#mesolithic britain

[ofruinsandmyth]

Reconstruction of a 10'000 year old round-house excavated at Howick house.

[mostly-history]

Red deer antler mask or head-dress from the Mesolithic site of Star Carr (North Yorkshire, c. 11,000 years ago).

[autodidact-adventures]

English History (Part 2): Mesolithic

Mesolithic Period (11,600 years ago [9600 BC] – 4000 BC)

At Formby Point (on England's north-west coast) are 8,000-year-old human footprints, continuing for about 9.75 metres.  They include the footprints of children.  The men were about 1.55m tall, and the women about 1.35m tall.  They were looking for shrimps and razor shells.

Formby Point footprints.

The Severn Estuary also has prehistoric footprints, from about 7,000 years ago.  They fade away at the point where dry land once became swamp.

Severn Estuary footprints.

Mesolithic people burned the woods and forests to clear them, so they could build settlements or hunt for game more effectively.  They also burned pine trees to make way for hazel trees – autumnal hazelnuts were a popular food source.  They knew how to manage their resources.

Although they were “hunter-gatherers”, with dogs for hunting, the Mesolithic English did not just wander randomly.  They ranged through group territories with well-defined boundaries that adjoined each other.  They liked the areas where land met water.

Star Carr is a Mesolithic archaeological site in North Yorkshire, dating back around 11,000 years (to the early Mesolithic period).  What is now the Vale of Pickering used to be covered in a great lake.  A platform, made of birch wood, was built on the lake's bank.  It may have been used for fishing, but probably was used for ritual ceremonial.  The people wore amber beads, and left behind pig, red deer, duck and crane bones.

A round house, 3.5m in diameter, has also been found.  It was made of 18 upright wooden posts, with a thick layer of moss & reeds so people could sleep on it.  The house appears to have had a hearth; and the inhabitants used iron pyrite to start fires.  They also used barbed antler points, and flint knices & scrapers.

The people of Star Carr used canoes to travel over the lake, and one paddle has been found.  There are also 21 fragments of deer skull, some with antlers.  They were probably used as shamanic masks or head-dresses, to enter the spirit of the deer.  It may have been an early form of morris dancing.

Reindeer antler mask/head-dress from Star Carr.

Another Mesolithic settlement has been found at Thatcham (Berkshire), dating to around 8400 – 7700 BC, slightly younger than Star Carr. The people lived on the shores of a lake.  Burnt bones, burnt hazelnuts, and patches of charcoal used for fires have been found. There are cleared spaces showing where small hut floors were.

There were hundreds of such settlements, many of them in coastal regions that now lie underneath the seabed.  The coasts were once 21-30 metres higher than they are now, so settlements were lost as the seas rose.

One submerged village was found at Bouldnor Cliff off the Island of Wight.  Divers saw a lobster flinging pieces of worked flint out of its burrow, and a settlement of craftsmen and manufacturers, hunters and fishermen, was revealed.  A canoe carved from a log was found; so was a wooden pole with a flint knife embedded in it.

The Bouldnor Cliff site also has Britain's oldest boat building. Beneath it is a wooden platform from around 6000 BC, made of split timbers several layers thick, resting on round-wood foundations that were laid horizontally.

Tools found at Bouldnor Cliff.

The waters gradually rose; after the glacial era's ice sheets melted, it encircled the new archipelago of England, Scotland and Wales. This happened around 6000 BC, with the marshes and forests of the plains between England and the continent were obliterated by the southern North Sea.  It probably took about 2,000 years overall, as the land slowly became swamp and then lake.

Earlier in prehistory, two huge floods had created the Engish Channel between England and France.  Now with the newly-risen waters, 60% of the land surface became what is now England.

The tools made in England became smaller than those in continental Europe, and some types of microlith were unique to England.

Travellers still came to England from the continent – from north-western Europe, and the Atlantic coasts of Spain and south-western France. The migrations from the Atlantic coast were not a new phenomenon. These people had been colonizing the south-western regions of England throughout the Mesolithic, and by the time the archipelago was formed, a distinctive culture was flourishing in the western parts of England.

Those coming from Spain also settled in Ireland.  “Hibernia” is the Latin name for Ireland, and is related to the word “Iberia”. The Iron Age tribe of the Silures (South Wales) always believed that their ancestors had come from Spain some time in the distant past. Tacitus stated that these tribal people had dark complexions and curly hair.  They were later known as the Celts.

So by 8,000 years ago, there were already distinctions between the English regions.  England's flint tools are divided into five categories.  Those in the south-west had a different appearance to those in the south-east, which encouraged trade between the two regions.  Individual cultures were being created, reinforcing geographical & geological identities (such as cultures established upon chalk & limestone vs. granite).

England can be divided into two zones – the Lowland Zone and the Highland Zone.  The Lowland Zone covers the south and east (the midlands, Home Counties, East Anglia, Humberside, and the south central plain).  It is built upon soft limestone, chalk and sandstone; it has low hills, plains and river valleys.  It is a place of centralized power and settlement.

The Highland Zone covers the north and west, including the south-west corner of England (the Pennines, Cumbria, North Yorkshire, the Peak district of Derbyshire, Devon and Cornwall).  It is mostly built upon granite, slate and ancient limestone; it has mountains, high hills and moors.  It is a placce of scattered groups or families, independent from each other; it is hard, gritty and crystalline.

These two zones did not face each other.  They faced outwards, towards the seas.  The changes can be seen upon the ground itself. In Wessex, artifacts from one settlement stop where the chalk meets the Kimmeridge clays, showing that the people would move no further west.  So regional differences began to spread.

Differences of accent & dialogue may already have existed.  There was a language in the south-east that left traces in contemporary English – the words London, Thames and Kent have no known Germanic/Celtic root.

The people of East Anglia & the south-east may have spoken a language that developed into Germanic, and the people of the south-west one that became Celtic.  The Germanic tongue would become Middle English and then Modern English; Celtic split into Welsh, Cornish and Gaelic.

In Wales and Cornwall, stones carved with Celtic inscriptions (from the Roman Age) can be found, but none have been found in southern England.  Tacitus stated that by the time of Roman colonization, the south-eastern people spoke a language not unlike that of the Baltic tribes.

[mostly-history]

Shaman pendant found at Star Carr, a Mesolithic archaeological site in North Yorkshire.  It is about 11,000 years old.

The pendant is 3mm thick and made of shale.  The markings on it, barely visible until digital microscopy techniques were used, may be tally marks, a map, or a depiction of a leaf or tree.

Red deer antler head-dresses were found nearby, and are thought to have been worn by shamans, so it is possible that this pendant also belonged to a shaman.  The designs are similar to those found in southern Scandinavia, and other areas bordering the North Sea. Because the sea level was lower at this time, land now under the North Sea was exposed.  There were close cultural connections between Northern European groups.

[mostly-history]

Red deer frontlet, probably used as a shaman's head-dress, from the Mesolithic site of Star Carr (North Yorkshire, c. 11,000 years ago). The antlers were removed or split to obtain the splinters, and the skull was perforated.

[mostly-history]

Red deer antler mask from the Mesolithic site of Star Carr (North Yorkshire, c. 11,000 years ago).

This mask was probably used by a shaman, and was made from the skull of a large stag.  The skin was deliberately removed from the skull, as shown by lines of cut-marks made by flint tools.  The bones forming the top of the nose were broken off, and the edges of the remaining skull part were trimmed.  The rim of the brain case was smoothed, and interior projections were removed and scraped smooth. The antlers of this mask were broken off, and the stumps thinned down and trimmed around the base.  Two holes in the back of the skull (one through each parietal bone) were made by cutting and scraping away bone on both sides.  These holes were probably used to tie the mask onto the shaman's head.

This mask is 15cm high and 18cm long.

[mostly-history]

Artefacts from the Mesolithic site of Star Carr (North Yorkshire, about 11,000 years ago).  They include a barbed antler point used for hunting, bodkins (blunt needles with large eyes), and scraping tools made from auroch bone.

[mostly-history]

Two amber beads from the Mesolithic site of Star Carr (North Yorkshire).

No other pieces of amber have been found in British Mesolithic sites. Sometimes pieces of amber wash up on Britain's east coast, so the peoples of Star Carr may have found it there.  Alternately, it may have been brought from coastlines further away in what is now the North Sea, or traded from Denmark or the Baltic (where many amber pendants have been found from this period).

The first piece of amber has been perforated twice but also broken. A third piece of amber was found during the excavation, but has since been lost.