Unearth the Facts on Brighton Museum's Archaeology Gallery
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
Unearth the Facts on Brighton Museum’s Archaeology Gallery 1 How does this period fit into worldwide prehistory? Use of fibres First to produce Invention pyramids Ice Age Iron Age First Black Rock clothing of wheel built Hollingbury Writing 220,000 years ago 35,000 years ago 5,500 years ago 4,700 years ago 2,800 years ago 2,000 years ago First Homo Neolithic Hieroglyphic Bronze Age Romans Anglo sapiens Whitehawk Hove Barrow Springfield Road 5,700 years ago script 3,500 years ago 2,000 years ago Saxons Africa Stafford Road 200,000 years ago developed 1,400 years ago 5,100 years ago Welcome to the Ice Age When was the Ice Age? It started 220,000 years ago, but we’re technically still in it! What is the Ice Age? The Ice Age is known for epic changes in the global climate, which alternated between warm and cool. These periods of warming and cooling shaped human development. As people coped with changes in climate they learned to walk upright and make tools. They also became more complex mentally and socially. About 12,000 years ago, the climate warmed and open grassland and tundra (treeless plains) became woodland. Large animals like reindeer and mammoth were replaced by smaller, faster species like red deer, wild boar and wild ox. Around this time Britain was connected to France, until the last land bridge was flooded about 8,000 years ago when sea levels started to rise. Britain was an island again. Who lived then? The Ice Age is so long ago that nobody is completely sure about the people that lived in Britain at the time. But we can make some pretty good guesses… Early humans (Homo antecessor) could have arrived in Britain as early as one million years ago. Homo antecessor was between 1.68m (5’ 5”) and 1.83m (6’ 0”) tall and weighed up to 90kg (200lb). They had smaller brains than modern people. By 500,000 years ago, we think another species (Homo heidelbergensis) arrived. The remains of one of them were found at Boxgrove, near Chichester. He’s called 1 ‘Boxgrove Man’. Although slightly smaller than their ancestors, Homo heidelbergensis were hunting large animals across Sussex. In Europe around 350,000 years ago, Neanderthals (Homo neanderthalensis) evolved. They became shorter and stockier so they could live better in a cold climate. They were shorter and heavier than us, with larger brains. By about 40,000 years ago, modern humans (Homo sapiens) arrived in Britain. Evidence suggests that modern humans had families with Neanderthals and that both species lived together in Northern Europe for around 10,000 years before Neanderthals died out. We’ve got some different ideas about what might have happened to them. Did they fail to adapt to climate change? Fight to the death with Homo sapiens? Or interbreed with them? Today, we’re the only species left. But since up to 4% of our DNA is Neanderthal, the past has definitely left its mark. Reconstruction of Neanderthal Woman Reconstruction of early Modern Man 2 What were their lives like? As soon as people developed tools, they could do more than their ancestors, from using weapons to harvesting fruit. These tools changed everything. For example, they could make tiny flint blades called Microliths into arrows to hunt animals through forests, as well as tools to harvest wild seeds and fruit from trees and shrubs. They learned to eat more fish and shellfish too. People lived in small temporary homes. They moved across the land to make best use of the resources available during the different seasons. As time went on, we think they probably moved less. Instead, they started to control the landscape around them to provide what they needed to survive. They started to express themselves through cave painting and take part in rituals. What do we have in the gallery? We’ve got a large selection of stone tools from the Ice Age. They include the hand axe – which people used to cut up animals for at least 1.8 million years. There’s also a fantastic collection of bones and fossils from animals that lived alongside people in Britain during the Ice Age. These include mammoth, woolly rhino, bear, wild horse and auroch (ancient wild cattle). Which local site can we look at to tell us more about Ice Age life in Brighton & Hove? Behind ASDA at the Marina you can still see evidence of a 220,000-year-old raised shingle beach at Black Rock. When the beach was formed, Brighton was in a warm stage with high sea levels. It’s possible Neanderthals were hunting big game there, including horse, red deer, bison and mammoth. Brighton & Hove must have been good hunting grounds with lots of big game around. People could easily find local flint to make hand axes to butcher what they’d killed. As the climate cooled, the sea retreated and shifts in the earth’s surface pushed the stranded beach further up and inland. Slowly, as the landscape froze and thawed out again, the chalk cliff started to crumble. In time the beach was covered by a layer of 3 chalk sludge and other claylike deposits. Gideon Mantell, the 19th century geologist and fossil collector, named these deposits the ‘Elephant Beds’, because they hid so many fossilised ‘elephant’ bones. The bones would actually have belonged to mammoths! Archaeologists have found a hand axe at Black Rock. It probably dates from the Lower Palaeolithic, hundreds of thousands of years before the beach was formed. Next time you wander along the Undercliff Walk behind ASDA in Brighton Marina, look up. You can still see the shingle beach suspended in the cliff line, covered with chalk and layers of orangey-brown silt. You might even see a mammoth tusk poking out! 4 Welcome to the Neolithic, or New Stone Age When was the Neolithic? Around 6,000 to 4,500 years ago. What was the Neolithic? It began with an explosion of ideas coming from the Continent. These included: • Growing crops • Keeping animals • Building large landscape monuments • Formal burial • Making pottery and polished stone axes • Developing long-distance trade networks What were people’s lives like? People made the tools they needed for farming in the same place year after year. These included specialist flint tools like scrapers, awls and fabricators, picks made out of antlers and shovels made from oxen shoulder blades. They made quern stones out of sandstone for processing wheat and special axes for trading and clearing land. These axes were often ground smooth and polished. Neolithic people travelled long distances and dug deep mines to find the best quality stone. Neolithic people are also known for their mysterious large monuments, like large causewayed enclosures built with circular ditches and banks. We think they were places to feast or even bury the dead. As time went on they built circular monuments of wood and stone, possibly to mark changes in season. Pottery arrived in Britain. Handmade pinch and coil pots became more heavily decorated. Later came Impressed Ware – pottery decorated with twisted cord and bird bone. Next, people developed flat bottomed, more angular vessels, called Grooved Ware. 5 Meet the locals – Whitehawk Woman Female aged 17-25, height 1.45m (4’ 9”). This woman was buried in a ditch at an entrance to Whitehawk Causewayed Enclosure. Buried with her were: • Two small pieces of chalk with holes in • Two fossil sea urchins • Half the leg bone of an ox and other animal remains Small and slight, she probably died in childbirth. Her careful burial at Whitehawk may mean she was part of an important Reconstruction of Whitehawk Woman family. She probably grew up close to Wales, Normandy, Brittany or Spain. Her clothes were made from animal skins. She would have worked hard looking after animals, growing crops and grinding wheat into flour. Most Neolithic people didn't live longer than 35 years. 6 What do we have in the gallery? We have a large Neolithic collection. It’s mostly from local sites such as Whitehawk and the Sussex flint mines. In the gallery you can see: • The skeleton of Whitehawk woman with her grave goods • A scored chalk block • Fossilised sea urchins (otherwise known as Shepherd’s Crowns) Scored chalk block found at Whitehawk • Butchered animal bone • Entire restored pots • Stone tools including polished axes Which local site can we look at to tell us more about Neolithic life in Brighton & Hove? Whitehawk Causewayed Enclosure was built around 5,600 years ago. That’s up to a thousand years before the major stone circles at Stonehenge! We think it took one or two whole generations to complete. It’s made up of at least four concentric rings of ditches and banks which cover around six hectares, making it a major monument in the landscape. People would have been able to clearly see the white chalk banks from miles away. The gaps in the banks and ditches would have allowed people to access the inner circle. Causewayed Enclosures became very popular in southern England about 5,700 years ago. Most may have remained in use for only a few decades. However, we think Whitehawk Enclosure was used for up to 250 years as a large arena where the communities gathered, traded, celebrated and possibly worshipped. Large amounts of animal bone found in the ditches suggest a lot of feasting must have happened there. We’ve also found lots of stone tools. Many people were buried 7 there too. The remains of four complete burials have been found in the ditches.