Metal tools first appeared in Wales about 2500 BC, initially of copper and followed by bronze. Copper mining in Wales began along the north coast at Parys mountain (2000 BC), Isle of Anglesey, and on the Great Orme peninsula (1800-600 BC), Conwy. At Cwmystwyth, Ceredigion, Copper mining began 2100 BC and continued for another four hundred years or so.
Discovered at Cwmystwyth, the Banc Ty’nddôl sun-disc, a small, decorated, gold ornament, probably part of a funerary garment, is more than 4000 years old, which makes it the earliest gold artefact found in Wales.
The presence of the Bell Beaker culture is suggested by the considerable number (more than seventy) of their typical flint barbed-and-tanged arrowheads discovered on the Plynlimon moorlands around Llyn Bugeilyn, Powys, probably left by small hunting groups passing through mid-Wales.
Burial practices changed from communal tombs to round barrows and the introduction of grave goods. Inhumation was soon replaced by cremation, and the cemetery mound with a number of burials had become standard by about 2000 BC.
In the Brecon Beacons mountain range, Powys, Pen y Fan at 886 m (2907 ft), is the highest peak in south Wales; its summit together with that of Corn Du at 873 m (2864 ft) were once referred to as Cadair Arthur or ‘Arthur’s Seat’. Pen y Fan is marked by a Bronze Age cairn with a central stone cist, similar to that on the summit of Corn Du.
Together with the human remains, there would have been grave goods such as flint tools, cinerary urns (multiple burials) and flower tributes. The similar round barrow on Fan Foel on the Black mountain, Carmarthenshire revealed such items in the central cist, the flowers being those of meadowsweet.
The building of hillforts began during the Late Bronze Age and extended throughout the Iron Age. Many hillforts have evidence of the earlier period, i.e. Bronze Age burial urns, spearheads and socketed axes, barrows nearby and cairns (single or multiple) within the closure itself.
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