Explain to the students that around 3500 - 4000 BC (between 5,500 and 6000 years ago) and after nearly one million years, the Stone Age began to come to an end in Britain. Something happened about this time that changed the world forever.

Tell the students that you are now going to show them a short film without any dialogue Resource 1 - which shows a specific technology and process involving metals.

Watch 'How to make homemade bronze'

What is the relevance of this to Dartmoor and particularly the Stone Age? Encourage discussion and reasoning.

People discovered that when copper is heated and mixed with tin (a process called smelting) it creates bronze. This was a great advance because bronze wasn’t only harder and stronger than either copper or tin, but it was also much easier to melt, mould and shape. Unlike stone tools those made of bronze could be sharpened again and again making them much more long-lived.

The film in Resource 1 shows bronze being created today with modern equipment and technology.

• Would people in the Bronze Age have had access to these resources?
• What could they have done to create the necessary heat to smelt copper and tin?

For answers see Resource 2:

Watch 'KS2 Prehistory - The Bronze Age'

and Resource 3:

Watch 'Discovering metalwork in Bronze Age Britain'

This discovery enabled Bronze Age people to manufacture a wide range of items to use in many aspects of their lives. Resource 2 and Resource 3 contain examples of such Bronze Age artefacts that they left behind.

Can the students identify what each artefact is and how people would have used it in their everyday lives?

When the students have completed this exercise ask them to reflect on how all of these items show progress or advancement in the way people were living compared with the Stone Age. For example:

• A piece of bronze jewellery could indicate that people were making some items for decoration, pleasure or to show their higher social status rather than just purely functional purposes.
• Evidence of chisels and scythes show that Bronze Age people were heavily involved in the construction of buildings from timber and farming the land.
• The change in technology from stone to bronze was also a time of change to more settled communities who farmed. These settled peoples were able to use time freed up from hunting and gathering for other pursuits.

This leads on to the second question in the study.