3. Neolithic

4000 BC to 2500 BC

Neolithic

Pottery was first used in the

Neolithic.

Image: SCAU

Neolithic (New Stone Age) people were the first proper farmers, looking after crops and animals. They were also highly skilled at making fantastic pots, and mining flint for top quality tools.

People

They replaced the hunter-gatherer lifestyle with growing their own. They grew a small range of crops, which included wheat, millet and spelt. They kept dogs, sheep and goats, and later cattle and pigs. Up until this point family groups had been living independently. Now they had to be close by to tend to their animals and crops. This encouraged settlements to become established, either seasonally or permanently. Any extra foodstuffs were stored for winter, or exchanged for other goods between groups.

Places

Neolithic people were accomplished builders. They built long barrows, causewayed camps, henges and circular ditch (cursus) monuments. They often had timber fences (palisades) surrounding them with an entranceway. They built elaborate chambered tombs for the dead. They acted as boundary markers, and reminders of the spirits of their ancestors. This level of building would have required lots of man-power and time, and some degree of social organisation to get the job done!

Times

Neolithic people were extremely skilled at making the tools needed for tending, harvesting and processing the crops they were growing (sickle baldes, grinding stones) and eating (pottery and bone implements). They also produced other types of stone tools and ornaments including projectile points, beads and statuettes. The most important tool was the flint axehead, mounted on a wooden shaft.

To make sure they had the best flint for their tools and ornaments, Neolithic people discovered how to mine for raw materials. They dug down through the chalk to the seams of flint using antler picks, wooden ladders and woven baskets on ropes.

Neolithic Surrey

An unusually large assemblage of Neolithic Grooved Ware pottery was found at Betchworth.

Farming was not the only innovation of the Neolithic period. Large communal monuments were built for the first time, and are associated with ceremonial and ritual activity. An excavation near Staines revealed an enclosure with burials in the surrounding ditch at Staines Road Farm, Shepperton. Viewed from the centre, the entrance pointed directly to where the sun rises on Midsummer’s Day and was ‘guarded’ by a human skeleton. This skeleton was of a 30–40 year old female who was buried in a tightly flexed (foetal) position. It seems that when her body was in an advanced state of decomposition parts of it were removed.