People’s lives in the Mesolithic, 10,000-4,000BC (12,000-6,000 years ago), an understudied but interesting time period, can perhaps be studied using the new techniques of archaeological science. At this time the island of Britain was still attached to the Continent, with Doggerland still exposed. Small mobile groups, adapting to the changing environment, were moving around to target natural resources such as red deer, aurochs, beaver, hares plus such plant foods as hazelnuts, hemp, nettles, sorrel etc. They also exploited seafood: cod, herring, sea bream, saithe, eel, seal, and shellfish: cockles, mussels, limpets. UK Mesolithic sites tend to be in watery locations. At Star Carr in Yorkshire there is now nothing remarkable to be seen, but in the Mesolithic the site was on the edge of a vanished lake now known as Lake Flixton. The natural resources there would have attracted both people and animals. At the site were discovered lithics, barbed antler points, a rare piece of Mesolithic art - an engraved shell pendant with a hole bored in it, perhaps so it could be worn - and the well-known deer skulls fashioned into head-dresses/frontlets – perhaps an animal pelt was attached to them to enable hunters to creep up on a deer, or perhaps they were ritual objects to be used in ceremonies to do with hunting magic - to increase hunting success. At Blick Mead, a Mesolithic hunting camp within the Stonehenge landscape beside a spring which maintains a constant temperature of c13 degrees, a rare alga causes flint from the spring to turn a bright pink colour – perhaps this alga was present in the Mesolithic and the colour change would have seemed magical. Till circa 10-15 years ago, it wasn’t thought there were structures at this time, but at another site, Howick, a circular configuration of postholes suggests a tepee-like structure which might have been covered with turf or animal skins. And recently house forms have been found at Star Carr.
Although in the UK there is little physical evidence of the Mesolithic people themselves, in Europe there are some remarkable sites: in Denmark, a body buried on a bed of antlers, with flint blades and stones, some on top of the feet; another burial contains a mother and child, the child placed on a swan’s wing; in Latvia 30 inhumations with bone beads etc. , with evidence that bodies may have been wrapped tightly first; at Bavaria in Germany nests of skulls, some with the neck vertebrae still attached: perhaps decapitations; in Sweden, crania on stakes on a submerged platform in a lake; at Lepenski Vir, Serbia, a settlement site on the banks of the Danube: a number of house floors with hearths, some human remains in foundation deposits of houses, some laid in the houses, the skeletons sometimes in unusual configurations, and figurines: some half-human, half-fish.

In the UK the only definite inhumation of the period is Cheddar Man; some of the skeletons found in another cave, Aveline’s Hole, were later lost during WWII bombing, but some of the surviving bones have been found to be Neolithic. From elsewhere there is some disarticulated and fragmented bone, and a late Mesolithic cremation at Langford, Essex. So to study the British Mesolithic requires more excavation, studying modern hunter-gatherer groups, and using archaeological science.

There was a rapid human dietary change between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic: in the Late Mesolithic, a highly marine diet, but after the transition, a completely terrestrial diet, perhaps because fish became taboo, or due to a socio-cultural change. The UK is lagging behind Europe in aDNA studies: there are large DNA laboratories in Europe with a lot of money, so a lot of papers are being produced, showing links between hunter-gatherers and modern humans, and between Western European hunter-gatherers and the Middle East; at La Brania, Spain, a 7000 years old individual had genes suggesting dark skin colour, but blue eyes.

At Cnoc Coig, Oronsay, Inner Hebrides, there are 6 Mesolithic shell middens., excavated by Dr Paul Mellars in the 1970s. Huge amounts of shellfish, plus animal bones, hazelnut shells, flints, 2 hearths, possible structures have been dated to the late Mesolithic, c 4600-3900BC. Seasonality of use is suggested, but when were they visiting the island? 49 pieces of human bone, from at least four different people, were in 7 different clusters across the midden. The bones were mostly from hands and feet – were these from excarnation (perhaps on a scaffold over the midden), and these small bones had been missed when the bodies were removed? These are the only late Mesolithic assemblages we have. For her Ph.D., Sophy wondered what could be done with these bits of bone. Granted 20 very small pieces, most less than 3cm long and labelled as unidentifiable, perhaps human, she wondered if she could find out the species, their date, the site chronology, their diet, the burial context, anything about the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition. For diet she carried out isotopic analysis: you are what you eat, leaving chemical traces in the body. Carbon/nitrogen isotopes vary geographically and for different foodstuffs. Seal diet is only marine; the humans had a similar diet to seals. The pigs had all eaten completely terrestrial plant foods except for one which was half-way between the terrestrial pigs and seals. The island is not large enough to support pigs, so people were bringing pigs, alive or dead, with them, perhaps from two different places – people were apparently moving animals around before domestication arrived in Britain.

Yvonne Masson