2800 BC - Alard the Neolithic Farmer

On the drier chalk uplands the woodland was much thinner and people could move around fairly easily. Here were plenty of flints which could be chipped or knapped to make arrow heads and simple blades which were mounted on hafts or shafts made from branches or animal bones and then used for hunting spears and knives and also axes for chopping down the trees.

Groups of people settled on these hills and built defensible hilltop camps or forts because there was some inter tribal fighting over-hunting areas and later pressure from more people moving into the area.

The huts they lived in have left little evidence of their existence except for a few marks in the ground which the archaeologists interpret as the holes from roof posts. In the north of England and in Scotland where stone outcrops are more common huts were all or partly built of stone and of these there is more evidence left.

Most forts were like the one in the picture at the top but there were some which were many times larger and the one at Maiden Castle was the largest in Europe. It was almost a kilometre long and much further around the edge. In it could fit thousands of people as well as all their cattle, but the total population for the whole area was only a few hundred so it must have been constructed for ceremonial or religious reasons.

Alard hated digging. He had used the antler of a red deer killed on the last hunt as a pick for the last few days to help his family group to dig a ditch and bank around their camp. While he dug with the antler pick his friend Yark used a shovel made of an ox shoulder blade to move the broken chalk.

Once the bank and ditch had been dug they could drive the cattle in and close the gaps in the banks with hurdles. Every year there was a clan gathering at one of the camps during the early days of autumn when there was plenty of wild fruit and nuts and berries to eat as well as the sparse crops which people had started recently to grow. For the rest of the year the clan broke up into smaller groups which spread out over the hills with their grazing cattle, while the children collected whatever edible things they could find to pick. Corn was grown on the flat land at the hill foot and ground with a stone quern.

At the clan gathering each family provided an animal for slaughter. After his father had killed it the mother and sisters of Alard skinned and then cut it up. Flint knives were used to cut out the sinews which could be used as string. The large bones were split to extract the delicious and nutritious marrow, and then further split to make pins and needles and combs.

The inside of the skin was removed with a flint scraper to prevent it hardening and spoiling the skin.

A piece of deer antler was used to get the hair off the outside after it had been soaked in water for a few days.

During the days of the autumn feast news and gossip was exchanged, marriages arranged, clothes and food traded and animals bartered. The feast was a sacred event and afterwards the pots and bowls they had used were broken and left in the ditch.

Before hunting for food for the feast Alard and his companions would dance to build up their courage as hunting was dangerous and afterwards would celebrate the kill. Everyone now had food for several days.

One of the women Alard saw at the feast was different from the others. She was taller and belonged with a group of traders who had made a long journey lasting many weeks. They came from the north. A valley called Langdale - long dale - in a land of hundreds of lakes (the Lake District) was their home. The goods they traded were stone axes and other tools made of a much harder rock than flint. These tools were expensive, costing more goods than flint ones but they lasted much longer and did not break up on the sharp edge like the flint ones. Everyone used stone tools of some sort or another. That is why we call this period the Neolithic or Stone Age.

On the long journey south the traders sheltered at the end of each day under trees and rocks and even in caves if there were no bears or wolves living in them. One day a man in the group was badly mauled by a bear he was hunting. The rest of the group managed to kill it but they had to stay a few days while he recovered. They found a nice warm cave to rest in, at the foot of a cliff near a ford on the river Tame.

Much later in our story a Saxon named Eorda settled here. His village became called Eorda's ton (Erdington) but this was three thousand years away and at this earlier period only a few family groups lived in the area, moving through the very thick forests and surviving by hunting and never staying in any one place for very long, nor building camps to keep cattle in.