Chantal Conneller - The Mesolithic in Britain: Landscape and Society in Times of Change

The Mesolithic in Britain proposes a new division of the Mesolithic period into four parts, each with its own distinct character.

The Mesolithic has previously been seen as timeless, where little changed over thousands of years. This new synthesis draws on advances in scientific dating to understand the Mesolithic inhabitation of Britain as a historical process. The period was, in fact, a time of profound change: houses, monuments, middens, long-term use of sites and regions, manipulation of the environment and the symbolic deposition of human and animal remains all emerged as significant practices in Britain for the first time. The book describes the lives of the first pioneers in the Early Mesolithic; the emergence of new modes of inhabitation in the Middle Mesolithic; the regionally diverse settlement of the Late Mesolithic; and the radical changes of the final millennium of the period. The first synthesis of Mesolithic Britain since 1932, it takes both a chronological and a regional approach.

This book will serve as an essential text for anyone studying the period: undergraduate and graduate students, specialists in the field and community archaeology groups.

Chantal Conneller is a Senior Lecturer in early prehistory at Newcastle University. She is author of An Archaeology of Materials (2012) and Star Carr: A Persistent Place in a Changing World (2018).

The British Palaeolithic

Human Societies at the Edge of the Pleistocene World

Paul Pettitt and Mark White

The Neolithic of Britain and Ireland

Vicki Cummings

Iron Age Lives

The Archaeology of Britain and Ireland 800 BC AD 400

Ian Armit

The Mesolithic in Britain

Landscape and Society in Times of Change

Chantal Conneller

Formative Britain

The Archaeology of Britain AD 400 1100

Martin Carver

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.routledge.com/Routledge-Archaeology-of-Northern-Europe/book-series/ARCHNEUR

Chantal Conneller

First published 2022

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2022 Chantal Conneller

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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

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ISBN: 978-1-138-79042-1 (hbk)

ISBN: 978-1-138-79043-8 (pbk)

ISBN: 978-1-003-22810-3 (ebk)

DOI: 10.4324/9781003228103

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First, I would like to thank the British Academy, whose award of a mid-career fellowship permitted me to finish this book within the terms of my natural lifespan. Thanks also to the intrepid readers who commented on the entire draft: Andrew David, Graeme Warren and Caroline Wickham-Jones. Ben Elliott, Aimee Little and Tom Yarrow provided useful input on specific chapters and issues. The project has hugely benefited over its various iterations from the input of Tom Higham, Alex Bayliss and Seren Griffiths on the dating side. I would also like to thank Fraser Sturt for generously generating new sea-level maps for this book; to Charlie Rowley for her rigorous work on the maps in maps.

A book that covers so much material can only be completed through the generous efforts of a huge number of people, who have provided images, answered queries and introduced me to their sites. I would like to thank: Cathy Barnett, Nick Barton, Alex Bayliss, Martin Bell, Martin Blundell, Fraser Brown, Alison Burns, Sophy Charlton, Mike Church, Andrew David, Mike Donnelly, Ben Elliott, Mike Farley, Nyree Finlay, Eric Grant and colleagues, Seren Griffths, Susanna Harris, Gill Hey, Brian Howcroft, Clive Hudson, David Jacques, Kay Kays, Jodie Lewis, Tom Lord, Nicky Milner, Steve Mithen, Garry Momber, Graham Mullan, Nick Overton, Susann Palmer, Steph Piper, Stephen Poole, Matt Pope, Paul Preston, Gary Robinson, Peter Rowley-Conwy, Rick Schulting, George Smith, Penny Spikins, Barry Taylor, John Thorp, Clive Waddington, Elizabeth Walker, Graeme Warren, Caroline Wickham Jones, Karen Wicks, Linda Wilson. A special thanks goes to Roy Froom for his generous tour of the Kennet Valley sites, to John Davies for his introduction to the Mesolithic of Northumberland and to the late Pat Stonehouse for his appreciation of the Pennine Mesolithic landscape. I have learnt a huge amount about the British Mesolithic from PhD students I have worked with and would like to thank Hannah Cobb, Amy Gray Jones, Jim Leary, Nick Overton, Ray Nilson, Ellen McInnes, Lawrence Billington, Alison Burns, Julie Birchenall and Tom Lawrence for their insights. This book has also benefitted from discussions over many years with Ed Blinkhorn, Ben Elliott, Roger Jacobi, Aimee Little, Stephen Poole, Graeme Warren and Tom Yarrow. All errors are of course my own.

A lot of this book is based on work on lithic collections and museum archives. In times when local museums are under threat from reduced funding, I must emphasise how vital these visits have been. I would like to thank the following people who have generously facilitated access to their collections: Jill Greenaway (Reading Museum), Brett Thorn (Buckinghamshire County Museum), Andrew Parkin (Great North Museum), Ross Turle and David Allen (Hampshire Museums), Lisa Brown (Wiltshire Museum), Ann Vernau (Three Rivers Museum Trust), Richard Sabin (Natural History Museum) and Nick Ashton, Jill Cook Claire Harris and Claire Lucas (British Museum).

Thanks also to Kangan Gupta and all the other members of the Routledge editorial team, whose patience I have tested over the years.

And finally to Aime Little, Lesley McFadyen and Beccy Scott, and to Roger Jacobi, who set me on to this task.

Basemap data acknowledgements:

The maps produced for this volume contain public sector information (OS Strategi 2016.01 and OpenRivers 2018) licensed under the Open Government Licence v3.0 and open data (Pope 2017 UK Shaded Relief Tiff) licensed under the Open Data Commons Public Domain Dedication and License (PDDL) v1.0.

Note on radiocarbon dating:

All radiocarbon dates have been calibrated using IntCal13 (Reimer et al. 2013) and OxCal version 4.3 (Bronk Ramsey 2009). Date ranges are given at 95% probability unless noted otherwise.