The Early Neolithic in North Hertfordshire

The archaeology of North Hertfordshire

Introduction

Between about 4300 and 3100 BC, people living in Britain first learned how to plant and grow their own food crops and rear their own animals. These animals and crops originated in eastern Europe and the Middle East. Some of them may have been brought to Britain by farming settlers whose ancestors had left the Middle East several thousand years earlier. In many cases, though, the woodland hunters acquired them by trading with their neighbours. Eventually, they became farmers themselves and no longer had to rely entirely on wild plants and animals for food. The earliest farmers still lived mainly on wild plants and animals but used crops and domestic animals to ensure they had plenty of food. Because food was now more abundant, people could raise bigger families and the population grew rapidly.

Local evidence

Some of these early farmers lived in North Hertfordshire. Objects made by them have been found in this area, but we know little about their houses and farms. It is possible that they had a partly nomadic lifestyle, like their ancestors; they would have driven their herds to higher ground during the summer and moved into more sheltered valleys during the winter. They also built burial mounds or long barrows. One of these can be seen on Therfield Heath, near Royston.

Mounds like these covered the remains of only a few people: they were not the tombs of whole families. It is likely that the burials were thought as the ancestors of the farming communities and represented their status as owners of the land.

Other monuments of this era are rare in North Hertfordshire. In the 1960s, the ditches of a possible cursus (thought to be a processional way) were excavated near Nortonbury Farm, between Letchwroth Garden City and Baldock. Just over the county boundary in Cambridgeshire, a causewayed enclosure has been found to the north-east of Royston. These enclosures were used as seasonal meeting-places, perhaps where fairs, markets and religious ceremonies could eb held. In some cases, they seem to have been used to expose the bodies of dead members of the community.