Key Stage 2 history · British history

KS2 Stone Age Britain and Skara Brae: a guide for parents

Key Stage 2 British history starts long before writing, with changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. In the Stone Age part, children learn how early people lived as hunter-gatherers, how farming arrived around six thousand years ago, and what a village such as Skara Brae in Orkney tells us. Just as importantly, they learn how we can know anything at all about people who left no writing.

Stone Age Britain, explained

The National Curriculum asks children in Years 3 to 6 to study changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age. Late Neolithic hunter-gatherers and early farmers, with Skara Brae as an example, is one of the examples listed in the programme of study. Examples are non-statutory, so schools choose which sites to use. What every school covers is the sweep of change over thousands of years, and the idea that history can be pieced together from evidence even when nobody wrote anything down.

The Stone Age is the longest period in Britain’s human story, and archaeologists split it into three: the Old, Middle and New Stone Ages (Palaeolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic). For most of it, people were hunter-gatherers. They moved with the seasons, hunted animals such as deer, fished, and gathered nuts, berries and roots, using flint, bone and wood for tools and shelters. Around 4000 BC, farming reached Britain, brought across the sea by people from the continent. People began to settle in one place, clear patches of woodland, grow wheat and barley, and keep cattle, sheep and pigs. They also built large communal monuments, such as burial mounds. Stone Age does not mean people had no skills. It means their main cutting tools were stone rather than metal.

Skara Brae is a village of stone houses on Mainland, the largest island of Orkney, off the north coast of mainland Scotland. A storm in 1850 stripped sand from a grassy mound and revealed the walls. The village was lived in from about 3200 BC to about 2500 BC, which makes it roughly five thousand years old. Eight buildings, most of them homes, are linked by low covered passages, and each has a central hearth, a stone dresser, stone box beds and small cupboards built into the walls. There were drains, too. Few trees grew on Orkney, but flat stone splits easily and was close at hand. The people of Skara Brae kept cattle and sheep, grew grain, and ate fish and shellfish.

A key idea is evidence. Stone and bone survive for thousands of years, but wood, cloth and food usually rot, so archaeologists study what is left and then reason carefully about it. Good historians say “this suggests” and “may have”, because we cannot ask the people. Children also meet BC dates for the first time. The numbers count backwards towards the birth of Christ, so 3200 BC is longer ago than 2500 BC, which many children find surprising. A timeline that runs from the Stone Age to the Roman invasion in AD 43 helps to fix the order.

Words your child will hear

Prehistory: The time before people wrote things down, so we learn about it from objects and remains.
Archaeologist: A person who digs carefully and studies what is left behind to find out about the past.
Hunter-gatherer: Someone who gets food by hunting animals, fishing and collecting wild plants rather than farming.
Neolithic: The New Stone Age, when farming and settled villages began in Britain.
Artefact: An object made or used by people in the past, such as a tool or a pot.
Settlement: A place where people live together, such as a village.
BC: Before Christ. The bigger the BC number, the longer ago it was. Some schools write BCE instead, which means the same years.

What the National Curriculum says

The programme of study for Key Stage 2 says:

Pupils should be taught about changes in Britain from the Stone Age to the Iron Age
Pupils should continue to develop a chronologically secure knowledge and understanding of British, local and world history, establishing clear narratives within and across the periods they study.
Pupils should understand how our knowledge of the past is constructed from a range of sources.

Objectives from the National Curriculum in England, © Crown copyright, used under the Open Government Licence v3.0.

A worked example: using evidence from Skara Brae

How do we know what life was like at Skara Brae?

Start with what survives. The stone walls, roofless houses, hearths, stone beds and dressers are still there, and they show how big the homes were and how they were arranged around a fire.
Look at the rubbish. Mounds of waste, called middens, outside the houses contain bones of cattle and sheep, fish bones and shells, and there is evidence of grain. This suggests that people kept animals, fished and grew crops.
Look at the objects. Tools made of bone and stone, decorated pottery and beads and pendants have been found. These show that people made things for work, and also for decoration.
Separate fact from guess. It is a fact that there are stone dressers in the houses. It is only a guess that people used them to show off their best possessions. Always say “may have” for a guess.
Say what we cannot know. There is no writing, so we do not know the people’s names, language or beliefs, and we can only guess at why they eventually left.

Archaeologists have found stone houses with hearths, beds and dressers, animal bones, shells, grain, tools and pottery. This suggests that the people of Skara Brae lived in a settled village, kept cattle and sheep, grew crops and fished, and made tools and ornaments. We cannot know their language or beliefs, because they left no writing.

Common mistakes and how to help

“Stone Age people lived in caves and hunted dinosaurs”

Cartoons and picture books mix up cavemen and dinosaurs, so children treat them as one long-ago time.

What helps: Dinosaurs died out about 66 million years ago, long before there were any people at all. Stone Age people did sometimes use caves, but they also built huts and, at Skara Brae, houses of stone.

Thinking Stone Age, Bronze Age and Iron Age were each short

They sit side by side on a timeline and look similar in length.

What helps: The Stone Age was far longer than all the periods that followed it put together. Draw a timeline to scale along a long strip of paper, or a hallway, and children can see how short the later periods are.

“Hunter-gatherers were not clever, and farmers were better”

A story of progress makes earlier people seem less capable.

What helps: Hunter-gatherers knew their landscape and the plants and animals in great detail. Farming changed how people lived, and it brought new problems such as bad harvests, so it was not simply an improvement.

Getting BC dates the wrong way round

In everyday life bigger numbers mean later, but with BC dates the opposite is true.

What helps: Use a number line that counts down to zero. Ask which is earlier, 3200 BC or 2500 BC, and let your child check against the line.

How to help at home

Build a BC number line. Lay out a long strip of paper or a line of tape and mark from 4000 BC down to AD 43 (the Roman invasion). Mark the start of farming, Skara Brae and the Roman invasion, and notice how far apart they are.
Be an archaeologist. Put a few clean, dry items from the recycling on a tray, such as a cereal box, a receipt and a plastic bottle top, with no glass, tins or sharp edges, and ask your child what a stranger a thousand years from now could work out about your family. What would survive, and what would be missing?
Model a Skara Brae house. Use clay, play dough or flat stones to make a one-room house with a central hearth, a dresser and two beds. Talk about why the builders used stone and what they put in each part.
Collect and sort outdoors. On a walk with an adult, gather leaves, sticks and stones and sort them into what a Stone Age person could have used for tools, shelter or decoration. Do not pick or eat any wild plants or berries.
Visit or look up a museum collection. Many museums and heritage sites have flint tools, pottery and models of Stone Age life. Let your child choose one object and write three questions about it before reading the label.

Leads on to

Key Stage 3: Medieval Britain 1066 to 1509
Key Stage 3: Tudors and Stuarts: Britain 1509 to 1745
Key Stage 3: Britain 1745 to 1901: industry and empire
Key Stage 3: Britain and the world, 1901 to today
Key Stage 3: The Holocaust