New Research

Large Groups Came Together for Grand Feasts at the End of the Bronze Age in Britain

After analyzing bone fragments found in millennia-old trash piles, researchers say that people may have brought livestock from far and wide to consume in the south

Sonja Anderson | Daily Correspondent

September 12, 2025

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Nearly 3,000 years ago, groups gathering for feasts in southern Britain gnawed the meat off enough bones to generate massive trash heaps. These mounds, which became part of the British landscape, are known as middens. Now, a new analysis of material from six middens is providing insight into the scope of ancient feasting.

The middens date back to the late Bronze Age, which was a time of “societal shifts across Europe,” according to a study published this month in the journal iScience. During this period, huge crowds came together for “feasts on a scale unparalleled in British prehistory.”

“I’m pretty sure these gatherings would have had a really important role to play in creating some degree of community cohesion at a time of trouble,” co-author Richard Madgwick, an archaeologist at Cardiff University, tells the Guardian’s Steven Morris.

Researchers analyzed animal bones found inside middens in Wiltshire and the Thames Valley. The largest midden, Potterne, spans the area of five soccer fields and contains as many as 15 million bone fragments, according to a statement from Cardiff University.

“Our findings show each midden had a distinct makeup of animal remains, with some full of locally raised sheep and others with pigs or cattle from far and wide,” lead author Carmen Esposito, an archaeologist at the University of Bologna in Italy, says in the statement.

The researchers performed multi-isotope analysis on bone fragments extracted from the middens. Long ago, each animal ate food that contained markers specific to the geographical region. By identifying these chemical signatures in the bones, scientists figured out where the livestock came from.

Potterne is full of the bones of pigs, some of which came from far away in northern England, reports the Guardian. Another midden called Runnymede is dominated by the bones of cows that came from Wales, Cornwall and Devon. Meanwhile, the East Chisenbury midden—which is located near Stonehenge—is thought to contain hundreds of thousands of animals’ remains, mostly local sheep.

Esposito says in the statement that the “distinct makeup” of animal bones found at each site “demonstrates that each midden was a linchpin in the landscape, key to sustaining specific regional economies, expressing identities and sustaining relations between communities during this turbulent period.”

Historians aren’t sure why the end of the Bronze Age was marked by an economic downturn, when “bronze was devalued as long-established trade routes imploded,” writes the Telegraph’s Lara Brown. “As the age came to a close, Britain endured what was essentially an inflation-induced recession.” Eventually, during the Iron Age, this crisis ended. The middens were formed during the transitional period between the two eras.

“There was perhaps a feasting age between the Bronze and Iron Age,” Madgwick says in the statement. “Overall, the research points to the dynamic networks that were anchored on feasting events during this period and the different, perhaps complementary, roles that each midden had at the Bronze Age-Iron Age transition.”

 

Sonja Anderson | Read More

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in Chicago.