http://SaturnianCosmology.Org/ mirrored file For complete access to all the files of this collection see http://SaturnianCosmology.org/search.php ========================================================== < Main Page Chapter 13 The First Metals in the British Isles In the British Isles the first gold and copper objects appear in the single graves alongside beakers, the characteristic handleless drinking vessels of Late Neolithic and Early Bronze Age Europe. In Britain and Scandinavia, they form part of so-called `status kits' together with perforated buttons, polished stone wristguards and flat cast- copper daggers that are seen as the prerogative of individuals of high status. From 2,900BCE Bell Beakers appear in graves all over Europe and the pots are often accompanied by metal objects, trinkets mainly, in both copper and gold. Could immigrants who introduced metal technology have been the first foreign workers in the British Isles bringing with them their special skills? This question may be now answered by an excavation on Ross Island in Co Kerry in Ireland dating from around 2500BCE. Here not only an ancient arsenical-copper mine could be explored but also a miners' camp alongside where the metal was processed together with the accompanying rubbish layers that contained many sherds of Beaker pottery. A recent discovery has shown that by 2,200BC adits fifteen metres long were being driven into a hillside overlooking Lough Lein, (Co. Galway) in order to mine the local arsenical-copper deposits. Fire-heating was used to break up the parent rock and rubble was shifted with the aid of ox shoulder blades (scapulae). The establishment of such centres in Ireland resulted in production and a widespread distribution of flat axes in south-west Ireland and other parts of the British Isles.. Very soon copper mines were being worked in north and central Wales and in Cheshire and perhaps their artefacts of pure, not arsenical copper, were smelted by itinerant coppersmiths together with arsenical copper products to produce an alloy. But some of the copper tools have been found to contain nickel and these ores have been tracked to mines in Cornwall where the only significant deposits of tin in Europe are to be found. Tin is one of the ingredients in the mix of true bronze - a 10% tin/90% copper alloy - and it is possible that this coincidence prompted the beginning of the Cornish tin export trade that was to link the peninsula with most parts of Europe in later centuries. Certainly at this time tin was being used in the production of the first true-bronze tools that were likely to have been made with Cornish tin at copper mines in other parts of Britain. These are the contexts in which metal objects appear in Britain. The discoveries go some way to explain the lead that the craftsmen of Ireland established in metallurgy in the British Isles that they were able to maintain for over a thousand years. As far as gold is concerned, no evidence of gold mining is known earlier than the Roman mines at Dolaucothi in South Wales. Presumably before this time gold was obtained by panning in Welsh and Irish rivers. Single graves of the period characterized by beaker pots are in themselves harbingers of a revolution in burial practice in the British Isles for we cannot assume that all Beaker graves covered the bodies of immigrant metal craft specialists. What has happened is what happened with other earlier pottery styles - they just became fashionable and so were taken up by a wider public. During the Neolithic period, burial, such as it was, consisted of the deposition in communal graves of bones collected from excarnated corpses. But later on in this period, the first individual graves appear and do suggest that those responsible were the possessors of a degree of wealth. Most under round mounds, the dead accompanied by some of their possessions for use presumably in an after life and sometimes by companion graves perhaps of children and relatives. Perhaps this suggests that the burials were not all immediately covered over by a barrow but at a later date, following perhaps the tradition of the builders of the earthen long barrows. The pots that appear in these graves are broadly described as either bell-beakers, short-necked or long-necked beakers. Students of the graves containing goods have divided them into four classes: warrior graves, female graves, leather-workers' graves and poor graves. Quite what these mean in the context of the society of the time we cannot say and it is even difficult to know whether we should take the suggested system at face value. A proportion of beaker graves are covered by bowl barrows constructed of material dug out of an encircling ditch. Some barrows reach a height of over three metres and a diameter of over 30m. The largest barrows would have required considerable expenditure in time and effort and probably could only have been afforded by families at the top of the social and economic tree i.e. a newly-emerged or emerging aristocracy who could also afford the first metal goods. Perhaps wealth was not the criteria for large barrows in all cases but in some cases for honourable interment of individuals who had some special significance to the society of the time. Not all beaker graves are under barrows; some are in flat graves, some in cists, and in Ireland in wedge-shaped megalithic tombs. Occasionally the bodies are cremated rather than inhumed. Where there are grave-goods, as well as beakers they can include a variety of objects such as stone shafthole axeheads, copper tanged knife/daggers, flint tools, small gold jewellery, amber objects and flint barbed-and-tanged arrowheads as well as those described above. But even the richest graves would include no more than a small selection of these materials. Non-Beaker graves of the time contain little else but pottery like flat-bottomed Fengate ware, Food Vessels or, in the case of cremations, Collared Urns, and contrast with the wealthier Beaker graves. Collared Urns are distributed throughout the British Isles and are so called because they have a deep rim on the exterior which is often decorated. In the case of Food Vessels various pottery forms are lumped together in the classification. They were probably developed from earlier Neolithic pottery forms under the influence of the trendier Beaker pottery. The diversity of Food Vessel forms results from regional variation and includes the pottery type often referred to as 'encrusted urns'. In England, bowls are the commonest form of Food Vessel, in Ireland the 'Irish vase' is the main variety and in Scotland both bowls and vases are found. As there are few settlement sites on which beaker pottery is found most of what is known of the people of the time in the British Isles is deduced from their grave-goods. The settlement sites tell us little more than that the beaker users were farmers who grew wheat and barley and raised farm animals like their predecessors in the Neolithic period and their successors in the later Bronze Age. We are looking, in fact, as far as we can tell, at a continuity of life-style. Beaker finds on the sites of the great Neolithic monuments emphasize this continuity. Beaker users were frequenting the henges and adding stone features to some of them like the bluestones to Stonehenge at about 2600BC, the West Kennet Avenue linking Avebury and the Sanctuary in Wiltshire and the double henge monument at Cairnpapple in Scotland. At Avebury and Stonehenge the addition of stone settings to the monuments heralds the appearance of the first round barrows in the surrounding landscape. These were the beaker single-grave burials that were the forerunners of the similar but richer barrows of the Wessex Early Bronze Age which accompany the later sarsen stone phases at Stonehenge. Wider Contacts [LINK] main page [LINK] Growing Wealth [LINK]