Image bank: notes for teachers
Bronze Age Britain
About image banks
Image banks provide a set of images on a specific topic for teachers to use in
any way they need. They are high resolution enough for use as a whiteboard
resource, and can be freely downloaded and copied for educational use.
Find out more
The notes below each slide contain links to follow for more information on that
specific object. To find the object on the Museum’s online database, go to
http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/collection_online/search.aspx and
open the ‘Advanced search options’ pane. The final section gives the option to
‘Search by Museum number or reference’. Enter the Museum number exactly
as it appears underneath the slide. Tick the ‘images only’ box if you only wish to
view entries with images.
The database features over 2 million objects in total. Enter ‘Bronze Age Britain’
to see all the objects from that period.
Background information
Around 2500 BC a new culture, known as the Beaker culture, arrived in Britain
via cross-channel connections with mainland Europe. This culture brought with
it new burial rites, people, objects and technology including the skills of copper
and gold metal working. At first items were made from copper, but from around
2200 BC bronze, which was much harder than copper, was made by mixing
copper with a small amount of tin. Bronze gradually replaced stone as the main
material for tools and by 2000 BC the period known as the Early Bronze Age
had begun in the British Isles. Tin was mined in south-west England and from
about 2100 BC copper, gold and lead were all being mined in Ireland and
Wales. This changed after 1600 BC when the majority of the metal used in
Britain was imported from mainland Europe. The Bronze Age in Britain ran until
around 800 BC when bronze began to be replaced by iron as the principal
metal used to make tools.
Teaching ideas
Prepare for a visit
 Show the students the images on a whiteboard to prepare them for the sorts
of things they may see on their visit.
 Use printouts of these objects or print small versions on a sheet and ask the
students to look out for these or similar objects on their visit.
 Ask each group of students to research an object in detail. Give them a
printout of the object to take to the Museum. Ask them to select a different
object in the Museum which provides a good comparison with the one they
have worked on already
Image bank: notes for teachers
Talk about the images
 Introduce vocabulary associated with the objects such as materials (e.g.
silver, stone, pottery), technical terms (e.g. constructed, carved, cast), name
of object (e.g. statuette, hoard, tombstone), function of object (e.g. conflict,
eating and drinking, religious expression).
Investigate the images as source material
 Discuss archaeological evidence in general. What sorts of factors determine
whether an object survives? Print out the objects and distribute around
groups. Ask students to consider why these objects have survived.
Compare other archaeological evidence for the period.
 Provide students with samples of the real materials used to make the
objects. Use these to investigate properties, such as weight, flexibility,
floating/sinking, magnetism.
 Print out all the images on to card, chop them up into pieces and then
rebuild as jigsaws. Use as a starting point to talk about archaeology and
reconstructing objects from the past.
Interrogate the images
 Use Visual Thinking Strategies to engage your students when looking at
one of the images in depth, eg What’s going on in this picture? What do you
see that makes you say that? For more information: www.vtshome.org
 Use Thinking Routines such as “I see / I think / I wonder” or “colours,
shapes, lines” which are very well suited to exploring and appreciating
images, as well as helping the students to improve their critical thinking
skills. For more information: www.pzartfulthinking.org/routines.php
 Who would have been involved with the life of this object from the raw
material being obtained, through its manufacture, decoration, sale, purchase,
use, breakage, loss, excavation, rediscovery to its exhibition in a museum?
Storyboard the life of the object from its origins to its current location/display.
 Print an image and use it as the centre of a mind map.
 Work in pairs where one person describes the image and the other draws
what they hear.
Classify the images
 Ask the students to imagine that they are organizing the objects in a display
cabinet for people to look at. Ask them to research the objects to find out
how large they are (or you could supply this information) and then ask them
to design a cabinet (deciding how many shelves to have and how big to
make the cabinet) and then arrange the objects appropriate to their size and
shape.
 Print out the objects. Research the date of each object and use them to
make an object timeline or group them according to date.
 Use a website such as Pinterest (or just use Word) to create a pinboard of
your favourite objects from the image bank. Research these and write
captions. Now add other objects from outside the Museum, and any relevant
or interesting facts. For an example see http://pinterest.com/carolynhowitt/tudors/
Image bank: notes for teachers
Compare the images
 Think how different cultures interpret the same object. Gold for Pre-hispanic
Colombians and gold for the Europeans. Money would be another examplefeathers/shells etc.
 Compare the objects with modern examples of the same kind, e.g. a coin, a
letter, a pot. What are the similarities and the differences? What aspects of
continuity and change can you observe? What do we use today for the
same purpose? Compare and contrast the past and present to think about
the future.
 Look at an object and write a label for it. Investigate the same object and
write a label for it. Compare the content of each label from descriptive text to
evaluative text.
Use the images to fire creativity and imagination
 Create a fictional narrative between objects/designs/characters on objects
to develop creative thought and team work.
 Select or create a piece of music or other performance that links to the
feeling of the object or uses the characters/culture that you are looking at.
 Use the objects as a source of inspiration for art and design work on
function (e.g. a container), geometric patterns, shapes or colour.
Further reading
For students
Prehistoric Britain (British Museum Activity Books) by Mike Corbishley (British
Museum Press, 1999)
Online information

Find out about Bronze Age finds from your local area using the Portable
Antiquities Scheme PAS database at www.finds.org.uk.