When it came to making it through winter it all comes down to food, of which there would be two main items that could be found in every home in a bronze age village, and they were dried meat and dried fat. Salted goods weren’t common inland as mining it was hard work and salt mines weren’t exactly common in Britain, leaving the only practical choice being to dry goods. Dried fat can last for years if its sown up in an animal skin, and dried meats mixed with fat will easily last a few winter months.
Here’s a few of the foods that people of bronze age Britain are believed to have eaten through the winter months based on archaeological finds. It should be noted that no ones knows their full diets for sure as there was no written language until several hundred years after the bronze age ended, so records of food simply don’t exist.
Grains:
The two types of wheat that were in Britain during the bronze age were Emmer and Einkorn, and barley was also known to have been grown as seeds have been found from settlement digs around the country. Corn isn’t native to the UK and wasn’t introduced until much later, and oats were much more work to process than barley or wheat and weren’t introduced until the very late bronze age. Grain is one of the easiest things to dry and as long as it doesn’t get wet it can last for several years in the right storage conditions.
Vegetables:
The only vegetables known to have been produced in bronze age Britain are peas, chickpeas, lentils and bitter-vetch, which is a type of bean that will make you sick if you eat it raw. Evidence of these crops has been uncovered at archaeological sites but that’s not to say they didn’t grow more, we just don’t know about it.
Carrots, onions, cabbage and leeks are amongst some of the earliest recorded vegetables grown in Britain and are likely to have been utilised by our ancestors, but again there’s no evidence since these plants quickly rot into nothing. Out of all these crops the only ones capable of lasting the whole winter would be peas, beans and lentils since they can be dried and will last for months if done so properly.
Meats:
Pigs, cows, chicken and goats have been raised since the early bronze age and their bones have been found at many ancient sites. Hunting would still have been a major food source and finding meat wouldn’t really be a problem, its making it last for the whole winter that’s the issue. Since they farmed their own animals they could butcher them mid-winter and provide a fresh source of meat they wouldn’t need to try and preserve, but it was always wise to do so.
To preserve meat long term without salt the only option would be to dry it. Stock fish is a product that can take weeks to make and basically just involves hanging a fish up in direct sunlight until every drop of moisture has been removed. Stock fish can last for months and only needs to be soaked to make it edible, but dried pork and beef would only safely last for a couple of weeks before it started to turn bad. The answer round this was animal fats which would be melted and poured over meats to stop the air getting to them, sort of like an early version of pemmican. Dried strips of fat would last for months and provide a much needed calorie and fat boost, something needed during the cold weather.
In terms of how they survived other than with food, the answer is the same as it always was and always will be, in a shelter with a heat source to keep them warm. Homes would be made of animals skins and basic thatch and would have a fire almost constantly burning inside. It may not be fun to sit around the fireplace with nothing to do for several months with your entire family eating nothing but wheat, peas and fat, but its certainly better than starving to death in the snow.