The Bronze Age

From about 4,400 years ago travelling metalworkers introduced ornaments and tools made of copper and then bronze (copper and tin mixture), bringing in the Bronze Age. A bronze-worker's open air workshop has been found on the Island of Eigg and a hoard of buried axe-heads has been found in Lochaber. It is an interesting fact that the nearest sources of copper and tin are many hundreds of miles away from the Highlands.

The great monuments of the late Neolithic continue into the middle Bronze Age, around 3,500 years ago. Good examples of early Bronze Age burial cairns can be seen at Clava (near Inverness, cairns 1, 2 and 3). After this there was a change to individual burials of important people only. These are often set in stone boxes or 'cists' and have pottery or other finds buried with them. Sometimes they are found inserted into earlier burial cairns.   

Some buried evidence of large communal houses dating to the Neolithic has been found, but from the middle Bronze Age we start to get visible evidence in the landscape of round houses (the overgrown stone footings are known as 'hut circles'). These are often surrounded by groups of stone clearance heaps where land has been used for growing crops. Woodland that had grown up since the end of the Ice Age was now being felled in earnest. The climate had improved to a point that it was warmer than it is today. Many hut circles are in areas that are now too high and cold for cultivation.