ronwilcox@archtext.co.uk Dr Ron Wilcox at http://www.archtext.co.uk/onlinetexts/britains_past/index.htm * Chapter 2* Mesolithic Times As the climate gradually improved at the end of the Ice Age, we find more traces of hunter-gatherers in Britain. This period before the introduction of farming is called the Mesolithic period. One place where remains left behind by people at the beginning of this period have been found is in the Vale of Pickering in Yorkshire. A site there that has been extensively examined is at Star Carr on the shores of an ancient and long-gone lake. The hunter-gatherers built a wooden platform of split and worked timbers some six metres wide between their campsite and the open water. Charcoal found on the site and in the reed swamp of the time has allowed the scientists to date the period of intermittent occupation to some c350 years, between c8700 and 8350BC. Most common finds are reindeer antlers and the flint tools with which their carpenters built the platform. Flint and antler were used for making hunting weapons like arrow points and harpoons. Their quarry were red deer, elk, aurochs, roe deer and wild boar whose bones were found on the site together with remains of fish caught in the lake. One curious find was a stag frontlet, perforated so that it could be worn on the head as a hunting disguise or perhaps as a costume piece in ceremonial dances. Domestic tools were used by the women for scraping skins and cutting up deer meat. Some flint artefacts were mounted in handles by the men as composite tools like axes, knives and arrows. Many of the flint blades were very much smaller than those of previous or later cultures and so present us with the characteristic icon of the Mesolithic period ? the microlith, a tiny flint point, so delicately made that it suggests that the fabricators may have been women. No pottery was made. At Star Carr (Clark) in Yorkshire, the environmental evidence ? animal bones and plant material preserved in the damp archaeological layers - demonstrates that in the improving climate there was already plenty of food available for collection or hunting in the countryside soon after the withdrawal of the ice-sheet from Britain and that people were not slow to exploit it in the virgin frontier lands that were opening up for them. Their skill in carpentry, in fashioning their clothes from skins and in hunting prove that they were a talented people but they have not left a lot of artefacts behind them since they were wanderers, moving from place to place in order to find food and so did not burden themselves with unnecessary possessions. Mesolithic structures have not been located very often. A rescue excavation was carried out in 1970 on a site first discovered in 1880 at Mountsandal in Coleraine, Ulster that turned out to be a circular hut about six metres in diameter made of saplings driven into the ground and bent over to form the structure and containing a hearth. A date of between 7000 and 6500BCE was obtained. This hut can be compared with a post-built example at Howick in Northumberland set in a circular sunken area consisting of rings of posts some 0.1 and 0.15m in diameter that suggest a rebuilding. Hearths seem to be invariable in Mesolithic sites, necessary in view of the chilly climate of the time. In this case it provided a date of around 7800BCE. Two late Mesolithic structures interpreted as a fishing weir and a causeway in the Somerset Levels at Walpole near Bridgwater have recently been discovered (2005) and date to c.4500BCE. Other radiocarbon dates from various parts of Britain indicate that Mesolithic people regularly set fire to woodland as an aid to hunting. The fires made clearings that animals used for grazing and so became easier prey for the hunters. As an aid to hunting, they domesticated dogs; bones that have been found show that they were similar to modern sheep dogs. Plant food must have been an important item in diets of the time. Large quantities of hazel-nut shells were found on several sites as far apart as Oakhanger in Hampshire and Colonsay in the Hebrides suggesting that they were a popular food while other plant remains include fat hen, nettle and yellow-water lily at Star Carr and rapberry from Newferry in Northern Ireland. But there were probably other plant foods like berries, tubers, varieties of nuts and edible leaves for which we have no archaeological evidence so far. On the other side of England in the cave known as Aveline?s Hole in the Mendips recent research had identified the earliest cemetery so far known in the country. It dates from the early Mesoloithic period between 8,200 and 8,400 years BCE and, although the bones of the 21 individuals found there were mostly destroyed in a bombing raid on Bristol during World War II, enough remains today to provide a date and to establish from the strontium in their remains that they were ?locals?, living close by. In the later Mesolithic there seems to be more emphasis on exploiting the resources of the coast and the sea. Sites in Dorset and Northern Ireland are important in this respect. Large quantities of mollusc shells are found in middens along the coast suggesting lengthy stays by Mesolithic people. At Culver Well in Dorset, (Palmer) the midden consisted mainly of winkles and limpets piled on a floor of limestone slabs together with a cooking pit and a hearth. From the charcoal remaining, radio-carbon dates of just over 5000BCE were extracted. In Scotland, in coastal sites like those on the island of Oransay, similar middens show that people were catching fish like saithe in such quantiries that they probably exceeded shellfish as a proportion of the diet. An excavation in 2004 at Warren Field in Crathes, south-west of Aberdeen, discovered twelve massive post pits that were later identified as belonging to the Mesolithic period (8000-7500) and give the lie to the idea that Mesolithic people in Britain did not build massiove structures. So far, however, this is the only evidence of this sort of activity recorded. / During this time, important developments were taking place in the Middle East. People were beginning to produce their own food by developing agriculture in Iraq and Palestine before 7000BCE. Some started by herding animals, others by growing crops. The domesticated animals were sheep and goats while the earliest crops were wheat and barley. Knowledge of farming gradually percolated into the lands to the west. It reached the Balkans during the earlier seventh millennium BCE while farming villages first appeared in southern Italy and Sicily around 6200BCE. Further west, in France and Spain, the caves and rock-shelters of the Mediterranean coast were occupied by hunter-gatherers who adopted agriculture reluctantly, herding sheep and goats and planting some cereals but still hunting, gathering and fishing. In north-western Europe, the so-called ?Western Neolithic? culture wais characterised by a simple material agricultural culture with stone and flint -tools and a limited range of undecorated bag-shaped pots, bowls and cups. Timber mortuary buildings intended finally to be covered with long earthen mounds are found in Flanders, causewayed enclosures in Northern France and in western France a concentration of megalithic (large stone) ossuaries covered by earthen mounds appeared./ * Introduction to Archaeology * * * * main page <../onlinetexts-start.htm>* ** <../onlinetexts-start.htm>** * Environment and Landscape * * * *** ** *