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The Later Bronze Age (1200-700BC)

The later Bronze Age appears to have been a period of rapid population expansion in the county. Farmers began for the first time to clear and settle the extensive clay areas of eastern Hertfordshire.

It was also a period of fundamental change in religious practices and burial. The tradition of burying people under mounds which occurred in the Neolithic and earlier Bronze age, had by this time disappeared and had been replaced to some extent by a ritual cult based on rivers and wet places. This time is marked by the appearance of new types of monument in the landscape. Long stretches of linear banks or ‘dykes’ which probably served to mark out tribal territories are known in the Chilterns, and the large hill-top defended settlements known as hillforts also make their first appearance during the late Bronze Age.

In Hertfordshire the hillforts at Wilbury Hill and Arbury Banks in north Hertfordshire are both thought to have begun life in this period.