The range from 1900 to about 1400 B.C. includes the time of development of the archeological features usually called the “Early Bronze Age” in Britain. In fact, traces of the Wessex warriors persisted down to about 1200 B.C. The main regions of the island were populated, and the adjustments to the highland and lowland zones were distinct and well marked. The different aspects of the assemblages of the Beaker folk and the clearly expressed activities of the Food-vessel folk and the Wessex warriors show that Britain was already taking on her characteristic trading role, separated from the European continent but conveniently adjacent to it. The tin of Cornwall--so important in the production of good bronze--as well as the copper of the west and of Ireland, taken with the gold of Ireland and the general excellence of Irish metal work, assured Britain a trader’s place in the then known world. Contacts with the eastern Mediterranean may have been by sea, with Cornish tin as the attraction, or may have been made by the Food-vessel middlemen on their trips to the Baltic coast. There they would have encountered traders who traveled the great north-south European road, by which Baltic amber moved southward to Greece and the Levant, and ideas and things moved northward again. There was, however, the Channel between England and Europe, and this relative isolation gave some peace and also gave time for a leveling and further fusion of culture. The separate cultural traditions began to have more in common. The growing of barley, the herding of sheep and cattle, and the production of woolen garments were already features common to all Britain’s inhabitants save a few in the remote highlands, the far north, and the distant islands not yet fully touched by food-production. The “personality of Britain” was being formed. CREMATION BURIALS BEGIN Along with people of certain religious faiths, archeologists are against cremation (for other people!). Individuals to be cremated seem in past times to have been dressed in their trappings and put upon a large pyre: it takes a lot of wood and a very hot fire for a thorough cremation. When the burning had been completed, the few fragile scraps of bone and such odd beads of stone or other rare items as had resisted the great heat seem to have been whisked into a pot and the pot buried. The archeologist is left with the pot and the unsatisfactory scraps in it.