Milton Keynes' Bronze Age

The Bronze Age roughly covers the period 2300 BCE until 600 BCE. In reality these dividing lines are not as clear cut as we sometimes imagine. It is the introduction of metalworking in bronze (and also copper and gold) which defines this period - until iron becomes the major type of metal being worked. Another characteristic of this period was a distinctive style of burial involving decorated pottery (giving rise to the name 'beaker culture).

The evidence of Bronze Age settlement  has largely come from excavation of ring ditches in the Ouse and Ouzel valleys.  These are associated with burial mounds (Round barrow). The most significant finds were at Warren Farm (Wolverton Mill) - which may be the oldest; the nearby Little Pond Ground, Oakgrove and Cotton Valley (between Willen Lake North and M1 Junction 14).

There's an excellent piece about the settlement at Blue Bridge/Bancroft accessible at http://www.mkheritage.co.uk/mkm/mkarchaeology/Web%20pages/Bronze%20Age.html. The pottery is of bronze age type, but the buildings are closer to Iron Age types.

A number of Bronze Age artefacts have also been found in Stony Stratford (a socketed axe): Shenley (an urn and an arrowhead) and other sites around the city.

Near Newport Pagnell (Gayhurst Quarry) an early Bronze Age cemetery has been excavated. It had seven round barrows. At the centre of the largest barrow was a massive grave pit which showed a sequence of five successive burials from around 2000 BCE, while the six surrounding ones were 100 and 600 years later. The Illustrated History of Early Buckinghamshire  says "What made this barrow remarkable was a deposit of cattle bones, perhaps the remains of 300 animals...The overall scale of the bone deposits provides as vivid an indicator of the wealth of the community that could afford to make this exceptional statement as the deposition of any number of artefacts. It illustrates the central importance of both cattle and ritual sacrifice to early Bronze Age communities"

The British Museum has the "Milton Keynes Hoard", an incredible hoard of Bronze Age gold found in 2000 in a field near Monkston. It has been described as "one of the biggest concentrations of Bronze Age gold known from Great Britain". A hoard of weapons was found on what became the County Arms Hotel in New Bradwell.