NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGES/ SETTLEMENTS AND BARROWS, HENGES AND HILLFORTS

NEOLITHIC AND BRONZE AGES

SETTLEMENTS(FARMING, AGRICULTURE…)

For most of that time, they subsisted by gathering food like nuts, berries, leaves and fruit from wild sources, and by hunting.

Around 10,000 years ago, the latest ice age came to an end. Sea levels rose as the ice sheets melted, and Britain became separated from the European mainland shortly before 6000 BC.

The introduction of farming, when people learned how to produce rather than acquire their food, is widely regarded as one of the biggest changes in human history.

NEOLITHIC REVOLUTION.

The change from a hunter-gatherer to a farming way of life is what defines the start of the Neolithic or New Stone Age.

So the majority of early farmers were probably Mesolithic people who adopted the new way of life and took it with them to other parts of Britain

Settlements consisted of round houses which were often grouped together, possibly for defence, but possibly too because people preferred to live near one another.
Barrows, Henges, and hillforts

 Neolithic barrows, although containing the remains of the dead, seem to have been monuments of ancestors en masse, rather than of individual people. The bones may have been left to decompose in the open, or possibly in mortuary enclosures prior to being placed in the barrows. Sites interpreted as elongated mortuary enclosures are often similar in shape and size to the long barrows, but are thought not to have had a covering mound. 

The best known barrows from this period include the spectacular West Kennet long barrow in Wiltshire. The main thing to remember about long barrows is that they were communal tombs, holding from one to fifty adults and children. 

Henges
they are basically a simple bank and ditch enclosing an area of land. The bank is outside the ditch, so they would not have been defensive enclosures, but were more likely a form of religious and ceremonial gathering place. The henges are younger than causewayed camps, with the oldest built about 3300 B.C. The largest henges enclose up to 12 hectares. Some  have stone circles within them, while others show remains of wooden rings. The first phase of Stonehenge belongs to this class of monument, though it has now been overshadowed by the famous standing stones which were added at several later dates. Other henges to visit include Avebury, Durrington Walls, and Woodhenge, all in Wiltshire, and Arbor Low in Derbyshire.

Hill Forts  

They are defensive structures enclosing high places with rings of ditches and banks. Often there were wooden or stone walls atop the banks as a further barrier. The hill forts do not seem to have been places of permanent settlement, but may have been emergency assembly points for tribes, or the case of the smaller forts, even single families. There are thousands of hill forts throughout the British Isles in various stages of repair, though the most spectacular is without a doubt Maiden Castle in Dorset.