Gold in Britain’s auriferous regions, 2450–800 BC

Abstract

• Incorruptible and brilliant, and shining like the sun, gold has always attracted attention. From its earliest known use at Varna around 4500 BC, this metal has been utilised to make some of the finest objects humans have ever possessed. Gold use, and the know-how to work it, arrived in Britain with the ‘Beaker people’ in the 25th century BC: a pair of basket-shaped hair ornaments and a ‘cushion stone’ for working gold were buried with the Amesbury Archer. Over the course of the Chalcolithic and Bronze Age, goldworking evolved from the plain and embossed sheet gold tradition, to one that featured heavy bar torcs, and then to traditions whose techniques included soldering and diffusion-bonding.