In this Section:

• The Palaeolithic
• The Mesolithic ('Middle Stone Age')
• The later Mesolithic and the start of the Neolithic
• The Neolithic ('New Stone Age')
• The Bronze Age
• The Iron Age
• The Romano-British Period

The Palaeolithic ('Old Stone Age')

There are no known Palaeolithic sites of human activity in north-west England. There may have been people inhabiting this landscape before the last Ice Age, but the remains of them, and the things that they did, have been scrubbed away by the slow advance of the glacial ice.

However, this is still an important period in the history of Merseyside, as the landscape itself was formed by these giant features, and the landforms they left behind were born from the changes in climate which happened around 13000 - 10000 years ago.

As the ice disappeared, the first plants to colonise the area were birch, juniper and willow scrub, which eventually developed into open grassland as sea-levels rose and there was more rainfall. From the scrubland larger plants and trees grew, forming increasingly dense woodland.

The Mesolithic ('Middle Stone Age')

The sea level around 9000 years ago was around 20m (66ft) lower than it is today. This means that the coastline was much further west than it is today, lying just west of Anglesey, to west of Walney Island in Morecambe Bay, with a band of now-submerged land around 10-15km (6-9 miles) wide lying between.

The land was covered in forest up to 500m (1640ft) above sea level, consisting of oak, hazel, lime and elm. Just behind the coastal zones, and in the poorly drained hollows of the inlands and uplands, fen developed. The remains of these wetter areas give us some small clue that humans were active in the area at this time. The surfaces of these boggy mires shows evidence of burning, suggesting that perhaps the mixed woodland was being cleared deliberately, before allowing it to grow back somewhat.

The people here during the Mesolithic must have only been seasonal occupants of the land. Ditton Brook was an important location also, and Mesolithic flint tool evidence points to the area being the location of repeated visits by Mesolithic humans. Their tools have been found either on the surface of the boggy layers, or eroding out of the stream bank. This settlement may have been continuous with that at Brunt Boggart, where similar evidence for Mesolithic occupation has been found.

In general, the landscape at this time consisted of broken woodland of oak and hazel, with patches of wetland, and frequent flooding. The river banks would have been slightly more open, with a mixture of oak, hazel, alder, elm and pine, as well as shorter shrub-like vegetation taking advantage of the increased sunlight near the channel.

Humans were here for the abundant fish stocks in the river, and the birds and plants inhabiting the banks. There is also evidence for the killing of larger animals - wild pig and deer. The tidal Mersey would have encouraged a wide variety of animals for the humans to exploit, and the streams would have provided a route into the interior of the county before widespread clearance of woodland took place. They would also have provided the fresh water needed for living.

The coast, particularly at the mouths of the Ditton and Alt, have proven rich with Mesolithic material, and would have benefited from both salt- and freshwater fish, as well as the small amounts of flint that were available to Mesolithic communities. It follows that areas near the mouth of the Mersey would have been important centres of population at this time, but these sites, if they existed, have been lost in the expansion of the city.

The later Mesolithic and the start of the Neolithic

Around 7000 years ago the wetlands in the north west were spreading and expanding. It was at this time that the earliest direct evidence for human occupation near Liverpool was created on the shores at Formby. Here, preserved in ancient sand layers, are sets of human footprints, along with those of deer, showing that humans were using the zone between high and low tides to hunt large animals.

Mesolithic activity is known around the mouth of the River Alt on the Sefton coast, and at Banks, near Southport.

The Wirral also witnessed activity at this early point in human history. At Greasby, Thursaston, can be found the densest concentration of Mesolithic finds in the county. An area of 200 sq m (2150 sq ft) is covered with signs of flint tool-making, and excavations at Greasby Copse revealed stone-lined pits, their use uncertain. What can be said is that the chert they made their tools from came from North Wales.

The mid-Wirral sandstone ridge, left behind by the retreating ice-sheets, was quite a focus for Mesolithic activity. Perhaps the inhabitants of the region found the higher ground better-drained, or otherwise more suitable for the plants and animals they hunted, gathered and foraged for.

One thing we know very little about is the range of ritual beliefs and activities of these people. There is evidence on the European mainland of burial rituals as far back as 225,000 years ago, and it may be that these much more recent Mesolithic communities were performing similar activities, although ones which have not left any traces for us to find today.

The Neolithic ('New Stone Age')

Flint and Chert

One of the main problems that prehistoric Liverpudlians had to contend with was the lack of local flint. The nearest sources for this incredibly important Stone Age raw material are in Yorkshire, Wales, the Lake District and County Antrim in Ireland. Some small pebbles were probably to be found on the shores of the Irish Sea, washed up from the sea bed, but not in sufficient quantity as a basis for making a living with.

Unfortunately, archaeologists are not sure where prehistoric people living in the north west of the British Isles got their flint from, although it is suggested that it came mostly from the east, Yorkshire and Derbyshire. For this to happen the communities on the coast, here in Merseyside, must have been trading with similar communities in the Pennines. Flint and ready-made tools would have changed hands over and over again as they made their way from central Britain to the coast.

Chert (a material related to flint) has been found on sites in the lowlands to the north and east of the Mersey, and this may have come from Derbyshire. Evidence collected in the 1940s suggests that the tool types people were creating had not changed much from those tools used by their Mesolithic forebears.

Woodland Clearance and the Beginnings of Farming

The landscape in which these people moved was at this time beginning to be cleared. Small gaps were appearing in the tree cover, and this was more common around the coast and in the central mosslands of south Lancashire. People were clearing the forest to give them some room to grow the first cultivated cereals. Although this would have been nothing like the vast and dense crop we see across Britain today, these people would have helped plants spread and multiply, in order to gain the advantages of a more reliable food supply than nature would offer alone. Both upland areas and lowland areas were cleared of their woodland for this reason, from the coastal zone to the higher limestone areas. Knowsley Hall and Park today stands on land first cleared almost 5000 years ago. Similar clearance and cereal cultivation was occuring all down the western coast of these islands, including land now covered by the Irish Sea, proving again the network of contacts and travel between prehistoric Merseyside and the rest of Britain.

However, there is still relatively little pollen evidence, and it may be that animal rearing was still much more important, and remains of aurochs (wild ancestors of cattle) as well as red deer have been found in the region.

The Sea and the Coast

By the end of the Neolithic, however, sea level was 8m (26ft) above the level it is today. In the shallow seas formed shingle ridges, some now up to 1km (0.6 mi) inland. Towards the end of the Neolithic, and into the Bronze Age, the climate deteriorated further, and woodland returned to many areas as the region experienced wetter conditions around 4500 years ago, and mossy bogs appeared in places, such as at Leasowe Bay, north Wirral.

The Bronze Age

There was a deterioration in climate during the Bronze Age, and bogs and mossy areas expanded over Merseyside.

Communities remained mobile, and evidence for upland occupation gives a clue that the lowlands may have been avoided, at least as far as permanent settlement was concerned. Bronze Age groups would have exploited the valuable lowlands when possible, probably in the summer, while retreating to drier uplands in the wetter seasons. Large scale woodland clearances occured at this time, such as at Simonswood and Parr Moss, and the first signs of agriculture are from this period.

The Bronze Age is the time of the earliest settlements excavated in the North West. Irby, on the Wirral, revealed traces from the Middle Bronze Age, and at Tarbock archaeologists found a short section of a ditch with characteristic Bronze Age pottery, known as beakers. In Kirkby a semi-circular structure associated with Bronze Age pottery was found, while at Brunt Boggart a deposit of stones and burnt material was found, and has been compared to the burnt mounds found at this time in various parts of Britain. Farmsteads were still minor elements in the landscape at this time, with people keeping relatively mobile until later centuries.

Bronze Age communities still made common use of stone tools, and scatters of stone-working debris have been excavated at Hale, Irby and Little Crosby.

Middens - large mounds of discarded food, pottery and bones - found on the North Wirral coast were probably created by the same communities who created these late stone tools.

Small-scale farming continued into the Bronze Age, shown by pollen evidence from Mount Pleasant in Waterloo dating to around 3000 years ago. However, marking Merseyside and Cheshire out from other regions of Bronze Age Britain, there is less evidence for absolutely permanent settling down by the inhabitants. Large scale settlements and extensive field systems have not been found. Perhaps people were still moving from season to season, or perhaps only pausing in one location for a few years at a time. Where single buildings have been found in rural contexts, these may have been used for dwellings, or maybe simple agricultural buildings (storage etc).

For a period popularly known as the Bronze Age, there is very little evidence on Merseyside for metal production at this time. There have been discoveries of metal hoards, however (Portfield Camp, Whalley and Winmarleigh

Of course the most intriguing remains of the Bronze Age in Britain are the numerous ritual monuments left scattered across the landscape. While south west England is internationally famous for its Bronze Age monuments, henge-like features have been found in Halsall in west Lancashire, and the Calder Stones, before they were dismantled and moved to their current location, formed a burial chamber - possibly a passage grave - like those seen across Wales (and Anglesey), Ireland, Scotland and Cornwall. Those links with their Irish Seaboard cousins clearly continued into the late stages of prehistory. The tomb of which the Calder Stones were a part was certainly open in the Bronze Age, as they were carved with footprints and spirals, cups and concentric circles - typical Bronze Age features. In Liverpool itself have been found the remains of ritual activity. In Wavertree eight urns were found in the 19th Century, along with cremated bones, but no structure (such as a burial mound) was recorded.

The Iron Age

The woodland clearance that we saw begin as a patchwork in the Mesolithic was probably widespread across north west England by the Iron Age, and use of the land had intensified by this point. Marshy areas were still common, and temperatures were falling while rainfall increased. This reduced the space available for grazing animals and cultivating cereals, although the coast would have been relatively warmer.

Evidence for growing crops is not as extensive as that for farming animals, at least until the end of the Iron Age. The first permanent farmsteads in the region come from this period, as well as the transformation of the landscape with the first large scale field systems.

Construction efforts were often much more grandiose at this time, with huge multiple-ditched enclosures being constructed on hilltops (such as near Frodsham, Eddisbury, Kelsbarrow, and at Beeston in Cheshire), and similar features in the lowlands, such as at Mill Hill Road, Irby, Woolton, and Brook House Farm, Halewood. These enclosures may have formed part of a developing settlement hierarchy, with the hilltop settlements at the top, and the smaller, scattered villages and isolated enclosures beneath, such as the lowland promontory settlement at Peckforton Mere, Oakmere in Cheshire.

The houses people lived in were usually circular in plan, from 4m across (eg. at Tatton Park) up to 11m or more, such as the five roundhouses whose foundations overlap each other at Lathom.

Only Brook House Farm, in Halewood, has provided any plant remains or animal bones north of the Mersey (though grain storage structures were found at Lathom), so archaeologists clearly have a lot to learn about this stage in Liverpool's history.

It has been suggested that Iron Age wealth was shown off not through belongings, precious metals or weapons, but rather through the breeding and large-scale consumption of cattle. The arrangement of ditches and entrances at Brook House Farm would support this idea, as they would have been suitable for corralling these animals. Also, despite not being set on a hilltop like Beeston, the farm could have been a site of high status not just for its cattle herds but because of the physical size of the place. The farm was most likely situated in a clearing, as pollen evidence suggests that heavy woodland surrounded the farm in the Iron Age.

Towards the end of the Iron Age, however, this situation was changing, and cattle enclosures become smaller, and it is possible that cereal cultivation was becoming more important. However, it could also mean that cattle corralling was no longer a communal activity, and each of the later enclosures was only designed for one family's livestock.

Trade

What were do know about this period is that Cheshire salt was already becoming a valuable commodity, traded over the north west of England, Wales and the Midlands. As the Iron Age progressed, and we come to the end of the prehistoric period, Carthaginian coins and Roman amphorae (from the south coast of France) found their way to Meols at the north end of the Wirral. This shows the very widespread trade which was going on, with links between Merseyside and mainland Europe, as well as more local links. Merseyside was in contact with the Romans, and almost all Iron Age sites produce some Roman artefacts, but much of the wider region was only slowly Romanised compared to some parts of the country.

The Romano-British Period

The term "Romano-British" is particularly well-suited to the period around 2000 years ago. Although the Roman armies built a road between Chester, Warrington and Carlisle, contact to the west of this route is hard to see in the archaeological record. As has been mentioned, some Roman artefacts did make their way up the Wirral and to where Liverpool itself now stands, but more Romanisation than this is doubtful. There was a settlement at Ochre Brook, Tarbock, from the prehistoric period, but even once the Romans had made inroads into the rest of the country, only selected parts of their culture made it into Ochre Brook. The farm here cultivated barley, and there was certainly hay and grassland, while the buildings were oval or rectangular. It is also possible that the inhabitants exploited the small amount of coal which was exposed in the banks of the Brook itself.

The clearance of woodland, and the increase in crop farming and field-creation continued into the period. Settlements, which were becoming more permanent, would have been separated by belts of woodland, scrub wasteland and the ever-present marshes. Most enclosures were still being created along stream channels (Bollin, Weaver, Glaze Brook). The extent of the field systems was still a lot smaller than similar features known from Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire, however.

Industry

In addition to the use of coal where available, in the Romano-British period sand was being exploited at Whitefield Sandhole, and sandstone was quarried at Bank Hey Delf (to the south east of Ochre Brook).

One of the intriguing aspects of industry at this time was the production of Roman tiles at Ochre Brook. Although no Roman coins have as yet been found in the immediate area, there is more evidence of Romanisation than in any of the surrounding region. Stamps on the tiles themselves show that there were certainly links between the tile manufacturer and the 20th Roman Legion based in Chester.

Pottery found on the site has been found to be locally made, with nothing quite the same being found anywhere else. There is some evidence that building style was influenced by Roman ideas, and it may be the case that whoever lived at Ochre Brook 2000 years ago was a retired Roman legionary who had taken to producing tiles for the Roman army based in Chester while living in his modest farmstead in the countryside!

Bibliography

• Aughton, P., 1993, Liverpool: A People's History, Carnegie Publishing, Preston.
• Belchem, J., (ed), 2006, Liverpool 800: Culture, Character & History, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool.
• Barrowclough, D., Brennand, M., Chitty, G., Clare, T., Edwards, B., Lewis, J., Longworth, C., Lund, J., McNeil, R., Newman, R., Philpott, R., Quartermaine, J., & Woodcock, S., 2004, North West Archaeological Resource Framework, Museum of Liverpool Field Archaeology Section.
• Cowell, R.W., & Philpott, R.A., 2000, Prehistoric, Romano-British and Medieval Settlement in Lowland North West England: Archaeological excavations along the A5300 road corridor in Merseyside, NMGM, Liverpool.