like metals or loaned, thus generating wealth.
Eventually, horses entered the Bronze Age economy, facilitating long-distance travel over land. A network of roads emerged, along with wooden trackways made from logs across marshy areas in northern Europe. Horse-drawn wheeled vehicles, such as chariots and wagons, appeared in some areas of northern and western Europe. Wheels were made from planks joined together with cleats or dowels, although spoked wheels are found on Late Bronze Age wagon models and depicted in rock art.
Bronze Age Watercraft and Trade
The capacity for maritime mobility that emerged during the Mesolithic and Neolithic of northern and western Europe developed further during the Bronze Age. Transport of people and goods across straits and protected seas such as the English Channel, Baltic Sea, and the Irish Sea became routine. Indeed, such transportation was necessary to link the copper and tin sources and to distribute the finished bronze products. The inhabitants of the British Isles and Scandinavia were closely linked to the Bronze Age societies of continental Europe.
The maritime boatbuilding abilities of Bronze Age peoples are reflected in several watercraft that have been found preserved in waterlogged coastal deposits. A boat discovered in 1992 near Dover was probably about 15 m long (9.5 m was recovered) and 2.4 m wide. It was made from six large oak timbers joined by strips of yew, with all the joints caulked with moss and covered by oak strips, clearly the work of sophisticated shipwrights. It is estimated that the Dover boat was propelled by at least 18 paddlers to ferry people, livestock, and goods across the English Channel. In 1974, just off Dover in Langdon Bay, a large number of bronze axes made in France were found, apparently the load of another cargo boat that sank just off the English coast. Other Bronze Age boats have been found at North Ferriby in Yorkshire, although not as well preserved as the one at Dover. Meanwhile, a timber structure at Runnymede Bridge on the Thames river in England has been interpreted as a Late Bronze Age wharf, indicating that river commerce led to the construction of facilities for loading and unloading boats.
The extent of Bronze Age trade is most clearly reflected in the distribution of metal finds in northern and western Europe. Nowhere is this more vivid than in Denmark. An extraordinary number of Bronze Age metal artifacts have been found in Denmark, yet the Danish peninsula and islands lack any natural sources of copper or tin. Some of the finds reached Denmark as finished products, whereas evidence for local metalworking suggests that copper and tin ingots also were transported there. What was provided in exchange for these items? Agricultural products, wool, hides, dried fish, and amber were the likely commodities, although slaves cannot be excluded from the range of possibilities.
Long-distance trade and the local economy converged at some of the large fortified sites that emerged late in the Bronze Age. One such site is Fort-Harrouard in France just west of Paris. An area of about 7 ha on a plateau overlooking the Eure river was surrounded by earthen ramparts and a ditch. Inside the ramparts were houses arranged around an open space. Fort-Harrouard was a regional center for weapon manufacture. Excavations yielded about a hundred moulds, primarily for weapons like spears, swords, arrowheads, and daggers. Hill forts were also constructed throughout the British Isles during the Late
Bronze Age. The Breiddin hillfort in Wales was fortified with a rampart reinforced with timber boxes, and evidence for bronzeworking was also found at this site.
World History
