The Neolithic period is also known as the New Stone Age. From about 8000 BC hunter gatherers in Europe learned about farming from people in the Near East: the growing of crops (barley, wheat, and pulses) and breeding of animals (sheep, goats, cattle and pigs). Domesticated sheep, goat and cereals were introduced but cattle and pigs may have been domesticated independently across Europe from the wild aurochs and boar. Farming was adopted first in Greece and the Balkans, then in other parts of southeast Europe, reaching Germany by 5500 BC.

Farming arrives in Britain about 4000 BC. The domestication of sheep and cattle and the cultivation of wild grasses as crops led to a more settled life than the 'moving around' Mesolithic period. Permanent settlements with livestock enclosures and fields for crops were established after the land was cleared. With farming came a range of new tools to cope with this new way of acquiring food, particularly axes (stone and ground flint) and pottery. Some of these were traded hundreds of kilometres, in many separate transactions, probably based on social relationships. The wheel was invented about 4000 BC, and ploughs arrived about 3500 BC.

Flint axe from Mawbray, Cumbria (John Evans) (AN1927.3457)

In the British Isles, the evidence for settlement in the earlier Neolithic is sparse. The Neolithic people constructed defendable causewayed camps and buried their dead in long barrows. (Give an example of here). In the later Neolithic they started to build circles of wood or stone (henges).give example here. Many of these communal sites have ritual deposits in pits and ditches, of animal bone, pottery, stone tools and antler. few words about cursuses

Examples of Neolithic sites and objects in the British collections include:

Flint axe from Woodbridge, Suffolk (1958.412)

• Find out more about the John Evans Collections at the Ashmolean