Back to the Bronze Age calendar
You saw from the Amesbury archer that people were now making things from gold and copper. Craftsmen next discovered that if you heat bronze, it becomes a liquid and you could pour it into a mould, usually made of clay. When the liquid bronze cooled, it became solid. You could then break the mould and there was your beautiful piece of bronze.
The thing Bronze Age people liked best was jewellery. Important people would have swords and shields for decoration not to fight. The more important you were, the more gold you would have. They particularly liked necklaces which were called torcs. Look at the pictures. Aren't they beautiful?
The craftsmen who could make these things were a special part of Bronze Age life. People began to want possessions and they also showed your status, that is, how important you were.
Stone Age groups were usually family members or very close friends living together but now people got together with others who maybe had different skills.
The Bronze Age village might have some farmers who looked after the land and the animals but also some craftsmen who could make the beautiful jewellery and the tools the farmers or miners needed.
These groups of people became self-sufficient. That means they would grow or keep all the food they needed. There is evidence that about this time they started to use field systems. Instead of just planting things near their house, they would have areas within the village for growing certain crops. It was a hard life though. For example to make bread from wheat you would first have to get your field ready to plant the wheat. You would have to look after it while it was growing and then harvest it at the right time. The grain, wheat or barley, would then be dried on some rocks and then, often, stored in pits dug into the ground. You would then, at some stage, make the grain into flour to give you the bread part of your diet.
By the way, it was still a time when no one did any writing so all we can guess about their lives is from the things they left behind and that have survived over 4,000 years.
Forward to 2000BC
