‘The bronze age? What on Earth is the Bronze Age?’ I hear some of you little people out there saying. Well the bronze age is when bronze was the strongest metal around. They didn’t have Iron or Steel, they just had plain old bronze. The Bronze age was about 2000 to 700BC.

Life in the Bronze Age.

The agricultural way of life that had become established in the past Neolithic period continued. Ploughing appears to have become common, as shown by remains of tools as well as plough-marks under barrows, and depictions of ploughing in the rock art of the period. As populations grew and expanded, pressure on land increased, and agriculture spread. Soil erosion also increased: for example, in Cyprus a combination of deforestation, intensive agriculture, and pastoralism destabilized the fragile soil-cover on hillslopes in the early Bronze Age and led to the rapid deposition of sediment along coastal valleys.

Another trend towards the end of the Bronze Age was a growing emphasis on fortifications, hillforts being constructed in many upland areas of Europe. Bronze armour and helmets, and new types of weapons such as the very effective slashing sword, suggest that warfare had come to the fore. In some areas, the earlier types of inhumation in cemeteries or barrow graves were replaced by cremation, the ashes being placed in pottery vessels that were buried in large open cemeteries. The term "urnfield cultures" denotes the group of related European cultures that practised this rite in the Bronze Age.

Bronze Age Swords and Weapons