Here there are 7 case studies that illustrate the potential of Mesolithic research
Lynden Cooper, University of Leicester Archaeological Services
Archaeological evaluation ahead of a proposed housing development revealed a discrete scatter of lithics and calcined bone preserved within an early Holocene palaeosol. Joint funding from Jelsons Ltd and English Heritage has allowed a programme of post-excavation analysis. The site was located on a south-facing Devensian gravel terrace on the right bank of the River Wreake. The site comprised a 5m wide subcircular scatter of worked flint with a central cluster of burnt and calcined flint, the indications of a former hearth. Some 8000 flints were recovered by hand excavation, while a wetsieving programme produced copious microdebitage. The principal activities at the site comprised the production of bladelets, blanks for making microliths. Re-tooling of projectiles can be inferred from a cluster of impactdamaged and broken microliths and evidence for microlith manufacture in the form of numerous microburins. However, some microliths showed use-wear traces relating to other activities such as butchery.
The assemblage has the distinctive technological and typological profile of a Honey Hill assemblage type. The microliths are dominated by obliquely truncated points, backed points and points with inverse basal retouch, the latter a defining trait of such assemblages. The microliths show a near-ubiquitous feature in the form of sinistral lateralisation, ie they were nearly all retouched on their left-hand side. Bladelet production was methodical and comprised reduction from single-platform and opposed-platform cores, prepared by abrasion of the core front. Ventral stigmata on the bladelets demonstrated that the cores were reduced with a soft stone percussor. However, there was some evidence for a less skilled knapper on site, possibly a child.
The Honey Hill assemblage type appears to be a Midlands phenomenon but showing some linkage with Horsham sites of southern England, and more distant links with Middle Mesolithic sites of northern France. A radiocarbon dating programme undertaken by Alex Bayliss suggests that the principal occupation at the site occurred c 8100 cal BC, around the beginning of the Boreal pollen zone, a period when climate warming caused a rapid replacement of the pine/birch forest with a mixed deciduous woodland. Proxy environmental indicators such as oak charcoal and pig bones support the position within the Boreal. It is proposed that Honey Hill-type sites and the related Horsham sites be termed Middle Mesolithic, reflecting similar developments in north-west Europe. Interestingly the site is broadly contemporary with the site of Howick in Northumberland which has lithic technotypological characteristics of the Late Mesolithic (geometric microliths and narrow blade technology). It seems plausible that there are co-eval developments in the settlement history of England, with different Mesolithic traditions (people?) infilling the north-west peninsula of Europe just prior to the creation of the British archipelago.
Fraser Brown, Oxford Archaeology
The excavation of Stainton West in advance of the construction of the Carlisle Northern Development Route, a new bypass built around the west side of Carlisle, revealed a multi-period site perched upon an early Holocene terrace of the River Eden. The fieldwork was undertaken by Oxford Archaeology North in 2009, and a programme of post-excavation analysis has also been undertaken, involving specialists from a wide range of fields and different organisations.
The excavated site covered 0.6ha, within the footprint of the road, but seems to extend outside this, towards both the north and the south. It comprised a series of palaeochannels, with a dense in situ scatter of struck lithic material (c 300,000 pieces) occurring on an island between two of these. Finds of worked wood and stone within the channels, associated with well-preserved palaeoenvironmental assemblages, indicate various phases of human activity. The earliest of these, dating to the 6th millennium cal BC, probably represents the opportunistic reuse of beaver-made structures by people.
The lithic scatter, on drier land between the channels, was associated with hearths, cooking pits, hollows and stakehole structures, suggesting that a semi-permanent camp or settlement once occupied this area. Scientific dating suggests this site was most likely in use from c 4800 to 4300 cal BC, or slightly thereafter, and, as such, it seems to fall between the phases of activity identified in the channels. Overwhelmingly, the lithic material is characteristic of a narrow-blade, geometric microlithic technology and thus is, in general, consistent with the late Mesolithic date, although other types, such as leaf-shaped points and polished stone pieces, which are usually considered to be later, were also recovered. One possible conclusion is that the site is transitional, encompassing the Mesolithic-Neolithic continuum. The raw materials represented had been sourced from an exceedingly large catchment area, including beach pebble flint from western Cumbria, good-quality flint probably of eastern Yorkshire origin, Lake District tuff, Arran pitchstone, quartz, ochre and a variety of cherts, including those that can be sourced locally and materials that most probably derived from both the Pennines and from the southern Scottish uplands.
A range of innovative techniques were successfully employed during the course of the Stainton West investigation and the results, including the raw data, will ultimately be made available on-line, in an indexed digital format. In order to retrieve the huge, in situ lithic assemblage, in a way that preserved its spatial integrity, a wet sieving methodology was imported from the Netherlands. The site was divided into 886 1m² grid squares, and the sediment from these was whole-earth sampled by context. Approximately 270,000 litres of clay-rich sediment was then wet sieved on site to 2mm, employing water pumped from the palaeochannel excavations. This was a very gentle process that has successfully preserved the microglosses on the lithic fabric, enabling their study
Rick Schulting, University of Oxford, and Oliver Craig, University of York
Human remains dating to the Mesolithic are rare in Britain (Meiklejohn et al 2011). This is unfortunate, as they provide a direct window into many different aspects of a long-vanished lifeway, pre-dating the arrival of farming. While the ideal case is an intentional burial, with its unrivalled combination of biological and cultural information, these are currently unknown for the period in Britain, with the possible exception of poorly documented early accounts, such as that of Aveline’s Hole, Somerset (Schulting 2005). This in itself might be telling us something important about how human remains were treated after death in the Mesolithic. Scattered and partial fragments of human bone, however, have been recovered from a variety of contexts, primarily caves, but also shell middens, rivers, and open-air sites. With the application of modern scientific approaches, these can provide a surprising amount of information, including insights into past diets and population relationships, which in turn have implications for the subsistence economy, territoriality and population density (Schulting 2010). It is clear that additional Mesolithic human remains do exist in museum collections, and the increasing use of AMS (Accelerator Mass Spectrometry) 14C dating, together with archival research, has resulted in a number of ‘new’ finds being identified in recent years. One of the best examples of this is the partial skeleton of ‘Tilbury Man’ found during the construction of the Tilbury Docks in 1883, now dated to the Late Mesolithic, c 6000 cal BC (Schulting in press). New excavations in targeted locations have also yielded human remains subsequently directly dated to the Mesolithic, most recently at Foxhole in South Wales (Schulting et al in press). This material presents new opportunities for research simply not available from any other source.
The field of ancient DNA (aDNA) research is one example of a new opportunity. This has advanced rapidly over the last few years and a major advance has been the application of next generation sequencing (NGS) technologies that are particularly well suited to analysing the short fragments of aDNA found in ancient biological material. The renaissance of research on aDNA driven by NGS is demonstrable through a series of recent successes in the analysis of prehistoric human bone, most notably the sequencing of Neanderthal remains and the identification of a new hominin species from c 40,000-year-old remains found in Southern Siberia. From later prehistoric contexts, ancient mitochondrial DNA has been sequenced from the bones of Mesolithic foragers and Early Neolithic farmers (8000-3000 cal BC) from a range of sites across Europe, whilst nuclear DNA has been recovered from Early Neolithic human bone from Central Europe. These landmark studies have provided new insights into the demographic changes associated with the shift to food production, showing in some cases large-scale replacement of Mesolithic huntergatherers with ‘incoming’ farming populations. As more later prehistoric bones are sequenced, more regional-specific and subtle inferences are beginning to emerge regarding the demographic history of Europe during this key period. Unfortunately, no prehistoric British human sequences have ever been published. Research in this area is a priority in order to achieve a better understanding the scale of migration at the start of the Neolithic period in Britain and the relationship between Britain and Europe during the Mesolithic period.
The article ‘Tilbury Man’: A Mesolithic Skeleton from the Lower Thames is available.
Nicky Milner, University of York
While Star Carr is famous within the global archaeological community, research in the local area over a three-year period (2009-2011) has demonstrated that less than 9% of the public had heard of the Mesolithic and less than 8% had heard of Star Carr. Consequently, the University of York POSTGLACIAL project has been aiming to improve public knowledge and engagement with the site. This has included setting up a free ‘Friends’ group with opportunities to volunteer on excavations at the nearby site of Flixton Island, primary school visits to the excavation which included digging and sieving, holding a ‘Star Carr Festival’ in Scarborough in collaboration with Scarborough Museums Trust, Young Archaeologists Club and York Archaeological Trust, talks to more than 30 local societies over the past four years, engagement with local artists including an exhibition in the York City Art Gallery, publication of a booklet, news coverage, involvement in television documentaries, an on-line ADS database of all the artefacts now housed in museums from Clark’s excavations (DOI: 10.5284/1019856), and a website which provides information and news updates (www.starcarr.com).
Most recently, collaboration with The Yorkshire Museum resulted in a year-long exhibition on Star Carr from May 2013. This included exhibits of artefacts, a digital fly-through of the Mesolithic landscape (http://vimeo.com/66913559), a 40-minute Mesolithic ‘soundscape’ with a storyline, and the publication by the Council of British Archaeology of a book Star Carr: Life in Britain after the Ice Age aimed at a non-specialist audience (Milner et al 2013).
The feedback from all of these activities has been overwhelmingly positive and the engagement has grown, as evidenced through larger numbers at talks, open days, volunteers on site, the number of ‘Friends’, and numbers attending the exhibitions. This example, as well as other projects which have also engaged the public such as Howick and Low Hauxley, demonstrates the huge potential for expanding public interest in the Mesolithic period.
Clive Waddington, Archaeological Research Services Ltd
At the north end of Druridge Bay, near Low Hauxley, a Mesolithic site comprising an extensive flint scatter, small scoops and pits, occupation areas and pockets of shellfish remains in a Late Mesolithic soil is eroding from the cliff face due to direct wave action. The site is located on what was originally a slight knoll standing at a higher elevation than the surrounding ground. This intact Later Mesolithic land surface has developed on a thick storm surge deposit thought to have been deposited as part of the Storegga Slide event. At the end of the 3rd millennium cal BC a Beaker period cist cemetery, covered by a large stone cairn, was constructed over the Mesolithic site, sealing the underlying Mesolithic soil horizons and protecting them from erosion. Since the Late Bronze Age, additional protection was afforded when calcareous dune sand accumulated over the site and a further palaeosol developed in the Iron Age before being covered over by ongoing dune sand accumulation since Roman times to a depth varying between 2.5m and 5m. The non-acidic conditions mean that bone and marine shell have been preserved.
Around 100m south of the cliff-face site, an eroding inter-tidal peat has recently been discovered with human and animal footprints, including those of adults and children and the tracks of red deer, wild pig and wild cattle imprinted on the surface. The base of the peat has been radiocarbon dated to the later 6th millennium cal BC when woodland including alder, hazel and oak grew on this land surface. The cliff-face site is also thought to be Late Mesolithic in date, although there could be earlier phases of Mesolithic occupation present. A community-based research project, ‘Rescued from the Sea’, has been established by Archaeological Research Services Ltd and the Northumberland Wildlife Trust to investigate the site and record the remains before coastal erosion removes the site for good.
Martin Bell, University of Reading
Wetland-edge contexts offer particular opportunities for putting known Mesolithic flint scatters on dryland into a wider palaeoenvironmental and economic context. They can also provide more secure dating. The Kennet valley has several examples. Excavations by John Wymer at Thatcham, Berkshire, were mainly on a bluff at the floodplain edge with some evidence from adjoining peat. More recently, coring on the floodplain by Cathie Barnett (formerly Chisham) has shown that activity extends to the floodplain with a good pollen and palaeobotanical record and distinct episodes of burning within the first millennium (9000-8000 cal BC) of the Mesolithic. In parts of the Kennet valley the development of climax woodland seems to have been delayed and the question remains to what extent it was retarded by human agency and/or natural factors such as grazing pressure, or the activity of beavers. Another Kennet valley site is Ufton Bridge, where a restricted flint scatter on a gravel rise has been shown by coring to extend below surrounding Holocene wetland sediments. Both here and on a number of other Kennet valley sites, early Mesolithic activity is associated with a dark black palaeosol horizon overlain by peat, tufa and alluvium. Similar wetlandedge Mesolithic sites are currently (2013) under investigation in the Somerset Levels at Chedzoy, Greylake and Shapwick, where flint scatters on dry, sandy Burtle sediments immediately adjacent to wetlands have long been known.
Intertidal wetland edges offer comparable palaeoenvironmental potential and are often easily accessible because later Holocene sediments have been removed. Submerged forests have particular potential in this context both in terms of palaeoecology, advancing our understanding of the wildwood, and in terms of the chronological precision they can provide for associated sites and environmental sequences. For instance, a submerged forest at Stolford, Somerset, has been shown to span the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition, a period which more widely has evidence for complex environmental changes, the nature and chronology of which need clarification by investigation of sites of this type and date.
Vince Gaffney and Simon Fitch, University of Birmingham
Global warming at the end of the last Ice Age led to the inundation of vast landscapes that had once been home to thousands of people. Amongst the most significant of these is Doggerland, occupying much of the North Sea basin between continental Europe and Britain. At the opening of the Holocene, Doggerland was still a large ‘country’ of hills, plains and river valleys, with an extensive coastline. Over a period of more than 4000 years this landscape was progressively lost to rising sea levels, so that by around 5500 cal BC Britain had become an island and the geography of north-west Europe approximated its present configuration. It was perhaps not until the publication of Bryony Cole’s Doggerland: a Speculative Survey in 1998 that the importance of this submerged landscape was brought home to the current generation of researchers; indeed it was Coles who gave Doggerland its name (after the wellknown submarine banks). Before Cole’s seminal paper, archaeologists had tended to envisage Doggerland simply as a land-bridge but Coles rightly asserted that the area should more correctly be seen as an inhabited landscape in its own right, and indeed one that is likely to have played a central role in the early prehistory of north-west Europe. Although it was recognised that these landscapes had the capacity to retain and preserve archaeological evidence that might be rare or absent within contemporary terrestrial contexts, the relevant deposits are often masked by tens of metres of water or sediment and they provide archaeologists and heritage managers with a unique set of technical and methodological challenges.
Over the last decade researchers at the University of Birmingham have pioneered the development of techniques which use seismic reflection data, gathered in particular for oil exploration at an overall cost of hundreds of millions of dollars, to map submerged Holocene (and Late Pleistocene) landscapes, with notable success (Gaffney et al 2007; 2009). The North Sea Palaeolandscapes Project (NSPP), funded through English Heritage, the Marine Aggregates Sustainability Fund and NOAA (National Geophysical Data Centre), achieved approximately 60% mapping coverage (c 45,000km2) of the area likely to have formed the landmass of Early Holocene Doggerland in the southern North Sea, using data provided by PGS (Petroleum Geo-Services http://www.pgs.com/) from their ‘Southern North Sea Mega Merge’, along with additional information provided through the Geological Survey of the Netherlands (http://www.en.geologicalsurvey.nl/). The Humber Regional Environmental Characterisation project (Humber REC), a collaboration between the Birmingham team and the British Geological Survey (Tappin et al 2011), included ‘ground truthing’ of interpretations of the seismic datasets, through the targeted recovery and palaeoenvironmental analysis of sediment cores from features previously identified as palaeochannels (Gaffney et al 2007). Together these data provide our best guide to the outline of Mesolithic Doggerland and its environment and the same methodologies have been applied to other, similar areas around the British Isles. The results of this work are now being used as the basis for further palaeoenvironmental and behavioural modelling to guide future exploration of these enigmatic and globally important landscapes (Chang and Gaffney forthcoming).