For four thousand years people struggled to survive, using tools and weapons of stone and flint. We call this period the Stone Age because of the materials they used, which were the best at that time for making a sharp edge e.g. hand-held flint axes.

However, a new technology was developed to make use of metals that had been discovered in Europe and the Near East. These metals were tin, copper, silver and gold, which Early Man learned to extract from the earth.

It was discovered that by mixing three parts copper to one part tin an alloy known as bronze could be produced which was easier to cast and was harder than copper alone. Copper and bronze could be used to make tools and weapons while silver and gold were preferred for fashioning ornaments.

By about 2000BC the Bronze Age had reached Scotland. Europeans arrived in the north-east of Scotland (venturing up the valley of the Rivers Don and Dee), bringing with them supplies and livestock. They cut clearings in the great forests and raised crops of barley. They also tended to their sheep, goats, pigs and cattle. They made attractive pottery, and those who knew about the new metal brought moulds and casts, small supplies of metals to be worked, bellows, kilns and other implements.

Bronze was made by making special fires of layers of charcoal and ore enclosed in a clay and stone furnace. Blasts of air forced the fire to burn so hotly that molten metal trickled to the bottom of the furnace. There it cooled and hardened into a solid mass, which could be made into tools, weapons and ornaments. Molten bronze was usually poured into a mould e.g. in the shape of an axe-head. An improvement in casting techniques came when a mould was invented with a removable core to make axe-blades with a socket for the handle to be fitted. Two flat moulds were brought together around the specially shaped core, through the top of which the molten metal was poured.

Such was the level of skill of the metal workers that in most communities these men became specialists and were freed from the routine duties of the other workers so that they could concentrate on making metals and metal goods of the highest quality. It was only a short step from this to metalsmiths making articles not only for their utility but also demonstrating their craft by creating ornaments and even tools and weapons which could be appreciated for their beauty.

It took many centuries for the Bronze Age to spread throughout Scotland, especially to the most remote, northerly areas such as Skara Brae on the northern isles of Orkney. Newcomers and their new lifestyle created dispute among the traditional peoples, but co-operation was gradually achieved. In our school we have used a fictional novel to help twelve-thirteen year old pupils understand how communities learned to adapt and accept progress. "The Boy with the Bronze Axe" by Kathleen Fidler (Oliver and Boyd, 1968) tells the story of a strange boy who arrives by boat in a Stone Age village, bringing with him an axe made from a new substance called bronze. When disaster strikes the villagers have to decide whether to follow the boy or go under…

A crucial implication of the new technology of bronze was that supplies of copper and tin had to be readily available. While copper was plentiful in Scotland, the only supplies of tin in Britain were to be found was in what we now call Cornwall. Only by making arrangements for imports of tin from across the North Sea, from where the Bronze Age men had come, could the metalsmiths ensure regular supplies. It is not known exactly how this system operated, but we know that for the first time in Scotland there lived a people who depended on trade.

Map of Bronze Age trade routes