WIREDGOV

Powerful, ceremonial objects—including among the most prized objects in the British Museum’s collection of ancient Britain and Europe—to go on display at Stonehenge. 

A new exhibition at Stonehenge highlights the shifting relationship between the British Isles and Continental Europe during the Neolithic and Bronze Ages.

Making Connections: Stonehenge in its Prehistoric World, which opens at Stonehenge tomorrow (Friday 12 October), has been curated in partnership with the British Museum. 

The exhibition will show different periods of connection and relative isolation between the ancient British Isles and mainland Europe through the display of its objects.

Among the objects on display are a highly prized 6500-year-old jade axe and an elaborate gold neckpiece made around 4000 years ago.

Neolithic Communities on The British Isles

In the late Neolithic, when Stonehenge was built, communities living in the British Isles appear to have been relatively insular. Although people were traveling widely and exchanging ideas from Orkney to Southern England, there was little or no communication with Europe.

By contrast, in the early Neolithic and early Bronze Age, mass migrations of people, including the first farmers and earliest metal-workers, arrived. During these times, objects, styles and religious beliefs were being shared widely with Europe.

Recent DNA analysis indicates that the Beaker culture communities who brought Bronze Age technology to the British Isles 4500 years ago, were part of a migration that almost completely replaced the communities of the British Isles in the course of a few centuries.

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