Between approximately 3000 and 4000 years ago, during a period archaeologists call the Bronze Age, people buried their dead in cists, sometimes within cairns. A cist was discovered on Lilburn South Steads Farm in 1946. The cist contained a pot, a copper alloy knife blade, a jet button. A Bronze Age stone axe head was found at the same spot three years later. The objects are now in the Museum of Antiquities, Newcastle upon Tyne.