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Large Groups Came Together for Grand Feasts at the End of the Bronze Age in Britain
Research reveals distinct animal choices at large Bronze Age feasts, with millions of bones found, highlighting regional economies and social networks vital during the era's transition.
- Archaeologists from Cardiff University revealed that large communal feasts took place around 3,000 years ago in southern Britain at sites like Potterne and East Chisenbury.
- These feasts emerged during a period of climatic and economic instability when the value of bronze declined and people increasingly shifted to farming.
- Cutting-Edge isotope analysis showed each midden had distinct animal remains, with Potterne featuring pigs from distant regions and East Chisenbury dominated by locally raised sheep.
- Potterne, spanning an area comparable to five football fields, contained a vast quantity of animal bones—estimated at 15 million fragments—with pork as the dominant meat, while beef was preferred at Runnymede and sheep were the main meat found at East Chisenbury.
- Researchers suggest that these large-scale feasts played a crucial role in strengthening social bonds and supporting regional economies during the transitional period separating the Bronze Age from the Iron Age in Britain, which some describe as a distinct era defined by communal feasting.
20 Articles
20 Articles
Watauga Democrat
What food festivals looked like in the Bronze Age
An analysis of bones revealed the types of animals people feasted on during the Bronze Age.
Climate change, economic decline, disrupted trade? This did not seem to prevent people at the end of the Bronze Age from holding large-scale events. They killed pigs, cattle, sheep – and their garbage is now a British cultural landscape.
New Study Highlights Britain's Age of Feasting - Archaeology Magazine
Feasting debris of pottery and bone recovered from East Chisenbury midden, Wiltshire, England CARDIFF, WALES—According to a statement released by Cardiff University, a recent study has shed new light on an exceptional era in British history that was characterized by large communal feasts. The research team used isotope analysis on material found within six huge middens dating to the end of the Bronze Age in Wiltshire and the Thames Valley to mor…
It seems that at the end of the Bronze Age, also a period of climatic and economic crisis, the same type of impulse was present.
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