What is the Mesolithic and what are the
challenges of studying it?
The Mesolithic is generally defined as corresponding to the beginning
of the Preboreal period (which follows the Younger Dryas – the last cold
snap of the Ice Age) at about 9600 cal BC, and finishes at about 4000
cal BC in Britain with the introduction of farming. However, the term
‘Mesolithic’ is a modern construct, coined in 1866, and the boundaries
of the period are rather fuzzy (Milner and Woodman 2005a). The
‘transition’ from Upper Palaeolithic to Mesolithic is poorly understood:
the long blade sites of the Terminal Palaeolithic are poorly dated and the
degree of continuity with the Early Mesolithic is not clear (Barton and
Roberts 2004).
There are hints of temporal succession in the Early Mesolithic
assemblage types of the Preboreal (Reynier 2005) and some indications
of Middle Mesolithic developments around the beginning of the Boreal,
but the chronologies require more work. In addition, the nature and
timing of the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition is much debated (Milner
2010). Although the general consensus is that at some point around
4000 cal BC changes associated with the Neolithic occur (see eg Whittle
et al 2011), rod microlith sites have been identified as particularly
late vestiges of Mesolithic behaviour, possibly extending into the 4th
millennium cal BC (eg Spikins 2002, 43; Chatterton 2005; French et al
2007, 283). Overall, the lack of chronological refinement for the whole of
the Mesolithic has been thrown into sharper relief by the precision now
achieved for the Early Neolithic through Bayesian modelling (Whittle et
al 2011).
Despite the difficulties of defining a specific beginning and end point
to the period, we can say that the Mesolithic spans roughly five and a
half thousand years: a significant chunk of time which covers about half
of the Holocene, the geological epoch we are currently living in. One
of the reasons this period has been overlooked may be because it lacks the impressive monuments and artefacts associated with later periods.
Developments in lithic artefact styles and technology enable a broad
Early/Late assignment to stone tools, the change occurring across the
late 9th and 8th millennia cal BC, and a ‘Middle’ facies has been posited
for southern and central England. Scarcity of substantial remains and
associated radiocarbon dates has hindered refinement of Mesolithic
chronology to a more familiar, human scale. Consequently, these five and
a half thousand years tend to be conflated and the Mesolithic is often
seen as a ‘timeless’ period, lacking history and change until the arrival of
the Neolithic.
However, this neglect in the past arguably makes the Mesolithic one of
the most exciting periods to study because there are so many questions
to answer; recent work has demonstrated that important discoveries can
overturn our understanding of hunter-gatherers after the Ice Age and
contribute significantly to the national story. Recent research has also
shown that a historical perspective is both vital and possible. Several
cultural and environmental events occurred during the Mesolithic,
including rapid climate change at the beginning of the period, significant
changes in lithic technology and, in the 7th millennium cal BC, a cold
event, a tsunami and eventually the breaching of the landscape which joined Britain to the rest of Europe. Many of these events speak to
current concerns about climate change, the environment, and Britain’s
place in the world.
There are a number of challenges that those dealing with the
Mesolithic have to face (Spikins 2010). Mesolithic sites can be hard to
find: the archaeology can be ephemeral and prospecting for sites can be
difficult. There are some entrenched views on what Mesolithic sites and
material should look like, which can limit exploration and consequently
lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy. For instance, because the human bone
record is so sparse for the Mesolithic, such remains are not expected
to be found. It is only through recent radiocarbon dating programmes
that more have been identified as Mesolithic (Meiklejohn et al 2011).
Similarly, recent excavations at Star Carr have shown that the site is
much larger than the original excavator had envisaged, which had been
based on a belief that sites of this period are small (Conneller et al
2012).
8 IntroductionConversely, the difficulties of prospection for small sites (and
intra-site archaeology) mean that the enormous potential of studying
single-period events is mostly untapped. Such small sites can preserve
archaeological signatures for short-term events, archaeological snapshots,
and offer ‘clean’ assemblages, unaffected by the palimpsests often seen
on larger scales. Their significance is inversely proportional to their size,
offering huge potential to inform our understanding of the bigger picture
at certain points in time.