Later Prehistory (Late Bronze Age to Iron Age)

Michael Nevell

With contributions by Mark Brennand, Kevin Cootes, Dan Garner, Mark Leah, Andy Myers, Vanessa Oakden, Rachael Reader, Norman Redhead and Sue Stallibrass

Introduction: The Resource

The early 21^st century has continued to make significant progress
in exploring the later prehistoric period within North West England. The years
2006 to 2018 have seen a considerable amount of fieldwork through
developer-funded activity, landscape management projects, and research-funded
exploration. Developer-funded projects have produced significant Late Bronze
Age and Iron Age evidence from road schemes (such as the Carlisle Northern
Development Route and the Manchester Airport Relief Route), quarrying activity
(Cut Acre in Greater Manchester), and urban-fringe construction, as at Saighton
Camp near Chester. Smaller evaluations and watching briefs across the region
have also revealed significant material from this period. Landscape management
projects have added important new material to our understanding of the Cheshire
Hillforts and through the Morecambe Bay Partnership the later prehistoric
landscape of the coastal fringe of southern Cumbria and northern Lancashire.
Non-developer-funded research and work by the voluntary sector have also
contributed through several long-running excavation projects, notably at the
Old Vicarage, Mellor, Greater Manchester, and Poulton, south of Chester. There
have also been several important publications on sites excavated before 2006 relevant
to the late prehistoric period, principally the Chester Amphitheatre, Irby, and
Oversley Farm, as well as a major publication on the finds from the coastal
site of Meols on the Wirral and overview work on Lancashire.

Three trends are visible in this work. Firstly, a steady, though not
spectacular, increase in the number of known settlements. Secondly, the
discovery that more of the region’s hillforts have origins in the Late Bronze
Age. Thirdly, an increase in the volume of later prehistoric metalwork,
specifically Late Bronze Age and Late Iron Age items, through items reported by
members of the public to the Portable Antiquities Scheme.

In many ways the later prehistoric in the North West is an amplification of
the broader settlement trends of the Neolithic and Early and Middle Bronze Age.
Investment continues to be made in the landscape, such as field systems and
there is a general intensification of land-use. This period also continues the
development and growth of an array of artefacts associated with conflict begun
in the Early and Middle Bronze Ages. Yet, there is now enough evidence to
suggest a break in settlement forms and metalwork types between the Late Bronze
Age/Early Iron Age and the Middle to Late Iron Age. There are also suggestions
in the southern part of the region that settlements evolved further in the
later Iron Age, hinting at sub-regional differences in settlement patterns and
perhaps social organisation.

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