Neolithic Britain: How Farming Arrived Around 4000 BC

Farming arrived in Britain around 4000 BC, marking the start of the Neolithic, or New Stone Age, on the island. Within a few centuries of about 4050-3800 BC, crops, domestic animals, pottery and monument building spread from south-east England across Britain and into Ireland. Ancient DNA has shown that this change was driven mainly by migrants from continental Europe, who largely replaced the hunter-gatherers who had lived in Britain for thousands of years.

Background: Mesolithic Britain

After the end of the last Ice Age, Britain was settled by hunter-gatherers of the Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age. They lived from hunting red deer, wild boar and aurochs, fishing and gathering plants and shellfish. Sites such as Star Carr in Yorkshire and the skeleton known as Cheddar Man give glimpses of their lives.

Britain was then joined to the Continent by a low-lying landscape now called Doggerland. Rising sea levels gradually flooded it, and by around 6000 BC Britain had become an island. This meant that later newcomers had to cross the sea by boat.

Farming had begun in south-west Asia around 9500 BC and spread across Europe over the following millennia. By about 4500 BC farming communities were established in northern France, Belgium and the Netherlands, just across the Channel and the North Sea. Yet for several centuries farming did not cross to Britain.

The arrival of farmers

A major radiocarbon dating project led by Alasdair Whittle, Frances Healy and Alex Bayliss, published in 2011 as Gathering Time, used statistical modelling of hundreds of dates. It concluded that the earliest Neolithic activity appeared in south-east England, around the Thames estuary and Kent, in about 4050-3950 BC.

From there, the Neolithic way of life spread unevenly. It reached much of southern England within one or two centuries and Scotland, Wales and Ireland by around 3800-3700 BC. Some areas may have received farmers directly from different parts of the Continent along the Atlantic coast.

The newcomers brought emmer wheat, barley and flax, as well as domestic cattle, sheep, goats and pigs. None of these crops or livestock existed as domestic species in Britain before. They also brought new technologies, including pottery, polished stone axes and new ways of building houses.

The evidence of ancient DNA

For decades archaeologists debated whether farming in Britain spread by migration or by local hunter-gatherers adopting new ideas. Ancient DNA has largely settled the question. In 2019 a team led by Selina Brace of the Natural History Museum, London, published genomes from Mesolithic and Neolithic individuals.

They found that Early Neolithic people in Britain were genetically very different from the Mesolithic population. Most of their ancestry came from farmers whose ancestors had migrated from Anatolia and the Aegean into Europe. Their closest matches were Neolithic populations in Iberia and France, which points to movement along the Atlantic and Channel routes.

Local hunter-gatherer ancestry was only a small part of the Neolithic genome, and the study described it as a substantial population replacement. How this happened is unclear. There is no direct evidence of warfare, and disease, competition for land or the smaller size of Mesolithic groups may all have played a role.

Houses and daily life

The first farmers lived in small communities. In some areas they built large rectangular timber halls, such as Balbridie in Aberdeenshire and Warren Field near Crathes, dated to around 3800-3700 BC. These buildings were short-lived and may have been communal structures rather than ordinary homes.

Elsewhere, settlements seem to have been small and often temporary, leaving only pits, post holes and scatters of pottery and flint. Cattle were central to the economy and, as pottery residues show, people were using dairy products from the start.

Farmers also cleared woodland, created trackways across wetlands and mined flint. The Sweet Track in the Somerset Levels, a timber walkway built in the winter of 3807-3806 BC according to tree-ring dating, is one of the oldest engineered roads in northern Europe. Flint mines in Sussex, such as Cissbury and Church Hill, were dug from around 4000 BC to supply stone for axes.

Pottery, axes and exchange

The first British pottery belongs to a style known as Carinated Bowl, round-bottomed vessels with a sharp angle, or carination, below the rim. Its makers did not decorate it much, and similar pots are found in northern France and Belgium, which supports the idea of close links with the Continent.

Polished stone axes were essential for clearing woodland and also served as prized objects. Some came from distant quarries such as Great Langdale in the Lake District, and a small number of beautiful axes of jadeitite were carried all the way from the Alps. These exotic axes, many of them hardly used, show that Early Neolithic Britain was part of long-distance exchange networks reaching deep into Europe.

Ireland and the far north

Farming reached Ireland at around the same time as Scotland, about 3800-3700 BC, again probably by sea. Early Irish farmers built rectangular timber houses, and later they laid out large field systems such as the Céide Fields in County Mayo, preserved beneath blanket bog. In the far north, the Orkney islands were also settled by farmers, who later built remarkable stone villages and tombs.

The first monuments

Within a few generations of arrival, Neolithic communities began building monuments. Some of the earliest are chambered tombs and long barrows, earth or stone mounds that held the remains of several individuals. Coldrum Long Barrow in Kent, dated to about 3980-3800 BC, is among the oldest megalithic monuments in Britain.

Later long barrows include West Kennet in Wiltshire, built around 3650 BC, and Wayland’s Smithy in Oxfordshire. Causewayed enclosures, large circuits of interrupted ditches, appeared mainly between about 3700 and 3500 BC. Sites such as Windmill Hill near Avebury and Hambledon Hill in Dorset were probably gathering places for feasting, exchange and ceremonies.

These early monuments came long before the famous stone circles of the Late Neolithic, such as Stonehenge, which was begun around 3000 BC.

Myths and facts

“Farming spread slowly over thousands of years in Britain.” The opposite is true. Radiocarbon dating shows that once it arrived, farming spread across much of Britain within about two centuries.

“The local hunter-gatherers became the first farmers.” Ancient DNA indicates that most Early Neolithic people descended from continental farmers, with only a minor contribution from Britain’s Mesolithic population.

Timeline

• c. 6000 BC: Rising seas complete the separation of Britain from the Continent.
• c. 4500 BC: Farming communities established across the Channel in northern France and the Low Countries.
• c. 4050–3950 BC: First Neolithic activity in south-east England.
• c. 3980–3800 BC: Coldrum Long Barrow built in Kent.
• c. 3800–3700 BC: Farming reaches Scotland, Wales and Ireland.
• 3807–3806 BC: Sweet Track built in the Somerset Levels.
• c. 3700–3500 BC: Main period of causewayed enclosure building.
• 2019: Ancient DNA study confirms large-scale population replacement.

Why it matters

The arrival of farming around 4000 BC was one of the most important turning points in British history. It brought new people, new food, new technology and new ideas about land, ancestry and the dead, and it laid the foundations for the great monuments of prehistoric Britain. The landscapes of fields, clearings and sacred places created by these first farmers shaped the island for thousands of years afterwards.