The period known as Bronze Age Wales ran from 2,400 BC to 800 BC. It began when a new wave of settlers, the Beaker Folk, brought their knowledge of how to smelt metal for weapons and tools.
When does Bronze Age Wales begin and end? Inhabitants of Wales had used stone for tools and weapons for thousands of years. However, the Neolithic Period, or Old Stone Age, drew to a close when a new group of settlers arrived on the island of Great Britain around 2,500 BC. This group is known as the Beaker People. They are sometimes called the Beaker Folk or simply “The Beakers.”
While the Beaker People came to Britain from Central Europe, their ancestors had come from the Eurasian Steppe—a 5,000-mile grassland from Hungary to Manchuria. The Beakers brought new technologies to the British Isles. They knew how to smelt copper ore and turn it into bronze tools and weapons. They also had extensive knowledge of how to make pottery. The bell-shaped dishes they made and buried with their dead are the reason behind their name.
This post is about Bronze Age Wales.
Bronze Age Wales
How Old is Wales?
Well, that all depends on how you look at it! Wales has been home to various groups of people since about 250,000 BC. Back then, the island wasn’t an island but was a peninsula still attached to the continent of Europe. It wasn’t until 8,000 years ago that this peninsula broke away from the mainland and became what we now call the island of Great Britain.
If you want to know how long Wales has been a country as it’s thought of today, that happened in 1536 with Henry VIII’s Act of Union. (Wales will be 500 years old in the year 2036.) The act was called by a different name then. It incorporated Wales into the Kingdom of England. Before that, Wales wasn’t united under a single ruler (at least not for long) but was a loose collection of Welsh kingdoms. In 1707, Wales joined the Kingdom of England and became part of the Kingdom of Great Britain. Wales became part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland in 1801.
You might wonder how long Wales has been considered one of the Celtic nations. The Celts arrived in the area that became Wales around 1,000 BC and by 600 BC had well established themselves. They spoke Insular Celtic, which became Brythonic and then later became Cymraeg (Welsh). So, Wales’ Celtic roots go back as much as a little over 3,000 years.
However, the people and events of Bronze Age Wales influenced the arriving Celts as the two groups clashed and intermingled. Not only do many modern Welsh people still share DNA with the Beaker People, but some also have genes from the Neolithic, darker-skinned settlers who came before them. This ancestry is what gives some Welsh people a rounder face and olive complexion. When viewed in that light, we can see that the history of Wales goes back a very long way indeed.
Prehistoric Wales
Prehistoric Wales is a vast period from 228,000 BC to 48 AD, encompassing the Stone Age, Bronze Age, and Iron Age. It ended with the arrival of the Romans in Britain. Bronze Age Wales also has its own segments of time: the Early, Middle, and Late Bronze Age. Each part of the Bronze Age brought unique significance and changes to Wales. Please note that each country or specific region has its own Bronze Age timeline, depending on when people started to use this metal. The following timeline covers Bronze Age dates in the UK. The period lasted for 1,600 years.
Early Bronze
The Early Bronze Age ran from 2,400 to 1,500 BC and began with the arrival of the Beakers. In the Early Bronze, people lived in round houses with cone-shaped roofs. While in the Neolithic Period, people used chambered tombs for interment, this changed. The Beaker Folk buried their dead in round barrows, often placing weapons, fine jewelry, and highly decorated pottery along with the deceased in the graves.
What’s significant about Bronze Age history is that people were now transitioning from copper metalworks to bronze. Copper (while more functional than stone, for sure) is a soft, malleable metal. By adding tin to copper and creating bronze, people could make more robust tools and weapons better for farming, defense, and everyday use.
Middle Bronze
The Middle Bronze Age covers the timespan from 1,500 to 1,250 BC. In the Middle Bronze, people continued to live in round houses, generally in small communities with groups of houses close together. They again changed the way they buried their dead. Now, they cremated the deceased, placed the ashes in special pottery urns, and buried them in large, open cemeteries. Farming changed as well. With more people and domestic animals to tend to, people began developing better methods of growing crops and cultivating fields.
Late Bronze
The Late Bronze Age in Wales runs from 1,250 to 800 BC. The main difference between the Middle and Late periods is the new styles of pottery, metal weapons, and tools that appeared during this time. Otherwise, it’s similar to the Middle Bronze. People continue living in round houses but also build long, recantangular halls. Horses gain popularity as a mode of transportation and for use in battle. During the Late Bronze Age, the Celts began to arrive in Britain and start building the first hill forts.
You can find the remains of many Bronze Age sites in Wales. The Cynon Valley Museum has a wealth of information, and Cadw is an excellent resource for ideas on ancient places to visit. You can also check out this map of ancient sites in Wales from the Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales.
Bronze Age Wales Facts
The Beaker People migrated to Britain slowly, ending the Neolithic Period and beginning what we consider Bronze Age Wales. They eventually wiped out most of the population of farmers who lived on the island. The Beakers didn’t eradicate all of them, of course, as some of the existing members of the agrarian society integrated into the new culture. The Beaker People had lighter skin, hair, and eyes than the olive-brown Neolithic farmers. As they intermarried, blonde hair and blue eyes became more common than before.
Everyday Life
Farming and archery were two of the main pastimes of the Beakers. They used wrist guards made of stone to protect their arms from the lash of the bowstring when they hunted or practiced.
The Beakers learned the skill of weaving garments from cloth such as wool and flax. Before this, people wore garments made of animal skins.
Bronze Age Wales was the first period in Britain’s history where people practiced metalsmithing. The Beaker Folk used copper and gold and, eventually, bronze.
This era also sees the creation of the first alcoholic drink of the British Isles: mead! They made it by fermenting honey.
During this time, societies weren’t as communal as during the Neolithic. Leaders took the form of warrior kings or chieftains. Societies were patriarchal.
Toward the end of the Bronze Age, the climate started to change dramatically. It had been warmer and wetter previously. In the Late Bronze, the temperature dropped and affected the arability of the land. Farmer’s fields began turning from soil to peat, and people had to abandon their settlements in search of more fertile land.
Burials and Religion
The Beaker People believed in an afterlife, which we believe is why they buried their dead with many of their possessions. Personal belongings might include daggers, swords, axes or other weapons, beautiful pottery and jewelry, cups, and metal accessories like brooches or buckles. People buried their dead with their heads oriented south: women faced west, and men faced east.
Like people in Neolithic times, the Beakers erected stone circles. Archeologists believe they held religious ceremonies here and may have also used these sites as important meeting places.
Warfare
The remains and evidence the Beakers left behind tell us that, unlike the earlier hunter-gatherers and farming population, they were a warlike people. They favored the bow and arrow as their primary weapons but used flat daggers and copper spears as well. Since they needed metal to craft weapons, their constant search for it spread their knowledge of metallurgy across Britain, just as they had done on the continent. In the Late Bronze, when they began riding horses more, they began making longer swords—not unlike the cutlass we see used in cavalry.
People began fighting over land and resources when the climate changed toward the Iron Age. When the land couldn’t sustain its occupants anymore, villagers resorted to stealing from their neighbors or sometimes overrunning them and taking their more arable land. However, sometimes people had to leave large areas altogether.
Although, like the Celts, the Beaker Folk left behind no written records that tell us about their language or their specific beliefs, they did leave us a great deal. There are thousands of round barrows across the UK. Many of the excavated sites have given us a trove of artifacts that tell us how people lived, worked, fought, struggled, and learned how to overcome the challenges of their environment. Their tenacity lives on in the spirit of modern Welsh people.
This post was about Bronze Age Wales.
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