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71-877: Bush Barrow is a site of the early British Bronze Age Wessex culture (c. 2000 BC), at the western end of the Normanton Down Barrows cemetery in Wiltshire, England. It is among the most important sites of the Stonehenge complex, having produced some of the most spectacular grave goods in Britain. It was excavated in 1808 by William Cunnington for Sir Richard Colt Hoare . The finds, including worked gold objects, are displayed at Wiltshire Museum in Devizes . Bush Barrow lies around 1 kilometre southwest of Stonehenge on Normanton Down. It forms part of

142-611: A Naumburg court in September 2003. They appealed, but the Appeals Court raised their sentences to six and twelve months, respectively. The discovery site is a prehistoric enclosure encircling the top of a 252 metres (827 ft) elevation in the Ziegelroda Forest , known as Mittelberg ("central hill"), some 60 kilometres (37 mi) west of Leipzig . The surrounding area is known to have been settled in

213-653: A beaker alongside the body. However, even though customs changed, barrows and burial mounds continued to be used during the Bronze Age, with smaller tombs often dug into the primary mounds. There has been debate amongst archaeologists as to whether the "Beaker people" were a race of people that migrated to Britain en masse from the continent or whether a Beaker cultural "package" of goods and behaviour, which eventually spread across most of Western Europe, diffused to Britain's existing inhabitants through trade across tribal boundaries. However one recent study (2017) suggests

284-557: A "plausible vector for the spread of early Celtic languages into Britain". There was much less migration into Britain during the Iron Age and so it is likely that Celtic had reached Britain before then. The study also found that lactose tolerance rose swiftly in early Iron Age Britain, a thousand years before it became widespread in mainland Europe, which suggests that milk became a very important foodstuff in Britain at this time. Nebra sky disc Two golden arcs that were along

355-417: A cult object, the disc had already been "published" approximately 3,500 years earlier in the Bronze Age and that consequently, all protection of intellectual property associated with it has long expired. The plaintiff, on the other hand, argued that the editio princeps of the disc is recent, and according to German law protected for 25 years, until 2027. Another argument concerned the question of whether

426-478: A decagon in its design. The design of the Bush Barrow lozenge also suggests that it has an astronomical meaning. The acute angles of the lozenge (81°) are equal to the angle between the summer and winter solstices at the latitude of Stonehenge. When the sides of the lozenge are aligned with the solstices, the long axis of the lozenge also points to the equinox sunrise. According to David Dawson, director of

497-529: A dig at the site and uncovered evidence that supported the looters' claims. There were traces of bronze artefacts in the ground, and the soil at the site matched soil samples found clinging to the artefacts. The disc and its accompanying finds are held by the State Museum of Prehistory in Halle , Saxony-Anhalt , Germany . The two looters received sentences of four months and ten months, respectively, from

568-458: A hexagon construction. Both the shape and the decorative panels appear to have been created by repeating hexagons within a series of three concentric circles, each framing the series of smaller decorative panels. The precision and accuracy displayed by the work demonstrates both a sophisticated tool kit and a detailed knowledge of geometry. A similar gold lozenge from Clandon Barrow , in Dorset, used

639-604: A license and knew their activity constituted looting and was illegal. Archaeological artefacts are the property of the state in Saxony-Anhalt. They damaged the disc with their spade and destroyed parts of the site. The next day, Westphal and Renner sold the entire hoard for 31,000  DM to a dealer in Cologne . The hoard changed hands, probably several times, within Germany during the next two years, being sold for up to

710-531: A major genetic shift in late Neolithic/early Bronze Age Britain and up to 90% of Britain's Neolithic gene pool may have been replaced with the coming of a people genetically similar to the Beaker people of the Lower Rhine region (modern Netherlands/central-western Germany), which had a high proportion of steppe ancestry . According to the evolutionary geneticist Ian Barnes , "Following the Beaker spread, there

781-483: A migration) into Southern Great Britain around the 12th century BC. The disruption was felt far beyond Britain, even beyond Europe, as most of the great Near Eastern empires collapsed (or experienced severe difficulties), and the Sea Peoples harried the entire Mediterranean basin around that time. Cremation was adopted as a burial practice, with cemeteries of urns containing cremated individuals appearing in

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852-462: A million DM. By 2001 knowledge of its existence had become public. In February 2002, the state archaeologist, Harald Meller, acquired the disc in a police-led sting operation in Basel from a couple who had put it on the black market for 700,000 DM. The original finders were eventually traced. In a plea bargain, they led police and archaeologists to the discovery site. Archaeologists opened

923-761: A multimedia visitor centre was opened near the discovery site at Nebra. The disc is part of the permanent exhibition in the Halle State Museum of Prehistory (Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte) in Halle . The disc was on display at the British Museum in London as part of The World Of Stonehenge Exhibition from 17 February to 17 July 2022. The disc was on display at the Drents Museum in Assen from 6 August to 18 September 2022. In November 2021,

994-624: A new pottery style arrived in Great Britain: the Bell Beaker culture . Beaker pottery appears in the Mount Pleasant Phase (2700–2000 BC), along with flat axes and the burial practice of inhumation . People of this period were responsible for building Seahenge , along with the later phases of Stonehenge . Silbury Hill was also built in the early Beaker period. Movement of continental Europeans brought new people to

1065-671: A notable work of art may be registered as a trademark in the first place. The Magdeburg court decided in favour of the State of Saxony-Anhalt. The case was appealed and on the basis of decisions from the Oberlandesgericht Düsseldorf in 2005 and the Federal Court of Justice in 2009, the initial ruling was overturned and the German Patent and Trademark Office withdrew the trademark rights. Thereafter,

1136-816: A replica of the Nebra Sky Disc was launched to the International Space Station on the Crew-3 mission, taken by German astronaut Matthias Maurer . Maurer, who was part of the European mission Cosmic Kiss, designed the mission's patch with inspiration from the Nebra Sky Disk, as well as the Pioneer plaques and Voyager Golden Records that were sent into the unknown carrying messages from Earth. The state of Saxony-Anhalt registered

1207-510: A small loop or ring to make lashing the two together easier. Groups of unused axes are often found together, suggesting ritual deposits to some, but many archaeologists believe that elite groups collected bronze items and perhaps restricted their use among the wider population. Bronze swords of a graceful "leaf" shape, swelling gently from the handle before coming to a tip, have been found in considerable numbers, along with spear heads and arrow points. Great Britain had large reserves of tin in what

1278-502: A thousand studs embedded in each square centimetre. David Dawson has stated that: "The gold studs are remarkable evidence of the skill and craftsmanship of Bronze Age goldsmiths – quite rightly described as 'the work of the gods'". Optician Ronald Rabbetts has said that "Only children and teenagers, and those adults who had become myopic naturally or due to the nature of their work as children, would have been able to create and manufacture such tiny objects." Scientific analyses indicate that

1349-537: A time "when elaborate ceremonial practices emerged among some communities of subsistence agriculturalists of western Europe". There is no clear consensus on the date for the beginning of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. Some sources give a date as late as 2000 BC, and others set 2200 BC as the demarcation between the Neolithic and the Bronze Age. The period from 2500 BC to 2000 BC has been called

1420-543: Is dated by archaeologists to c.  1800–1600 BC and attributed to the Early Bronze Age Unetice culture . Various scientific analyses of the disc, the items found with the disc, and the find spot have confirmed the Early Bronze Age dating. The Nebra sky disc features the oldest concrete depiction of astronomical phenomena known from anywhere in the world. In June 2013, it

1491-471: Is equal in length to 33 lunar years (with an error of only two days). That is, 32 x 365 = 11680 days, and 33 x 354 = 11682 days. This 32 solar-year cycle may be represented on the disc by 32 stars, plus the sun (or full moon), adding up to 33. The archaeologist Christoph Sommerfeld has argued that the disc encodes knowledge of the 19-year lunisolar Metonic cycle . According to Sommerfeld the Metonic cycle

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1562-627: Is exclusively attested in Britain, Armorica and Greece, with the oldest examples coming from Britain and Armorica. In Greece this technique, known as 'gold embroidery', first appears in the shaft graves at Mycenae. According to the archaeologist Nikolas Papadimitriou, "Mycenaean gold embroidery first occurred in the same context as two other types of artefacts that are considered indicative of northern European links: amber spacer-plates with complex boring and weapons with in-laid decoration." Sabine Gerloff argues that

1633-459: Is much harder than copper, by mixing copper with a small amount of tin . With that discovery, the Bronze Age began in Great Britain. Over the next thousand years, bronze gradually replaced stone as the main material for tool and weapon making. The bronze axehead, made by casting , was at first similar to its stone predecessors but then developed a socket for the wooden handle to fit into and

1704-564: Is not known due to damage to the disc. The Nebra disc has been compared to a passage from the Greek poet Hesiod in Works and Days , written around 700 BC: "When the Pleiades, daughters of Atlas, are rising, begin your harvest, and your ploughing when they are going to set. Forty nights and days they are hidden and appear again as the year moves round, when first you sharpen your sickle. This

1775-713: Is now Cornwall and Devon in South West England and thus tin mining began. By around 1600 BC, the South-West experiencing a trade boom, as British tin was exported across Europe. Bronze Age Britons were also skilled at making jewellery from gold , as well as occasional objects like the Rillaton Cup and Mold Cape . Many examples have been found in graves of the wealthy Wessex culture of Southern Britain, but they are not as frequent as Irish finds. The greatest quantities of bronze objects found in what

1846-604: Is now England were discovered in East Cambridgeshire , where the most important finds were recovered in Isleham (more than 6500 pieces ). The earliest known metalworking building was found at Sigwells, Somerset, England. Several casting mould fragments were fitted to a Wilburton type sword held in Somerset County Museum. They were found in association with cereal grain that has been dated to

1917-542: Is similarly encoded on the disc of the Trundholm sun chariot , dating from c. 1500 BC. The Metonic cycle is also thought to be encoded on the Late Bronze Age Berlin Gold Hat , which features a band of 19 " star and crescent " symbols. Some authors have argued that the number of pin holes around the rim of the disc (approximately 38 to 40) has an astronomical significance. The exact number

1988-535: Is the law of the plains, and of those who live near the sea, and who inhabit rich country, the glens and hollows far from the tossing sea,—strip to sow and strip to plough and strip to reap, if you wish to get in all Demeter's fruits in due season, and that each kind may grow in its season." A depiction of a sun and crescent moon similar to the Nebra disc appears on a gold signet ring from Mycenae in Greece, dating from

2059-482: Is towards the western end of the line of barrows, sited at the highest point of the ridge. The barrow was excavated in 1808 by William Cunnington for Sir Richard Colt Hoare . It contained a male skeleton with a collection of funerary goods that make it "the richest and most significant example of a Bronze Age burial monument not only in the Normanton Group or in association with Stonehenge, but arguably in

2130-510: The Argaric culture ), and in gold at Carnac in Brittany (associated with the Bell Beaker culture ). Various authors have suggested a connection between the bone mounts in Britain and those in Greece, where they appear without local antecedents. This is supported by the finding of amber necklaces from Britain in the elite shaft graves at Mycenae (Grave circles A and B ). According to

2201-553: The Goseck circle and Stonehenge , had already been used to mark the solstices, the disc presents this knowledge in the form of a portable object. The disc may have had both a practical astronomical purpose as well as a religious significance. The depiction of the Pleiades on the disc in conjunction with a crescent moon has been interpreted as representing a calendar rule for synchronising solar and lunar calendars , enabling

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2272-464: The Hallstatt culture . In 2021, a major archaeogenetics study uncovered a migration into southern Britain during the 500-year period from 1300 to 800 BC. The newcomers were genetically most similar to ancient individuals from Gaul and had higher levels of Early European Farmers ancestry. From 1000 to 875 BC, their genetic marker swiftly spread through southern Britain, which made up around half

2343-528: The Kivik King's Grave in Sweden, dating from the sixteenth to fifteenth centuries BC. Archaeoastronomist Emília Pásztor has argued against a practical astronomical function for the disc. According to Pásztor "the close agreement of the length of the peripheral arcs with the movement of the sun's risings or settings might be a pure coincidence". This claim is undermined by the finding of a similar feature on

2414-577: The Neolithic era, and Ziegelroda Forest contains approximately 1,000 barrows . At the enclosure's location, the sun seems to set every summer solstice behind the Brocken , the highest peak of the Harz mountains, some 80 kilometres (50 mi) to the northwest. The treasure hunters claimed the artefacts were discovered within a pit inside the bank-and-ditch enclosure. Axes and swords found buried with

2485-701: The Normanton Down Barrows cemetery. The surviving earthworks have an overall diameter of 49 metres (161 ft) and comprise a large mound, with breaks in the slope suggesting three phases of development. The barrow currently stands 3.3 metres high and its summit measures 10.5 metres in diameter. The barrow is one of the "associated sites" in the World Heritage Site covering Stonehenge, Avebury and Associated Sites (Cultural, ID 373, 1986). The Normanton Down round barrow cemetery comprises some 40 barrows strung out along an east-west aligned ridge. Bush Barrow (so named by Cunnington because it had bushes on it)

2556-583: The Wiltshire Museum , the design and precision of the Bush Barrow lozenge shows that its makers "understood astronomy, geometry and mathematics, 4,000 years ago." According to the archaeologist Sabine Gerloff , the lozenge design indicates "a continuation of some Megalithic traditions, beliefs and cult practices into the Early Bronze Age". Lozenges are also depicted on the Folkton Drums , which are thought to represent measuring devices used in

2627-532: The "Late Neolithic/Early Bronze Age" in recognition of the difficulty of exactly defining the boundary. Some archaeologists recognise a British Chalcolithic when copper was used between the 25th and the 22nd centuries BC, but others do not because production and use were on a small scale. In Ireland, the final Dowris phase of the Late Bronze Age appears to decline in about 600 BC, but iron metallurgy does not appear until about 550 BC. Around 2500 BC,

2698-510: The 12th century BC by carbon dating . The rich Wessex culture developed in southern Great Britain during that time. The weather, previously warm and dry, became much wetter as the Bronze Age continued, which forced the population away from easily-defended sites in the hills and into the fertile valleys . Large livestock farms developed in the lowlands which appear to have contributed to economic growth and inspired increasing forest clearances. The Deverel-Rimbury culture began to emerge during

2769-400: The Bush Barrow dagger lay forgotten for over 40 years from the 1960s, having been sent to Professor Atkinson at Cardiff University, and was found by one of his successors in 2005. Some bronze rivets and other bronze fragments have been identified as the remains of a knife dating from about 2400 BC, suggesting that the Bush Barrow chieftain may have belonged to a "noble dynasty" dating back to

2840-427: The Nebra disc and Bush Barrow lozenge may be linked to the solar calendar reconstructed by Alexander Thom from his analysis of standing stone alignments in Britain. Both the Nebra sky disc and Bush Barrow lozenge were made with gold from Cornwall , providing a direct link between them. According to the archaeologist Sabine Gerloff the gold plating technique used on the Nebra sky disc also originated in Britain, and

2911-575: The Nebra disc than in Babylonia. Baltic amber beads have been found in a foundational deposit under the large ziggurat of Aššur in Iraq dating from c. 1800-1750 BC, indicating that a connection existed between both regions when the Nebra disc was created. However some Assyriologists and astronomers have rejected the comparison of the Nebra Disc with MUL.APIN. The number of stars depicted on

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2982-588: The Wessex culture not only in the amber items as such and their close association with gold, but also in the social contexts of the appearance of amber jewellery … in both regions such special amber objects were confined to the very small group of the most richly furnished burials.” Close similarities have also been noted between the gold-stud decoration of the Bush Barrow dagger and the decoration of elite weapons in Mycenaean Greece. The gold-stud technique

3053-433: The ancestry of subsequent Iron Age people in that area, but not in northern Britain. The "evidence suggests that, rather than a violent invasion or a single migratory event, the genetic structure of the population changed through sustained contacts between Britain and mainland Europe over several centuries, such as the movement of traders, intermarriage, and small scale movements of family groups". The authors describe this as

3124-560: The archaeological record. According to John T. Koch and others, the Celtic languages developed during the Late Bronze Age period in an intensely-trading-networked culture called the Atlantic Bronze Age , which included Britain, Ireland, France, Spain and Portugal, but that stands in contrast to the more generally-accepted view that the Celtic languages developed earlier than that, with some cultural practices developing in

3195-513: The archaeologist Joseph Maran , "In Greece, amber objects first make their appearance in the seventeenth or sixteenth centuries BCE at the very beginning of the Mycenaean period. ... the amber objects had not reached Greece from the Baltic, but, mostly as finished products, from the area of the Wessex culture of southern England. ... There is an amazing similarity between the shaft grave period and

3266-795: The arguments of Gebhard and Krause. Scientific analyses of the disc, the items found with the disc, and the find spot have all confirmed the Early Bronze Age dating. The disc was the centre of an exhibition entitled Der geschmiedete Himmel (German "The forged sky"), showing 1,600 Bronze Age artefacts, including the Trundholm sun chariot , shown at Halle from 15 October 2004 to 22 May 2005, from 1 July to 22 October 2005 in Copenhagen , from 9 November 2005 to 5 February 2006 in Vienna , from 10 March to 16 July 2006 in Mannheim , and from 29 September 2006 to 25 February 2007 in Basel . On 21 June 2007,

3337-571: The bronze was also of Cornish origin. As preserved, the disc was developed in four stages: The find is regarded as reconfirming that the astronomical knowledge and abilities of the people of the European Bronze Age included close observation of the yearly course of the Sun and the angle between its rising and setting points at the summer and winter solstices . While much older earthworks and megalithic astronomical complexes , such as

3408-431: The cemetery. Nonetheless, several other barrows within the Normanton Group contain similarly rich grave goods associated with primary interments, also of a similar age. British Bronze Age Bronze Age Britain is an era of British history that spanned from c.  2500–2000 BC until c.  800 BC . Lasting for approximately 1,700 years, it was preceded by the era of Neolithic Britain and

3479-404: The construction Stonehenge and other megalithic monuments. Two of the bronze daggers have the largest blades of any from their period, whilst a third had a 30 centimetres (12 in) long wooden hilt originally decorated with up to 140,000 tiny gold studs forming a herringbone pattern. The studs are around 0.2 millimetres (0.0079 in) wide and 1 millimetre (0.039 in) in length, with over

3550-568: The creation of a lunisolar calendar . This rule is known from an ancient Babylonian collection of texts with the title MUL.APIN . According to one of the seven rules in the compendium, a leap month should be added when the Pleiades appear next to a crescent moon a few days old in the spring, as depicted on the disc. This conjunction occurs approximately every three years. Harald Meller suggests that knowledge of this rule may have come from Babylonia to Central Europe through long-distance trade and contacts, despite it being attested earlier on

3621-405: The disc (32) is also thought to be significant, possibly encoding the calendar rule numerically. Firstly, the conjunction of lunar crescent and Pleiades depicted on the disc occurs after 32 days following the last "new light" (the first visible crescent moon of the month), and not before. Secondly, because a lunar year (354 days) is eleven days shorter than a solar year (365 days), 32 solar years

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3692-420: The disc as a trademark , which resulted in two lawsuits. In 2003, Saxony-Anhalt successfully sued the city of Querfurt for depicting the disc design on souvenirs. Saxony-Anhalt also successfully sued the publishing houses Piper and Heyne over an abstract depiction of the disc on book covers. The Magdeburg court assessed the case's relevance according to German copyright law . The defenders argued that as

3763-461: The disc in his own hands, unlike the eighteen scientists who had examined the disc. Scientific analyses of the patina (or corrosion layer) have confirmed its authenticity. Richard Harrison, professor of European prehistory at the University of Bristol , stated in a BBC documentary that "When I first heard about the Nebra Disc I thought it was a joke, indeed I thought it was a forgery", due to

3834-411: The disc were dated typologically to c.  1700 –1500 BCE. Remains of birch bark found in the sword hilts have been Radiocarbon dated to between 1600 and 1560 BCE, confirming this estimate. This corresponds to the date of burial, at which time the disc had likely been in existence for several generations. Analyses of metal radioactivity and the corrosion layer on the disc further support

3905-699: The early Bronze Age dating. According to an initial analysis of trace elements by x-ray fluorescence by E. Pernicka, then at the University of Freiberg , the copper originated at Bischofshofen in Austria, whilst the gold was thought to be from the Carpathian Mountains . A more recent analysis found that the gold used in the first development phase (see below) was from the River Carnon in southern Cornwall in England. The tin present in

3976-440: The extraordinary nature of the find, although he had not seen the sky disc at the time. The same documentary presented scientific analyses confirming the authenticity of the disc. A paper published in 2020 by Rupert Gebhard and Rudiger Krause questioned the Early Bronze Age dating of the Nebra disc and proposed a later Iron Age date instead. A response paper was published in the same year by Ernst Pernicka and colleagues, rejecting

4047-704: The fifteenth century BC. Beneath the sun and moon is a seated female figure holding three opium poppies in her hand, she is identified as a goddess of nature and fertility, with a double-axe and celestoal symbols, possibly the Minoan poppy goddess , or an early form of the goddess Demeter . Opium poppy has also been found in settlements of the Unetice culture. According to Kristiansen and Larsson (2005), imagery similar to that found on Mycenaean signet rings also appears in Nordic Bronze Age petroglyphs from

4118-573: The gold originated from Cornwall. This was also the source of gold used to make the Nebra sky disc and Irish gold lunulae . The dagger may have been made in either Britain or Brittany ( Armorica ), where similar examples of gold-stud decoration are known. Gold-stud decoration was also used on the amber pommel of a dagger from Hammeldon Down Barrow in Devon, dating from the Wessex II period. The hilt of

4189-411: The gold-stud technique originated in Britain and was transferred to Greece, along with amber necklaces and zig-zag and lozenge-shaped decorative elements, including the bone mounts from Mycenae. It is not known why this barrow contained such rich grave goods compared to those around it. It occupies the highest point, but is not the tallest barrow, and is not obviously marked out as the principal barrow in

4260-407: The islands from the continent. Recent tooth enamel isotope research on bodies found in early Bronze Age graves around Stonehenge indicates that at least some of the new arrivals came from the area of modern Switzerland . The Beaker culture displayed different behaviours from the earlier Neolithic people and cultural change was significant. Many of the early henge sites seem to have been adopted by

4331-612: The newcomers. Furthermore, a fundamentally different approach to burying the dead began. In contrast to the Neolithic practice of communal burials, the Bronze Age society undergoes an apparent shift towards focusing on to the individual, rather on the ancestors as a collective. For example, in the Neolithic era, a large chambered cairn or long barrow was used to house the dead. The 'Early Bronze Age' saw people buried in individual barrows , also commonly known and marked on modern British Ordnance Survey maps as tumuli, or sometimes in cists covered with cairns . They were often buried with

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4402-407: The roughly contemporary gold lozenge from Bush Barrow at Stonehenge , where the acute angles of the overall design (81°) are equal to the angle between the solstices at the latitude of Stonehenge. According to Euan MacKie (2009) "The Nebra disc and the Bush Barrow lozenge both seem to be designed to reflect the annual solar cycle at about latitude 51° north." MacKie further suggests that both

4473-647: The second half of the 'Middle Bronze Age' (c. 1400–1100 BC) to exploit the wetter conditions. Cornwall was a major source of tin for much of western Europe and copper was extracted from sites such as the Great Orme mine in Northern Wales . Social groups appear to have been tribal, but growing complexity and hierarchies became apparent. There is evidence of a relatively large-scale disruption of cultural patterns (see Late Bronze Age collapse ), which some scholars think may indicate an invasion (or at least

4544-422: The sides are thought to mark the angle between the solstices , one now is missing. Another arc at the bottom with internal parallel lines is usually interpreted as a solar boat with numerous oars, although some authors have also suggested that it may represent a rainbow , the Aurora Borealis , a comet, or a sickle . In 1999, the disc was found buried on the Mittelberg hill near Nebra in Germany . It

4615-400: The state of Saxony-Anhalt registered the design of the disc as a trademark with the European Union Intellectual Property Office. In 2023, the state of Saxony-Anhalt filed a DMCA take down notice requesting removal of nine images of the Nebra sky disc from Wikimedia Commons , asserting that they were the "owner of the exclusive copyright in the Sky Disk of Nebra". Wikimedia Deutschland ,

4686-484: The time of Stonehenge's construction. An unusual stone mace head lay to the right of the Bush Barrow skeleton, made out of a rare fossilized stromatoporoid ( sea sponge ), originating in Devon or Cornwall. It had a wooden handle, from which decorative zig-zag-shaped bone mounts survive. The mace is considered to be a symbol of power or authority. Similar bone mounts have been found in Grave Circle B at Mycenae in Greece, at Illeta dels Banyets in Spain (associated with

4757-407: The whole of Britain". The items date the burial to the early Bronze Age, circa 1950 BC, and include a large 'lozenge'-shaped sheet of gold, a sheet gold belt plate , three bronze daggers, a bronze axe, a stone macehead and bronze rivets, all held by the Wiltshire Museum , Devizes. The design of the artifact known as the Bush Barrow lozenge , and the smaller lozenge, has been shown to be based on

4828-466: Was a population in Britain that for the first time had ancestry and skin and eye pigmentation similar to Britons today". Several regions of origin have been postulated for the Beaker culture , notably the Iberian Peninsula, the Netherlands and Central Europe. Part of the Beaker culture brought the skill of refining metal to Great Britain. At first, they made items from copper , but from around 2150 BC , smiths had discovered how to make bronze , which

4899-555: Was in turn followed by the period of Iron Age Britain . Being categorised as the Bronze Age , it was marked by the use of copper and then bronze by the prehistoric Britons, who used such metals to fashion tools. Great Britain in the Bronze Age also saw the widespread adoption of agriculture . During the British Bronze Age, large megalithic monuments similar to those from the Late Neolithic continued to be constructed or modified, including such sites as Avebury , Stonehenge , Silbury Hill and Must Farm . That has been described as

4970-426: Was included in the UNESCO Memory of the World Register and termed "one of the most important archaeological finds of the twentieth century." The disc, together with two bronze swords , two sets of remains of axes , a chisel , and fragments of spiral armbands were discovered in 1999 by Henry Westphal and Mario Renner while they were treasure-hunting with a metal detector. The detectorists were operating without

5041-440: Was introduced from there to the continent. There were some initial suspicions that the disc might be an archaeological forgery . Peter Schauer of the University of Regensburg, Germany, argued in 2005 that the Nebra disc was a fake and that he could prove that the patina of the disc could have been created with urine, hydrochloric acid , and a blow torch within a short amount of time. He had to admit in court that he had never held

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