Period of Cornish history from c. 2400 until c. 800 BCE
The Cornish Bronze Age is an era of the prehistory of Cornwall that spanned the period from c. 2400 BCE to c. 800 BCE. It was preceded by the Cornish Neolithic, and followed by the Cornish Iron Age. It is characterized by the introduction and widespread use of copper and copper-alloy (bronze) weapons and tools.
Significant social and economic changes occurred in Cornwall over the course of the Bronze Age. The earliest stage coincided with the arrival of the Bell Beaker culture, the adoption of new ceramic styles, innovations in ritual and funerary customs, and the earliest evidence for exploitation of local tin and gold resources. Throughout the Early Bronze Age, the main focus was on ritual activity and the construction of ceremonial monuments in the uplands, with the few known domestic buildings being relatively fragile and temporary structures. This changed in the Middle Bronze Age, with a decline in monument construction, the expansion of livestock and arable farming, and a pronounced increase in the number of settlements, which by this stage consisted of much more substantial roundhouses. At the beginning of the Late Bronze Age, there was an apparent abandonment of upland settlements, a change in lowland roundhouse construction technique, and a change in pottery style, suggesting increasing influence from South-Central Britain.
Cornwall was part of an extensive trade and cultural network from at least the Early Bronze Age, exchanging goods and ideas with the communities along the Atlantic Façade, the Wessex culture, and to a lesser extent more distant societies in Central Europe and the Eastern Mediterranean. Trevisker Ware ceramics from Cornwall were transported to other parts of southern Britain, and the style was copied by potters in Ireland and Brittany. Cornwall was an important source for tin and gold in the Bronze Age, and is the most likely provenance for these metals in a substantial number of artefacts and semi-finished products found from this period in the rest of Britain, Ireland, Germany, and the Middle East.
Chronology.
The Bronze Age is defined by the widespread adoption of bronze, an alloy of tin and copper which is found in Britain and Ireland from c. 2200–2100 BCE. The Bronze Age ends around the early to mid first millennium BCE, at which point ironworking is introduced, followed by a substantial decrease and eventual collapse in the production, circulation, and use of bronze tools and weapons and the beginning of the Iron Age. Bronze Age Britain and Ireland is usually dated to c. 2150–800 BCE, subdivided into Early Bronze Age (EBA, c. 2150–1600 BCE), Middle Bronze Age (MBA, c. 1600–1150 BCE) and Late Bronze Age (LBA, c. 1150-800/600 BCE). Recent reviews have tended to include the Chalcolithic ('copper-using', or 'Beaker') phase with the Early Bronze Age.
In 1986, Patricia Christie outlined a chronology of the Cornish Bronze Age based on Colin Burgess's thirteen industrial stages, but with different regional type-find names. Christie divided the Bronze Age into an 'earlier' and a 'later' stage with c. 1300 BCE as the point of division.
In 2011, Andy Jones outlined an alternative chronology based on modern radiocarbon dating, starting with the Cornish Bell Beaker-using period. Jones explains that Christie's 1986 chronology predates the development of high-precision accelerator mass spectrometry. Radiocarbon dating of metal associated contexts now gives a slightly different set of dates:
Overview.
Summary.
The changes that occurred around the start of the Bronze Age in Cornwall were probably the result of a combination of factors. Cornwall's geographical location connected it to communities on the Atlantic Façade in Ireland, Wales, and Brittany, while at the same time linking it with Devon and Wessex in southern Britain. Genetic studies and bone isotope analysis demonstrate long-distance movement both within Britain and from the European mainland at this time, perhaps initially motivated by the search for metals. Travel to and from Cornwall may have led to the spread of a range of ideas and beliefs, as communities in Cornwall interacted with people from distant places, bringing new monument styles and ideologies that would have been interpreted within a framework of previously existing knowledge and practices.
Bell Beaker period (c. 2400–1700 BCE).
The Bell Beaker complex expanded to Britain and Ireland by c. 2450 BCE, bringing new ceramic forms ('Beakers') and burial practices, around the same time as the earliest known metal artefacts in Britain. The spread of the Beaker culture to Britain is associated with the migration of people from mainland Europe, possibly from somewhere in the vicinity of the Lower Rhine. These people carried substantial levels of Yamnaya-related ancestry in their DNA, and are believed to have replaced a minimum of 90% of the British Neolithic gene pool within a few hundred years.
Bell Beaker culture was probably introduced to Cornwall from further east in Britain, rather than directly from the European mainland. Evidence for Bell Beaker activity is relatively scarce in Cornwall compared to other parts of Britain, and most of the Beaker pottery found here is relatively late, usually in coastal areas, and mainly found in the west. The introduction of Beakers into Cornwall is roughly contemporaneous with increased monument construction and changes in ritual and burial customs, but there is no evidence that Beakers were associated with these. Beaker-period burials in Cornwall are typically cremations, rather than the single-inhumation graves that are associated with Beaker burials in the rest of Britain.
Andy Jones argues that the small number of Beaker artefacts found in Cornwall in this period implies that an invasion or large scale migration is unlikely.
Early Bronze Age (c. 2050–1500 BCE).
Settlements were probably restricted to uplands and coastal areas during the Early Bronze Age, and direct evidence for domestic structures is very rare. The main focus seems to have been monument construction, which was at its peak during this period, and thousands of barrows and cairns, numerous stone circles and stone rows, and the entrance graves (in Scilly and West Penwith) were mainly built between c. 2000 and 1500 BCE.
Gold and tin extraction very likely began before the beginning of the second millennium BCE in Cornwall, and analysis of artefactual material suggests that Cornish metals were likely to have been exported to the rest of Britain and Ireland, the European mainland, and as far as the Eastern Mediterranean. Cultural and economic links between Cornwall and other communities on the Atlantic façade in the Early Bronze Age is demonstrated by similar burial practices, such as the entrance graves of West Penwith and Scilly, and metalwork finds such as the four Cornish gold lunulae, a high-status artefact which originated in Ireland.
New pottery styles originated c. 2000 BCE, such as Food Vessels, Collared Urns, and especially Trevisker Ware, a distinctive regional pottery style that originated in Cornwall and continued to be produced for almost a millennium.
Middle Bronze Age (c. 1500–1100 BCE).
The Middle Bronze Age was a period of major social and economic change. From c. 1500, an agricultural revolution occurred, farming expanded, and formal land boundaries were constructed. The landscape became 'domesticated', marking a fundamental difference between this period and the previous stage. The Middle Bronze Age was dominated by settlements rather than monuments; older ceremonial sites were abandoned, large mounds were no longer built, and ritual and burial activity shifted to sites within or near to settlements. There was a pronounced increase in settlement activity, and regionally distinctive sunken-floored roundhouses were constructed in the lowlands, while large numbers of stone huts were built in the uplands, particularly on Bodmin Moor, resulting in a relatively high settlement density by this time.
Trevisker Ware pottery is the only ceramic type found in Cornwall during the Middle Bronze Age, and the style spread to Devon, Dorset, and South Wales, and is even sometimes found as far away as Kent, Ireland, and France.
Widespread climatic deterioration is supposed to have taken place over the Middle Bronze Age period, perhaps contributing to an extensive abandonment of upland areas in south-west Britain.
Population migrations from Europe are thought to have introduced comparatively high levels of Early European Farmer ancestry into southern Britain over a 500-year period from c. 1300 to 800 BCE.
Late Bronze Age (c. 1100–800 BCE).
By the turn of the first millennium BCE, sunken-floored roundhouses were no longer being built, and were replaced by post-ring roundhouses similar to those found across southern Britain, which probably spread into Cornwall from Devon. Around the same time, Trevisker Ware ceramics were replaced by versions of the Late Bronze Age ('Post-Deverel-Rimbury') Plain Ware found throughout southern Britain at this time. The focus of activity shifted from upland to lowland zones, perhaps caused by a combination of environmental and socio-economic factors. Upland settlements on Bodmin Moor may have been abandoned after c. 1000 BCE, perhaps with continuing seasonal use connected with the movement of livestock herds to upland pastures in summer months.
Late Bronze Age metalwork provides evidence for increasing contact with the rest of Britain, as well as continuing links with communities along the Atlantic Façade. Large hoards of gold and bronze artefacts date from this period.
Settlements.
The remains of Bronze Age settlements are found in upland, lowland, and coastal habitats, and are widely distributed across Cornwall; in West Penwith, on the north Cornish coast, on the Lizard peninsula, on Bodmin Moor, and on the Isles of Scilly. Settlements next to rivers are only rarely found, but it is likely that these have usually been later buried by sand and alluvium, making them more difficult to discover.
Settlement locations appear to have been chosen for reasons which included nearby resource availability and ensuring that important landmarks were visible from the settlement. Lowland settlements such as Trethellan and Trevisker were positioned to exploit coastal and woodland resources, as well as provide access to pastures in the nearby uplands. In upland areas such as Bodmin Moor and the West Penwith Moors, settlements were often located near cairns or prominent rocks. Most settlements in Scilly were built by the coast, with locations selected to provide shelter from prevailing winds, but with the most sheltered locations further inland being avoided, balancing protection from weather conditions with the ability to easily obtain food. A 2014 study using visibility analysis concluded that the Leskernick Hill settlement was "most likely the result of two separate decision-making processes, one to optimize the visibility of ritual monuments and important natural landmarks, and the other to optimize the visibility of nearby tin-extraction areas."
Settlement sizes vary considerably. Evidence from the Cornish lowlands suggests that settlements here were much smaller than in the uplands, typically comprising only one to three domestic structures. Trethellan, a small village of at least seven roundhouses, is the largest lowland settlement so far excavated. On the Bodmin Moor uplands, although some isolated huts are found, the overwhelming majority occur in settlements of very variable size, from 5 or 6 huts in small settlements such as Catshole Tor, to very large settlements such as Roughtor North, where there are over a hundred huts. The dense concentration of roundhouses at some upland sites may indicate that large communities inhabited the uplands, or alternatively that the same locality was being occupied by several generations of people over long periods of time.
Settlement activity during the Early Bronze Age seems to have been restricted to coastal areas and uplands. Direct evidence for settlement from this period is very rare, and consists of relatively insubstantial isolated buildings, such as the structures found at Sennen (c. 2400–2100 BCE), Gwithian (the so-called 'Beaker house', c. 1890–1610 BCE), and Tremough, Penryn (c. 1900–1600 BCE).
In the Middle Bronze Age the relatively temporary Early Bronze Age structures are superseded by more permanent roundhouse settlements, as with other parts of South-West Britain at this time. By c. 1500 BCE, the archaeological record indicates fairly dense settlement activity in both the upland and lowland zones. The period c. 1600–1200 BCE is thought to have been a period of milder climate, allowing upland areas to be more easily exploited compared with the preceding centuries. The pronounced increase in the number of inland and lowland settlements at this time may be connected with increasing alluvial tin exploitation. In general, most lowland settlements of this period were inhabited by families who lived as agriculturalists, raising livestock and growing crops, practising small-scale metalsmithing, and trading pottery and stone.
Evidence for Late Bronze Age settlement in Cornwall is much less common compared with the Middle Bronze Age. In the upland zones c. 1000 BCE, field