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The Neolithic Period
Bradford on Avon, Wiltshire
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Neolithic arrowheads show great skill in flaking flint. These were found on the Iford estate, Westwood
The Neolithic Period (New Stone Age, roughly from 4000 to 2500 BC) was marked by the first introduction of farming, both in growing crops and keeping domesticated animals. It began with a mass migration of Early European Farmers into the Brtitish Isles, largely replacing the Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.
Large areas of the country were cleared of ancient woodland to make fields, but hunting and gathering still went on. Metal tools were not yet available and the Neolithic people made tools from flint and polished stone axes were traded widely. In Wiltshire especially there developed a culture of making large monuments, notably long barrow burial mounds, large conical mounds like Silbury Hill and the henges of Stonehenge and Avebury. The period ended with a new episode of migration- the incoming of people bringing knowledge of working with metal, beginning the Bronze Age.
Parts of Neolithic polished axe heads have been found around Monkton Farleigh and Conkwell, in Winsley. A near complete polished greenstone axe head has also been found in Winsley and a polished flint axe in Westwood. All these are in the collection of the Wiltshire Museum at Devizes.
No settlement sites or burials have yet been found in the Bradford Hundred area, but small flint implements and the cores from which they have been struck are not uncommon.
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A scraper made from a flake from a flint core. It was found on the Llewellen Palmer allotment gardens, Sladesbrook, Bradford.
A flint core from which several long narrow blades have been struck. It was found behind Tory, Bradford, just below the plateau of Budbury, which could have made a good camp site for a Neolithic hunting expedition.
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