1. Greek: νέος (néos) “new" + λίθος (lithos) "stone" = “New Stone Age”
Neolithic
Neo means ‘new’ and lithic means ‘stone’ – so the Neolithic is the New Stone Age.
Use the first slides as an introduction to help pupils find out more about the Neolithic in general.
Then explore the map to find out more about specific archaeological sites in Britain.
Greek:
νέος (néos) “new" + λίθος (lithos) "stone"
= “New Stone Age”
Historic England education

2. Historic England education
The Neolithic marks the beginning of farming in Britain, around 4000 BC, and ends with the appearance of bronze-working around 2200 BC.
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3. Farming: animals Historic England education
Farming in Neolithic Britain depended mainly on livestock (cattle, sheep and pigs) and grains (wheat and barley).
There were no chickens or turkeys!
All these domestic species were brought from the continent in small boats.
Archaeologists still debate how many people came over with them, and where they came from.
We know from animal bones found during excavations that in the early Neolithic cattle were the most important species.
People probably followed their herds in a nomadic fashion, not too different from Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
In the late Neolithic pigs became more important.
In contrast to the Mesolithic, wild animals were rarely exploited, although antler was used to make picks for digging.
People ate very little fish and some archaeologists believe there was a taboo because rivers were sacred.
QUESTION: As well as food, what other useful products would Neolithic farmers have made from their animals?
IMAGE:
Neolithic settlement at Durrington Walls, Wiltshire, in 2500BC. By Peter Lorimer © Historic England. [IC095_082]
  Farming: animals
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4. Farming: plants Historic England education
It is the first time that people start deliberately planting and harvesting crops. However, growing crops appears to have been less important in the Neolithic than herding animals, though there are a few sites where large quantities of grain have been found.
People also ate a lot of wild hazelnuts, as they had done in the Mesolithic.
Eating cereals required a lot of hard work; ploughing and planting seeds, harvesting the grains, cleaning and processing them to make flour.
People needed new tools for this such as sickles and grinding stones.
They may also have made beer for the first time.
QUESTION:
What different foods can you make using flour?
ACTIVITY: Try using a stone and some wheat grains to see how much effort it takes to make flour.
IMAGE:
Neolithic grain production © Historic England Photo Library Ref:J930178
  Farming: plants
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5. New technologies Historic England education
As well as the first evidence for farming, in the form of domesticated plants and animals, people also made pottery for the first time.
Although they continued to use stone tools, they had new techniques of producing axes (polished stone).
We have more evidence for houses in the Neolithic, as well as new types of site used for burials, gatherings and ceremonies, which archaeologists refer to as ‘monuments’.
  New technologies
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6. Pottery Historic England education
People started using pottery for the first time in the Neolithic.
The pots were handmade (not on wheels) and fired in simple pits or bonfires.
Bits of stone or shell were added to strengthen the clay and help stop it breaking when it was fired.
These can help archaeologists tell where pottery came from.
Early pottery was not very strong and was easily broken but it meant that people could cook and store food in different ways.
Microscopic residues extracted from pottery fragments show that many pots contained dairy products.
Neolithic pottery was often decorated, which might have been an important way of showing which groups people belonged to.
Sometimes pottery fragments and other rubbish were disposed of in special ways, usually in small pits.
These traditions reflected important beliefs which are very different from modern treatment of rubbish.
Even broken pottery might have been powerful or magical in the Neolithic world.
QUESTION:
What would people have used to store things in and eat from before they had pottery?
IMAGE:
A reconstruction drawing of Neolithic pottery from Windmill Hill. © Historic England.
LINK:
  Pottery
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7. Stone tools: polished axes
Neolithic people made stone and flint axes in a different way to Mesolithic people.
After using hammer stones to knap a nodule and produce a rough shape, the axes were ground or polished to produce a sharp edge and the smooth shape shown here.
These axes were mounted onto wooden handles and could be used for chopping and cutting.
They were also impressive objects that might have been important for the status of people in the past.
To have one of these axes might have made other people think you were important, powerful, brave or wise.
Stone axes were traded widely across Britain, which also shows how important they were.
Some are so delicate they must never have been used.
In these cases, the practical usefulness of these objects might have been less important than using them as status symbols.
QUESTION:
What sort of things in modern life could be called status symbols - having importance attached to them beyond how well they do a job?
IMAGE:
Neolithic polished stone axe. © Historic England Ref:DP005660
LINK:
  Stone tools: polished axes
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8. Woodworking Historic England education
As well as pottery and stone, Neolithic people would have made objects out of wood and other organic materials, but these rarely survive.
Examples of Neolithic woodworking have been found at Etton causewayed enclosure near Peterborough, including an axe haft and a bowl.
There are also a number of wooden finds from the Thames including a club from Chelsea (which looks like a modern rounders bat) and a small statue of a human figure from Dagenham.
Two finds made recently near Carlisle, Cumbria, are very rare wooden ‘tridents’ found in an ancient river channel.
The tridents are 6000 years old.
They were made from planks of oak wood, and with the handles (which are not shown in the image) they would have been nearly 2m long.
Archaeologists are not sure what the tridents were for.
QUESTION:
What do you think these tridents were used for?
IMAGE:
On the right is a picture of the trident in the ground, on the left is a reconstruction Detail © Oxford Archaeology North
  Woodworking
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9. West Kennet long barrow
Skara Brae
West Kennet long barrow
Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure
Doddington Moor
Click the red dots to find out more about each location
Stonehenge Cursus
Avebury and Silbury Hill
Langdale
Durrington Walls
Stonehenge
Thornborough
The Amesbury Archer
Grimes Graves
The Sweet Track
Horton
Carn Brea
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10. Langdale axe factories, Cumbria
The Langdales are hills and mountains in the Lake District.
They were the location of Neolithic stone quarries known as axe factories.
The waste stone from this process can still be seen at these sites today.
Langdale stone is very good for producing polished stone axes, but it also has a distinctive green colour.
A green axe from the Alps, Switzerland, had been brought all the way to the Sweet Track in Somerset, so the colour and other properties of Langdale axes were probably important too.
Getting to the axe quarries would have been risky and dangerous, and the stories about your adventures getting there would have impressed people.
The journey might have been as important as the stones you brought back!
QUESTION: Imagine you are journeying to the axe quarries; what might happen to you on your journey?
IMAGE:
A Neolithic axe factory at Langdale, showing quarrying waste in front of the rock face. © Mark Edmonds
  Langdale axe factories, Cumbria
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11. Horton, Berkshire Back to map Historic England education
Neolithic people lived in very different types of houses to those found in the Mesolithic.
They were still mostly constructed from wood, but varied in shape and size.
In the early Neolithic some people built timber halls or longhouses which were rectangular in shape, and sometimes very big!
It seems likely that these large buildings were not ordinary dwellings but more like village halls or community centres.
Four early Neolithic houses (3700BC) were found at Kingsmead Quarry, Horton, Berkshire. The largest was 15m x 7m in size.
Inside archaeologists found pottery, flint tools and arrowheads, a rubbing stone for grinding grain and charred food remains.
QUESTION: Why do you think some Neolithic houses were so big?
What type of activities happen in village halls today – do you think any of them are similar to what people did when they gathered together in Neolithic time? (dancing, eating, selling things, parties…)
IMAGE:
Reconstruction of one of the houses at Horton. © Wessex Archaeology
  Horton, Berkshire
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12. The Sweet Track, Somerset
The Sweet Track (named after Mr Sweet, the peat digger who discovered it) is the oldest wooden trackway known in Britain.
It was built across a marsh in Somerset.
As shown in the picture here, long poles were driven into the marsh so they could support planks for people to walk on.
Archaeologists used tree-ring dating to find out that the track was built in the winter of BC.
The track was not just a way of crossing a marsh. Objects found next to the track suggest that Neolithic people performed ceremonies here.
The finds included a green stone axe from the Alps, pottery and a wooden bowl.
Another Neolithic trackway in Somerset produced a carved human figure made of ash wood.
Such finds show that Neolithic people’s beliefs about water and the landscapes they moved through may have been very different from our own.
QUESTION:
Neolithic people did not have horses, cars, or other forms of land transport. They got everywhere on foot.
How would this affect your daily life?
IMAGE:
Conserved Neolithic wood from the Sweet Track. © Trustees of the British Museum
  The Sweet Track, Somerset
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13. West Kennet, Wiltshire Back to map Historic England education
West Kennet is an example of a type of early Neolithic burial monument called a long barrow.
The barrow is a large mound of soil about 100m long and 25m wide at its east end.
Inside the mound at this end are a passage and five chambers built out of stone, where the bones of about 36 people were buried in around 3600 BC.
Long barrows and chambered tombs of different kinds are found all across Britain.
Not all had large stone chambers filled with bones like West Kennet; some contained timber burial structures or had no burials at all.
Some locations have groups of monuments which suggest these areas were special places in the Neolithic.
The landscape around West Kennet includes other important Neolithic monuments such as Windmill Hill and Avebury.
QUESTION:
People have different spiritual beliefs. What do you think the people who buried their dead at West Kennet believed? Follow the link to more images to help you answer the question.
IMAGE:
West Kennet long barrow. © Historic England [24861_021]
LINK:
  West Kennet, Wiltshire
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14. Causewayed Enclosures
Around the same time that long barrows were in use, Neolithic people also constructed large enclosures defined by banks and ditches.
These earthworks were dug in sections, with the gaps between them allowing people and animals to enter.
These are the ‘causeways’ which give the sites their name.
Over 70 causewayed enclosures were constructed in Britain, mostly in the south, between 3700 and 3500 BC.
They were not occupied all the time.
Neolithic people probably met there seasonally to do things such as settle arguments, trade cattle or get married.
At Windmill Hill, near Avebury, archaeologists found deposits of animal bones in the ditches that may be the remains of feasts.
At Hambledon Hill in Dorset, human remains were de-fleshed and buried as part of complex funeral rituals.
QUESTION:
Where do you go when you want to mark a special occasion? Is it anything like a causewayed enclosure?
IMAGE:
A reconstruction drawing of the Windmill Hill causewayed enclosure. By Judith Dobie © Historic England [e tif]
LINK:
  Causewayed Enclosures
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15. Carn Brea, Cornwall Back to map Historic England education
Carn Brea is a Neolithic hilltop (or Tor) enclosure in Cornwall, equivalent to the causewayed enclosures found in other areas of Britain.
The site was in use for a long time, at least until the Iron Age, but the first time people came there was in the early Neolithic.
The site was enclosed by a stone wall, ramparts and ditches.
Within the enclosure were several flat areas where houses were built.
Evidence for burning and finds of hundreds of flint arrowheads suggest the site was attacked.
Similar evidence came from the causewayed enclosure at Crickley Hill in Gloucestershire.
Pottery found at Carn Brea was made with a distinctive type of stone, which comes from about 20 miles away.
People living here might have traded this pottery with communities living far to the east in Wessex.
QUESTION:
What were the advantages and risks of living on a hilltop?
IMAGE:
Carn Brea. © Seren Griffiths.
  Carn Brea, Cornwall
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16. Stonehenge Cursus, Wiltshire Back to map Historic England education
Cursus monuments are long and narrow earthwork enclosures that were built between 3600 and 3000 BC.
They range in size from about 100m to almost 10km long but they usually contain very few finds so their purpose is hard to discover.
However, they are often thought of as processional ways, through which people crossed sacred or important parts of the landscape.
Few cursus monuments survive as visible monuments above ground but one exception is the Greater Stonehenge Cursus, which is around 3 km long (CLICK/PAGE DOWN to show it’s course).
When the archaeologist William Stukeley noticed this monument in the 18th century he thought it was a Roman arena and gave it the Latin name for a chariot race track - cursus!
QUESTION:
Can you think of occasions today when processions take place?
IMAGE:
Stonehenge Cursus. © Historic England [27527_029]
  Stonehenge Cursus,
Wiltshire
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17. Thornborough Henges, Yorkshire
Henges were circular enclosures used in the late Neolithic and early Bronze Age.
They usually have a large ditch with a bank outside.
At Thornborough in Yorkshire a group of three large henges, each about 240 m across, form an impressive alignment stretching for over 1.5 km.
Henges had fewer entrances than the earlier causewayed enclosures.
This might have meant that only certain people were allowed inside.
At Thornborough there is little evidence of what took place inside but some henges elsewhere contained structures such as circles of upright stones or timber posts.
If henge ditches were built for defence we would expect them to be outside the banks, so instead these sites might have been used for special ceremonies.
It has even been suggested that they were built this way to keep ghosts or spirits inside!
QUESTION:
Many henges were big structures. How many people do you think it might have taken to build one? Why might they have done it?
IMAGE:
Thornborough Henges. © Historic England
LINK:
  Thornborough Henges, Yorkshire
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18. Avebury and Silbury Hill, Wiltshire
The first henges were probably constructed in Orkney around 3000 BC, but the largest are found in southern England, at Avebury, Marden and Durrington Walls in Wiltshire, and Mount Pleasant in Dorset.
The henge bank and ditch at Avebury enclose an area of over 400 m across and the ditch is 11 m deep.
Britain’s largest stone circle follows the inner edge of the ditch.
Outside Avebury are a number of related monuments, including two avenues of standing stones that would have guided visitors to the henge entrances.
1 km south of Avebury is the great mound of Silbury Hill, which was built around 2400 BC, a few hundred years after the henge.
While we know a lot about how and when Silbury Hill was constructed no-one is sure why it was built.
QUESTION:
Why do you think the stone circle at Avebury and the great mound at Silbury Hill were built?
IMAGE:
Avebury with Silbury Hill in the background, in snow © Historic England [NMR 15403/11]
LINK:
  Avebury and Silbury Hill, Wiltshire
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19. Grimes Graves, Norfolk Back to map Historic England education
This is an aerial photograph of the Grimes Graves flint mines in Norfolk.
You can see how big the site is by looking at the cars in the car park on the right. Each of the depressions to the left of these is a Neolithic mine.
At least 433 shafts were dug to mine flint from deep underground.
The biggest were 14m deep and 12m wide.
Neolithic people had no metal tools, and used antler picks and stone tools to dig.
They may have used torches of burning branches and animal fat.
Most of the mining at Grimes Graves took place between 2600 and 2400 BC.
The flint dug out of the mine shafts would have been used for stone tools, including polished axes.
Mining flint would have been a dangerous undertaking.
Some of the shafts seem to have been the sites of ceremonies, perhaps to ensure success or luck.
QUESTION:
A lot of effort was put into digging flint at this site. Why do you think Neolithic people wanted it so much?
IMAGE: Grimes Graves flint mines. © Historic England [15717/27]
LINK:
  Grimes Graves, Norfolk
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20. Skara Brae, Orkney Back to map Historic England education
Unlike the longhouses of the early Neolithic, the later part of the period saw a different style of house – roughly square with rounded corners and about 5 x 5 m in area.
At Skara Brae in Orkney the well-preserved houses were built of stone and connected by passageways.
The houses also had stone furniture, including cupboards or ‘dressers’ at one end, box ‘beds’ at either side, and a central square fireplace.
IMAGE:
A Neolithic house at the Skara Brae village © Sharon Soutar
  Skara Brae, Orkney
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21. Durrington Walls, Wiltshire
At Durrington Walls in Wiltshire recent excavations uncovered remains of houses that were very similar in plan but made of timber and chalk.
These discoveries show that there were connections between the north and south of Britain 4500 years ago, and that people in different areas used the materials available to them to build similar-looking homes.
IMAGES:
Top right inset: Reconstructions of houses from Durrington Walls (right). © Historic England.
Neolithic settlement at Durrington Walls, Wiltshire, in 2500BC. Reconstruction drawing by Peter Lorimer © Historic England. [IC095_082]
  Durrington Walls, Wiltshire
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22. Stonehenge, Wiltshire Play the game Back to map
Stonehenge is probably the most famous prehistoric monument in Britain.
It has a long and complicated history of construction from the Neolithic to the early Bronze Age.
The site includes outer circles and inner horseshoe arrangements of massive sarsen stones, brought from about 30 km away, and smaller bluestones from south Wales, 240 km away.
These were put up around 2500 BC.
The stones are unique in a number of ways, including their shaping, the lintels that join the tops of the upright stones, and the distance they were brought.
Some archaeologists think the bluestones were transported all that way because they were believed to have healing properties.
Surrounding the stone circle is a circular ditch and bank that was first constructed around 3000 BC.
For much of the period, before the stones arrived, the site was used as a cemetery.
QUESTION
Why do you think Stonehenge was built?
LINKS:
Trilithon icon - Play the Stonehenge Game to help you find out:
To find out more about monuments in the surrounding landscape take a look at the interactive map:
Historic England has done a substantial amount of research in the Stonehenge World Heritage Site landscape, which you can access through our research reports interactive map:
IMAGE:
Stonehenge. © Historic England.
  Stonehenge, Wiltshire
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23. The Amesbury Archer, Wiltshire
The Amesbury Archer was buried near Stonehenge in the late Neolithic. He was an important person, possibly a metalworker.
Finds buried with him included Beaker pots, archery equipment (hence his name), copper knives and metalworking tools.
His two gold hair ornaments are the oldest evidence for gold in Britain. His hair may have been dreadlocked.
At the transition from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age, metalworking was a specialist task and closely guarded secret.
People may have thought it included magical processes.
Specialists like the Archer may have been seen as powerful and dangerous.
Scientific analysis of his teeth shows the Archer grew up in Europe, in the Alps.
Another burial nearby was of a close male relative (perhaps his son) who grew up in Britain.
These findings show that some people travelled long distances across Europe at this time, which may have added to their prestige.
QUESTION:
How and why do you think people travelled in prehistoric Europe?
IMAGE:
Reconstruction drawing of what the Amesbury Archer might have looked like. © Wessex Archaeology
LINK:
  The Amesbury Archer, Wiltshire
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24. Doddington Moor, Northumberland
In some areas of Britain, where suitable rocks are exposed, Neolithic rock art is found.
One good example is on Doddington Moor in Northumberland.
There are a number of rock art sites here, where Late Neolithic people carved patterns and motifs, mostly ‘cup and ring marks’ where carved rings surround one or more small depressions or cups.
These types of motif are found across Britain, and from countries along the Atlantic coast of Europe.
Over 5000 cup and ring mark sites are known from Britain.
As far as we can tell, the rock art does not depict actual things, such as humans or animals, maps or the stars.
They may have served as signposts in the landscape or held some unknown, possibly sacred, meaning for the prehistoric people who made and looked at them.
IMAGE:
A rock art panel on Doddington Moor. © Historic England. [aa045828]
QUESTION:
Archaeologists do not know what cup and ring marks were meant to show. What do you think? Why do you think they didn’t carve other designs?
  Doddington Moor, Northumberland
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