In the beginning….

From 4000 BC, the population changed from hunter-gatherers to the first farmers. They began to sow crops and domesticate cattle, sheep and pigs. The tools they used were hand-made from stone, usually flint.

The flint worker would choose a large piece, then cut off a thin slice; he would then work it with a larger piece of stone until he had shaped it into a usable tool. Stone Age people buried their dead in long barrows, which were rather like the family crypts built beneath churches in the Middle Ages.

There are Stone Age sites in much of Gloucestershire, the main ones being Belas Knap near Winchcombe, Uley Long Barrow near Dursley, Nympsfield Long Barrow near Frocester and a site on Crickley Hill.

The period between 2,500 and 500 BC is known as the Bronze Age. The art of making bronze had been developed in the Middle East and China, and it spread to Europe.

Bronze is an alloy of 10% tin and 90% copper, and while it was certainly useful and a development of what had gone before, it is doubtful if suddenly everyone was using bronze tools. There was most likely a period when bronze was in use alongside stone; in fact, stone could have been considered a better material for some purposes than bronze, which is not a particularly strong metal.

The Bronze Age is known as the period of the Beaker People who produced a distinctive shape of beaker which would have been used for storing raw food, cooking and of course, drinking from - the Beaker answer to the pint pot!

Bronze Age sites are often Stone Age sites which continued to be occupied. Now the dead were often cremated and their ashes stored in the well-known pots, which were then buried. Archaeologists think some bodies may have been exposed so that birds and animals could strip the bones, which were then buried. Alternatively, newly dead people could be buried in the foetal position, in round graves; a burial of this nature has been excavated at Kingshill North near Cirencester. The body is that of a woman, aged about 30-40 years.

Burials were accompanied by 'grave goods' - items which the dead person would have owned and things which they would be expected to need in the next life. The emphasis was now on individual graves rather than group memorials.

The Celts were fierce people, associated with horses and fighting, and there must be more than a grain of truth in this because they left us a marvellous legacy of hill forts - Dorset has 35 of them and other counties are catching them up.

A hill fort was not only a defensive structure, despite the name often including the word 'castle', it was like a very large plateau inside defensive banks, rather like the 'henges' which we know from places like Stonehenge and Avebury. They were likely to have been places of administration, a kind of local parliament, and trade where farmers would bring their animals for exchange. To maintain healthy stock and avoid inbreeding, they would barter their animals. The people weren't mad keen on other tribes, however, so a hill fort would be a handy place to hole themselves up if the tribe next door looked like causing trouble.

Gloucestershire would have been populated by the Dobunni. (Before I moved to Tewkesbury, I would have belonged to the Cornovii who colonised the Staffordshire-Shropshire-Cheshire area.)

There is an Iron Age site on Cleeve Hill.

Within the hill fort, families lived in round huts. A hut has been reconstructed at the Corineum Museum in Cirencester. This town did not exist until the Romans came, but nearby Bagendon was a tribal settlement.

Now men knew how to smelt iron, they had very effective weapons at their disposal, as well as more efficient farming tools. Think of a flint-bladed harpoon versus a sword. No wonder they had a reputation for being aggressive!

Iron ore would have been heated in a furnace fired by charcoal, and the carbon monoxide given off would have turned the ore to iron and slag. When cooled, the iron could be beaten into shape.

It is a mistake to think the Romans came here and 'taught us to build roads'. We already had roads, thank you, and very well-made ones too.

The Sweet Track in Somerset, which dates from the Bronze Age, is an example, and there would have been a network of clearly-marked paths across the Dobunni territory. Some, known as ley lines, were believed to be mystical pathways. Pre-Roman tribes were already importing items from the Continent, things such as olive oil and wine (say thanks for that next time you raise a glass of something red and interesting) and although the Romans introduced many foodstuffs which had never been seen in Britain before, the Celts were no strangers to wheat, oats, rye and barley; six-row barley was used to make beer (and say thanks for that next time you raise a glass of Old Hooky.) Beans and a kind of parsnip were grown. Fat hen, which we now think of as at best a wild flower, at worst a weed, was eaten. Herbs would have been widely used. What the Romans did bring, and for which we should be truly thankful, are garlic, onions, shallots, leeks, cabbage, peas, celery, turnips, radishes and asparagus. Thank you, Claudius, I would hate to live without garlic (just ask my neighbours.)

A camp was established at Gloucester for the 20th Legion, which then moved on to Caerleon, leaving the site to be renamed Glevum and developed as a base for army veterans.

Cirencester, known to the Romans as Corineum, was a civic capital, a place of some importance since three roads intersected there - the Fosse Way, Ermine Street and Akeman Street - although they didn't meet exactly in the middle.

In an - I think - unusual example of Roman respect for their conquered, they were careful to bypass a late Iron Age site which was possibly built onto a series of Bronze Age barrows.