The Stone Age to the Iron Age

British history at Key Stage 2 starts with the Stone Age. Historians and archaeologists disagree about when exactly the Stone Age started and ended, but an estimated date according to evidence is around 8-10,000 BC until 4000BC. Cheddar Man is the oldest complete human skeleton to be found in Britain, dating from 7150 BC. The Iron Age starts in around 200BC and has continued ever since! This unit therefore covers at minimum 8-10,000 years of history – you cannot possibly cover everything, so you have to pick and choose your enquiry question carefully. The emphasis of the unit of study is upon change which can be a useful guide to help you focus planning.

Sort by: Date (Newest first) | Title A-Z
Show: All | Articles | Podcasts | Multipage Articles
  • Britain from the Iron Age to Robin Hood

    Article

    ‘...if children are to ever fully appreciate history the development of historical time has to be central to our teaching methodologies' This lesson aims to provide an overview of this period, developing pupils' sense of chronology and their understanding of cause and consequence. The context for these ideas comes from...

    Click to view
  • Case Study: Engaging history with National Trust tracker packs

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. White Horse Hill in Oxfordshire is home to the famous chalk White Horse, and it has been for the last 3000 years. The history surrounding this hill, high up on the Berkshire Downs, goes back...

    Click to view
  • Case Study: Prehistory in the primary curriculum: A stonehenge to remember

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. An article in the Sunday Times newspaper on 7 December reported that Britain is to stop making nominations to UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation) for heritage sites to be granted World Heritage...

    Click to view
  • Case Study: Working with gifted and talented children at an Iron Age hill fort in north Somerset

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. The phone call was over - manna from heaven. The opportunity to work with a ‘real' archaeologist on a ‘real' Iron Age site seemed far too good to be true. The cluster of eight South...

    Click to view
  • Celtic Britain: the land the Romans conquered

    Article

    Please note: this lesson was produced as part of the Nuffield Primary History project (1991-2009) and pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum. It is part of a full sequence of lessons available here. Literacy was addressed throughout these lessons: introducing the text and the materials about the island, then working on the production...

    Click to view
  • Children's thinking in archaeology

    Article

    Please note: this article pre-dates the 2014 National Curriculum and some content may be outdated. Young children enjoy prehistory Tactile, Physical and Enactive engagement with archaeological remains stimulates, excites and promotes children's logical, imaginative, creative and deductive thinking. Through archaeology there are infinite opportunities for ‘reasonable guesses' about sources and...

    Click to view
  • Exploring the Rollright Stones as part of your Stone Age to Iron Age study

    Article

    Those teaching the Stone Age to Iron Age will be aware that the range of sources can be seen as rather narrow largely because of the absence of written records. It often means resorting to artefacts and monuments. This article explores one stone site and how it can be used as...

    Click to view
  • Historical fiction: it’s all made up, isn’t it?

    Article

    One of the hardest things for children to develop in history is a sense of period. What was it really like to live in a Stone Age house for example, to get up every morning knowing if you didn’t collect food or hunt something then there would be nothing to...

    Click to view
  • How did a volcano affect life in the Bronze Age?

    Article

    Recent discoveries have greatly altered our view of life in the Bronze Age. Must Farm, for example, was built in the Cambridgeshire Fens around 1000 BCE. Sometime around 1159 BCE (no-one is quite sure when) Hekla, a volcano in Iceland (a country no-one yet knew existed) erupted, throwing millions of...

    Click to view
  • How much has the weather mattered in British history?

    Article

    Tim Lomas has considered the effect that weather has had on shaping Britain. He explores how weather conditions and human actions have affected these islands and the communities living here. He suggests three potential areas of investigation. First, he looks at how weather changes might affect crop failure and so...

    Click to view
  • Iron Age Farm - Film

    Multipage Article

    The following film takes a look at Butser Ancient Farm - a unique experimental archaeological site and a fascinating day out. Nestled into the rolling South Downs National Park, this ancient farm displays ongoing constructions of Iron Age buildings based on real sites, crops from prehistory and rare breeds of...

    Click to view
  • Our Iron Age challenge

    Article

    The University of Chichester’s three-year BA (Hons) Degree for Primary Education and Teaching involves learning how to provide rigorous and creative educational opportunities for children. The course involves one creativity module each year. The final one involves the development of skills and confidence in creating problem-solving. Four of us were...

    Click to view
  • Place-names and the National Curriculum for History

    Article

    Place-names, such as house or school names, are infinite in number and all around us. Every place-name may convey a message about the place. Often place-names record and celebrate local and national people, events and incidents, define what a place looked like in the past and how we used to...

    Click to view
  • Podcast Series: Ancient British and Irish Pagan Religion

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Professor Ronald Hutton of the University of Bristol looks at Ancient British and Irish Pagan Religion.

    Click to view
  • Podcast Series: From the Stone Age to the Romans

    Multipage Article

    In this podcast Professor Richard Bradley of the University of Reading looks at Britain and Ireland from their prehistoric beginnings to the arrival of the Romans.

    Click to view
  • Prehistoric Bristol

    Article

    This period is represented in the valley of the Bristol Avon by the Acheulian industries, named from the type station of St. Acheul in the Somme valley, which has yielded many ovate and pear-shaped hand-axes characteristic of the period. These industries flourished during the very long Second Interglacial phase, a...

    Click to view
  • Prehistoric Scotland

    Article

    Prehistory is an attempt to reconstruct the story of human societies inhabiting a given region before the full historical record opens there. Its data, furnished by archaeology, are the constructions members of such societies erected and the durable objects they made. The events which should form its subject matter naturally...

    Click to view
  • Primary History 51

    Article

    04 Editorial 06 In my view: Bringing the past to life – Julian Richards (Read article) 07 In my view: The true end of archaeology? – Don Henson (Read article) 08 in my view: Our heritage: use it or lose it – Mike Corbishley (Read article) 10 Think Bubble: Instant Archaeology –...

    Click to view
  • Pull-out Posters: Primary History 68

    Article

    Click to view
  • Pull-out Posters: Primary History 69

    Article

    Click to view