Introduction
Three primary research themes have been identified for future investigation, broken down into specific questions, many of which have drawn upon other regional, national or thematic frameworks across the country. They have changed from those in the 1999 framework in order to reflect the focus in this framework document on purely Mesolithic research and the advances made in the last fourteen years. The themes are:
Theme 1: Living in a changing world
The Mesolithic is notable for a number of recognised climatic and natural environmental phenomena including rapid climate change at the start of the Holocene, the Preboreal oscillation (Hoek and Bos 2007), the 8.2 kiloyear event (Alley and Ágústsdóttir 2005; Edwards et al 2006), a tsunami caused by the Storegga slide (Weninger et al 2008), and the creation of the British Isles as an archipelago of islands as a result of rising sea levels, the breaching of the strait of Dover (Gupta et al 2007) and the final submersion of Doggerland (Gaffney et al 2007). At the same time there is widespread evidence for anthropogenic change in a landscape enriched by successions of flora and fauna adapting to local conditions. The following questions aim to address the relationship and interaction between human populations and the environment.
T1.01: What was the effect of the climate and environment on past communities, including both long-term processes and brief events such as the Storegga tsunami?
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T1.02: What was the impact of a human presence upon the environment, vegetation, and animal population, and how does this compare to the wider European evidence?
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T1.03: To what extent did environmental change impact upon Mesolithic technology and ‘tool kits’?
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T1.04: How can our understanding of Holocene environmental change inform perspectives on climate change in the present day?
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Theme 2: Mesolithic lifeways
Social narratives of the period have become more prevalent in recent years, highlighting Mesolithic people as primary agents of change. These perspectives have not sidelined traditional approaches. Rather, new theoretical perspectives have added a social dimension to understanding various aspects of Mesolithic archaeology, such as technology (Conneller 2000b; Warren 2006; Elliott and Milner 2010; Finlay 2003), death (Conneller 2006), settlement and mobility (Spikins 2000; Milner 1999; McFadyen 2006), ritual (Bevan 2003; Chatterton 2006; Conneller 2004), and diet (Milner 2005; 2009). The following questions aim to address aspects of the human experience during the Mesolithic and work out how to build narratives based around the material evidence.
Technology and art
T2.01: What can Mesolithic technology (eg stone, antler, bone and wood working), its production, use and deposition, tell us about Mesolithic lifeways?
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T2.02: To what extent can we understand the sourcing of raw materials and the movement of materials and people at different spatial scales?
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T2.03: How can we better understand spatial and temporal variation in lithic technology, use and deposition?
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T2.04: Can instances of Mesolithic cave and portable art be identified and dated, and placed within a broader understanding of social and geographical context?
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Settlement and mobility
T2.01: What can Mesolithic technology (eg stone, antler, bone and wood working), its production, use and deposition, tell us about Mesolithic lifeways?
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T2.02: To what extent can we understand the sourcing of raw materials and the movement of materials and people at different spatial scales?
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T2.03: How can we better understand spatial and temporal variation in lithic technology, use and deposition?
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T2.04: Can instances of Mesolithic cave and portable art be identified and dated, and placed within a broader understanding of social and geographical context?
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T2.05: To what extent can the composition, size and geographical characteristics of lithic scatters be used to define different types of site in the Mesolithic?
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T2.06: What is the range and nature of structural remains? How were structures built, how were they used, and did these features change through space and time?
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T2.07: How were caves and rock shelters utilised in this period and what were their relationship to open-air sites?
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T2.08: How did mobility strategies develop from the Lateglacial to the end of the Mesolithic?
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T2.09: Can patterns of territoriality be distinguished?
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T2.10: How were coastal, island and marine environments incorporated into networks of interaction?
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People
T2.11: What did people eat and how varied were their diets?
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T2.12: What was the health of people at this time?
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T2.13: How did the living treat the dead?
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T2.14: What was the genetic relationship between Mesolithic human populations, their predecessors and successors?
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T2.15: Is it possible to understand social organisation in the Mesolithic better? For instance, group sizes and population density?
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Theme 3: Investigating change and diversity
Despite spanning the first half of the Holocene, the Mesolithic has often been discussed as a uniform concept, consequently removing a sense of change and history across almost six millennia. Additionally, interpretations of the few sites with good preservation have been extrapolated to other sites which are temporally distant and geographically diverse. Three main sub-periods are brought into focus: transition from the Terminal Palaeolithic to the Early Mesolithic; change during the Mesolithic; and transition from the Later Mesolithic to the Early Neolithic.
Understanding the transition from Lateglacial to early Postglacial hunter-gatherer societies
T3.01: Did people occupy Britain during the Younger Dryas, the last cold snap of the Lateglacial?
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T3.02: How can we refine the chronology for long blade sites and for Early Mesolithic sites, and the relationship between the two?
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T3.03: How did human occupation relate to climate and environmental change at the beginning of the Holocene?
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T3.04: What were the origins of the people who occupied Britain at the start of the Holocene?
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Identifying change through the Mesolithic at national and regional scales
T3.05: Can we refine further the chronology of Mesolithic lithic industries? For instance, is it possible to refine the spatial and temporal limits of distinctive lithic assemblage types (eg Star Carr, Deepcar, Horsham) and what may these distribution patterns imply? What do the changes in tool form, especially microliths, indicate?
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T3.06: How did bone, antler and woodworking technology change through time and across space?
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T3.07: What changes were there in animal exploitation through the Mesolithic? What were the key arrival and extinction events?
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T3.08: How did subsistence practices and diet change through time and space?
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T3.09: How variable was site use and landscape use through this period?
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T3.10: When and how did Britain become separated from continental Europe and what impact did this have on human groups?
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T3.11: Can radiocarbon dates be used as a proxy for population fluctuation during the Mesolithic?
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T3.12: Were there significant social changes taking place within this period?
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Understanding the transition from the Later Mesolithic to the Early Neolithic
T3.14: How can we investigate the character of final Mesolithic archaeology?
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T3.15: Why does there appear to be a paucity of dated 5th-millennium Mesolithic sites?
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T3.16: When do domesticates appear in the archaeological record and what evidence is there for overlap with Mesolithic populations?
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T3.17: What happened to the final Mesolithic hunter-gatherer groups when farming peoples brought domesticates to the British Isles?
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