Archaeological Ages in Prehistory - Ancient Penwith | Cornwall

Ancient Penwith
The prehistoric landscape of West Penwith, the Land's End peninsula, Cornwall
Ancient Penwith
Ancient Penwith
The prehistoric landscape of the Land's End Peninsula
Ancient Penwith
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Archaeological Ages in Prehistory

The Archaeological Ages


For social-cultural periods we could break down the Neolithic and Bronze Ages into different periods that more accurately reflect changes in ideas, worldviews, society and culture.

The archaeological ages (Neolithic, Bronze, Iron) don't represent social, spiritual and cultural periods - they're based on material artefacts and the stone or metals used in tools.

The development of material technologies increased people's capabilities, greatly affecting society, but major changes of culture and viewpoint happened at other times from these.

The Neolithic divides into four phases:
  • 4500-3800ish, pre-megalithic - a gatherer-hunter-gardener phase;
  • 3700-3200, megalithic development (tor enclosures, quoits, placed stones and longcairns);
  • 3200-2900ish, significant downturn or emigration; and
  • 2900ish-2500ish, the Late Neolithic and prelude to the Bronze Age.

The Bronze Age has five megalithic cultural phases:
  • 2500ish-2300ish, the Neolithic-Bronze Age transition (NBA);
  • 2300ish-2100ish, the Bronze Age ascendancy;
  • 2100-1800, the Bronze Age cultural zenith;
  • 1800-1500, megalithic culture becomes a settled tradition;
  • 1500-1200, megalithic cultural ossification, decline and fall.

The megalithic period was over. However...

It's better, from our viewpoint, to scrap the Neolithic and Bronze Ages and to divide the whole 2,500 year megalithic period from 3700-1200 into two main phases:

  • the Early Megalithic, 3700-3200 (500 years),
  • the Later Megalithic, 2500ish-1500ish (1,000 years).

The Megalithic Age declined from around 1500, to die around 1200 BCE, and a unique magical culture died with it. It was a culture that, whatever its faults and weaknesses (we must not be idealistic and starry-eyed), fundamentally sought to work with nature and its deeper forces. In modern terms it was an inclusive, sustainable economy.

After 1200, the psychology of the British changed toward one that was more extractive and exploitative, driven by warlords and strongmen, and establishing the pattern of future times. This was one of the most critical turning-points in Britain's history.

A footnote. We throw around these dates as if a prehistoric period such as 200 years sounds short, but for people with a life-expectancy of around 30-50 years, two centuries is a very long time. Some folk had long lives, becoming elders, carrying knowledge that could be passed down from generation to generation. But most died in their thirties or forties.
The Megalithic Era


Penwith woodlandsThe megalithic era spans the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, during which the stone monuments of West Penwith, Britain and Ireland were built.

Many of the principles and traditions of these periods passed over into the Iron Age and up to Medieval times. Hill camps and cliff sanctuaries were occupied and used in the Iron Age, and early Christian and medieval Gothic churches were built using ancient principles. But the megalithic era itself took place only in the Mid-to-Late Neolithic and Early-to-Mid Bronze Ages.

The 3000s: the Neolithic

The Neolithic or New Stone Age, spanning two millennia from 4500-2500ish BCE, started hotting up in West Penwith with the building of the Neolithic tor enclosures and the quoits between roughly 3700 and 3200 BCE.

The people of this time also erected placed stones, propped stones and longcairns.
Neolithic long cairn on top of Chapel Carn Brea
Neolithic long barrow, Chapel Carn BreaUp to around 3200 Penwith was densely wooded with small man-made clearings, and the climate was considerably warmer than now. Most people lived in a forested wildwood milieu that stretched endlessly across the land.

They were probably psychologically rather overwhelmed by it. People will have felt like guests in nature's domain and much more subject to nature's parameters than the people of later times.

Tor hills and cliff sanctuaries became prominent as locations where people could emerge from the enclosed shade of the woodlands to gain a sense of space and see the dome of the heavens. It allowed them to get some space and perspective - just as townies do today when they visit places like Cornwall.

Neolithic sites in West Penwith, CornwallGenerally, people moved on an annual round of their tribe's patch - they were transhumant, moving around their home ground in a seasonal cycle, or as needed, without being permanently settled. The landscape was their home, population was not dense and there was plenty of space.

The uplands in the north, from Rosewall and Zennor Hills westwards to Carn Kenidjack, were the best place to be - cooler, less humid in summer and clearer of trees and undergrowth. People went down into the forest in winter or poor weather, where there was fuel, wood for bivouacs and huts, and hunting and foraging. Seafood was a large part of people's diet.

Penwith was a really good ranging ground and home territory, blessed with rich seas, land resources and a variety of landscapes, all within an area people could tramp around in a few days. It was a compact, safe, productive and good place to live - at least, when times were good in the mid-3000s.

Something went awry around 3200. From then, megalith-building stopped and everything ground to a halt. It could have been a climatic downturn or a pandemic from Europe that harmed or decimated them, or something else - we don't know.
Neolithic propped stone on Zennor Hill
Neolithic propped stone on Zennor HillA long pause took place between roughly 3200 and 2900 BCE. Around 2800 megalith-building started in other parts of Britain and Ireland (Orkney, the Hebrides and Boyne valley), but not in Cornwall. The next sign of activity in Penwith came around 2500 and there are few signs of activity before that.

The thinning out of population, through death, birthrate decline or emigration, perhaps with the loss of some of the most knowledgeable and capable people, would have been serious.

Humans started impacting more markedly on the landscape through wildwood clearance as the Bronze Age approached, and it changed their psychology too. The growth of man-made clearings changed people's relationship with their environment - their sense of psychogeography. They no longer melted into a wild landscape - they were creating a landscape of their own making. It led to the idea that this is ours.

In the Late Neolithic, roughly 2800-2500, in Penwith clearance was not large-scale, but it began a trend that grew during the Bronze Age as tools improved, population grew, attitudes changed and people's impacts escalated. This wasn't environmental destruction as we know it today - impacts were localised and plenty of woodland and wildland remained - but it started a trend.

The Early 2000s: the Late Neolithic

Things slowly got better in the 2000s and life started reviving. This led to a transitional period from around 2500 to 2300, about which there are many open questions about dating, sequences of events, incoming people and ideas. New discoveries are being made ongoingly, particularly in the area of genetic research.

This concerns the 'Beaker Influx', and the beginning of the heyday of the megalithic era, which came in the first half of the Bronze Age, starting around 2500-2300 with the NBA, the Neolithic-Bronze Age Transition.
Late Neolithic Boscregan Cairn, north of Sennen
Late Neolithic Boscregan cairn, CornwallWhat's not clear at present is how much the Beaker Influx set Bronze Age megalith-building in motion, and how much indigenous people and ideas had already started it, then to be upstepped and accelerated by the Beaker Influx, bringing new ideas, people and bronze technologies with it.

The evidence is that megalithic principles were already being incorporated into stone circles and chambered cairns elsewhere in Britain and Ireland before the Beaker Influx came.

The Neolithic phased into the Bronze Age around 2500-2300. This is the NBA, which some call the Chalcolithic or Copper Age, since copper metallurgy was by then in use.

The Late Neolithic, from around 2800 to 2500, was more like a precursor to the Bronze Age than a continuation of the Mid-Neolithic of the 3000s. The people of the Mid- and Late Neolithic used stone tools, but their trajectory and cultures were very different. There was a massive material and cultural shift between these two periods around year 3000, connected with the austerity, ecological changes and population decline that came with the downturn mentioned above.

Recent genetic studies have discovered a surprising 90% change in the genetic makeup of the British around that time. The foregoing orthodoxy was that the Beaker Influx signified an influx of ideas more than of large numbers of people. But genetic studies show a dramatic change in population makeup, implying the arrival of many new people, though there are no signs of forceful invasion, violence or disaster.

2300-1500: the Early Bronze Age

The Bronze Age gradually phased in around 2500-2300, characterised by the adoption of bronze technologies. It applied particularly to Ireland and parts of what's now England, but it came later to Cornwall. West Penwith became an exporter of copper and tin, drawing in visitors, exchange-trade and imported valuables such as bronze tools and ornaments, but the signs are that Penwithians did not actually adopt bronze-working technologies themselves until around 1800 BCE.

They were well connected through maritime traffic around their shores, so they were exposed to knowledge and influences from Brittany and Ireland. But they did not adopt metal-crafting - seemingly choosing not to engage with it. However, an imported technology can make people's lives easier and better, but it might not stimulate them to engage in making it themselves - it can be easier to import it.

Megalith building in Penwith rose to a peak between 2300 and 1800 BCE. This was the heyday of the Bronze Age megalithic period, seeing the construction of stone circles, menhirs, barrows and sacred enclosures in profusion. It represented a peak in Britain's cultural history.
Men an Tol, once a stone circle, modified in Victorian times
Men an Tol stone circleThis was a time of increased woodland clearance and the beginning of the establishment of a more open, cleared landscape. By 1800 BCE about 50% of Penwith was cleared, becoming more of a man-made landscape. By then the south of the Penwith peninsula was fully colonised.

Cornwall had different influences to England, which was affected by influences from central Europe, while Cornwall was part of the Atlantic seaboard culture-zone.

Cornwall was a key maritime node in a megalithic culture stretching along Europe's Atlantic coast from Portugal to Scandinavia, centred in western Britain, Ireland and Brittany - the Irish Sea was a key focus. As a source of tin, a high-value resource, Cornwall became increasingly focal and prosperous.

Though the Bronze Age technically continued until around 800 BCE, enormous social and cultural changes arrived during the Late Bronze Age around 1200 BCE. This prehistoric watershed in time marks a significant divide - this was the final end of the megalithic age. Megalithic culture, peaking around 2000 BCE, started losing vibrancy and momentum by 1500, disappearing by 1200. Stone circles and menhirs remained and were respected, but much of the enchantment had gone out of them. A magic spell cast over the land of Britain was broken.

Increased territoriality, competitiveness and materialism took over in the Late Bronze Age after 1200, with visible changes in farming and land use, at a time when climate was deteriorating, becoming cooler and wetter, and society was becoming more stratified, centred around chieftains and warlords, more territorial, sedentary and materialistic. It was a time of cultural decline and of material development.

The customary division of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron ages does not help us if we are interested in megalithic ancient sites and the cultures that built them. Megalithic culture crosses these divides.

The Iron Age 800 BCE - CE 200
Chysauster late Iron Age settlement
ChysausterThen came the Iron Age or Celtic period between around 800 BCE and, in Cornwall, CE 200. The end of the Iron Age came earlier upcountry in England because of the Roman invasion, which did not affect Cornwall greatly.

Iron Age people were roughly the same people as those of the Bronze Age, with some changes, but society and culture had changed radically before the Iron Age started. The building of ancient sites changed too: hilltop camps (hillforts), rounds (lowland enclosures), settlements, fogous, cliff sanctuaries and holy wells became more important in the Iron Age. Stone circles and menhirs interested people as much as old churches interest us today - to a degree, but not a lot.

Though well rooted in all that had happened beforehand, the Celtic/Iron Age period brought a cultural upswing from around 500 BCE onward - around the same time as the early days of classical Greece. Iron Age people were nature-lovers in a different way to Bronze Age people. They weren't great temple builders or geoengineering nerds like the bronzies - they preferred natural features such as springs, trees, glades and hilltops, and a simpler esoteric culture. Writing was available, yet they wrote nothing down - Druidic secrets were passed down through whispered lineages.

In Penwith the Iron Age peaked around 200 BCE to CE 100. After this and up to 400ish Cornwall went through a downturn - the tin trade slumped because of the Roman discovery of tin deposits in Spain, though later they were exhausted by around 400.

The Roman occupation shifted the centre of gravity of Britain eastward, marginalising Penwith - the Romans dominated England for 350 years, from the 60s CE to 410. They did not take Cornwall, but Cornwall was influenced by Romanitas and romanised British people, with their trade, economic and cultural influences.

Medieval Times
St Buryan church - located on an iron age round
St Buryan ChurchAfter the 410 withdrawal from Britannia of the Romans, during the Early Medieval period from the 400s to the 900s Cornwall went through a time of independence, joined to Devon in the kingdom of Dumnonia.

Here come the early Christian saints, Celtic Christianity and a cultural and economic revival. The Saxons, forerunners of the English, came as far as Exeter in Devon in the 500s, but only in the late 900s did they expand to the river Tamar, Cornwall's current boundary. Devon was ethnically cleansed, becoming English.

During the post-Roman period Cornwall became a distinct land, regaining some of its centrality in the Celtic fringe of Europe. But it was now separated from Wales by the Saxon occupation upcountry. The Welsh and Cornish developed thereafter as separate peoples and cultures. Their languages drifted apart - Cornish was closer to Breton, partially because many Brits and Cornish migrated to Brittany as refugees from the Saxon incursions in the 500s-600s.

In the Medieval period  from around 900 onwards Cornwall was increasingly affected by Norman and Roman Catholic influences, though it wasn't invaded - instead it was infiltrated and incorporated in small steps. During this time church-building took place on many former ancient sites in Penwith at places like St Buryan, Ludgvan, Pen Sans, Paul, Madron, Sancreed, St Erth, St Ives, Hayle and St Just.

The early British church was by now overwhelmed by the Roman Catholic church, the church of the Saxons and Normans - the critical turning-point was the Synod of Whitby in the 680s. Even so, many principles of geometry, proportion and mathematics from ancient times lived on amongst the church-builders, the masons, up to the 1300s, and we see this in the cathedrals and abbeys of the time, designed according to principles which had their origins in the Bronze Age.

For a full history of the Neolithic, Bronze and Iron Ages, download A History of Penwith's Prehistory (PDF).

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