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Chapter 5
A Changing Way of Life
At the end of the Upper Palaeolithic period the ameliorating climate
brought changes that after a further four thousand years would result
in the environment that is familiar to us today.
The onset of neothermal times not only changed the climate of
north-western Europe, it changed the animals and plants too. Over a
period of four thousand years sub-arctic scrub was replaced by
woodland and meadow and the reindeer and wild horses gave place to
woodland deer, wild cattle, elk and wild pig. A similar sort of change
took place in the bird kingdom. Obviously people had to adapt too. In
the archaeological record these changes can be monitored using the
tool-kits and evidence for diets. People still remained
hunter-gatherers but they probably had a greater choice of gathered
foodstuffs in western Europe than they had enjoyed for millenia.
Hunting and gathering is a way of life that can still be observed in
the modern world. The !Kung San people. for example, a tribe that
lives in the Kalahari Desert, still practise it at certain times of
the year which they treat as holidays and this in itself is an
revealing comment on the contrast between hunter/gathering and the
settled way of life. The hunter/gatherer regime is much more leisurely
and much less burdened with responsibility. The optimum number for
their hunter/gatherer group is between twenty and thirty, the women
responsible for the gathering and the men for the hunting. When they
reach a promising area the !Kung San make camp, each family party with
its own fire within reach of their neighbours so that food can be
passed between them. The younger women are accompanied by children but
only one babe in arms for the birth interval between each child has to
be sufficiently long to allow the older child to be capable of walking
considerable distances before a fresh birth can be contemplated.
Three-quarters of the food eaten by the !Kung San is vegetable and
consists of nuts, roots and berries collected by the women who carry
it back to camp and process it. The men, meanwhile, will be hunting, a
'fun' activity that is only successful one day in four. It is a way of
life with its own character which seems to bring out a carefree,
'laid-back' attitude in those who practise it.
In N.W. Europe one would expect people, unlike the !Kung San, to build
shelters on their camping-places. One would expect too that they would
need to wear more clothes than the !Kung San so that hunting would be
necessary for obtaining skins as well as food.
One of the more dramatic but still imperceptible changes that took
place in neo-thermal times was the melting of the ice-sheets and
glaciers in northern Europe. We can document this process using the
varves deposited in still lakes and estuaries by glacial spates at
annual spring thaws. The varves are the bands of sediment so laid
down, one for each year, which can be counted back 10,000 years. In
the open sea, these annual melts raised the sea level so that by about
6000BC Britain had become an island.
At the beginning of the great 'melt' a corridor had existed between
eastern England and Scandinavia which allowed people to move backwards
and forwards between the two areas before the route was blocked by the
rising North Sea but bits of camping-place gear belonging to the early
commuters are sometimes dredged up by trawlers from the shallow bed of
the sea that authenticate its existence.
The culture of the northern European area before 6000BC is known as
Maglemosian after a site in Denmark. It is clear from the toolkits and
other equipment used at the time that people were having to cope with
an environment of woodland interspersed with many lakes.
In Britain the best-known excavated camping-place of these earlier
Mesolithic people is at Star Carr in Yorkshire, dated to c9,000BC,
where the main activities were hunting, tool-making, collecting and
skinworking. We can compare this evidence directly with the insights
into the hunter/gatherer way of life provided by the !Kung San.
Details of the materials and the techniques used by the 'Kung San and
the Maglemosian people may not be the same but the picture we get of
the two life-styles is similar. In both cases the list of possessions
is short, inevitably so when everything had/has to be carried around
on the peoples' backs
At Star Carr, occupied for several short summer seasons, the women
collected edible leaves, fruits, seeds and roots. Elk, deer, wild
cattle and wild pig were hunted and, in view of the lakeside location
of the camp, probably waterfowl and fish. A paddle, perhaps for a
canoe, was found on the platform the people had built to camp on above
the marshy ground. Further off, another platform contained two split
and worked planks which are evidence of an advanced carpentry
technology. Fires were lit with dried fungus and sparks struck from
flints which also furnished the adzes and tranchet axeheads used for
working timber. Tools made by attaching the flint heads to handles
were supplemented by other composite tools made by using resin to glue
small blades of flint into handles made of wood or bone or antler to
produce sickles, saws, arrows and harpoons.
The type of flint used by the toolmakers of the early Mesolithic was a
high quality white/grey type which contrasts with chert and
low-quality material sometimes utilised in the later period which were
made for domestic tasks and for hunting but it is becoming clearer
that it was also used for weapons against human enemies. It has been
suspected that this is the case since the discovery in the Ofnet cave
in Bavaria of two pits filled with skulls cut from the bodies of men,
women and children. Two-thirds were female and all were covered with
the red ochre pigment, characteristic of Mesolithic burials. Alongside
them lay shells and the teeth of red deer. This is the earliest
example of a massacre in this mesolithic period but there are
certainly others. Later in the period, after 7000BCE, a number of
examples of skeletons with flint points embedded in their bones have
been found in cemeteries as well as others who had suffered from head
injuries clearly inflicted with a club of some sort.
We do not associate all Mesolithic societies with proper burials.
However, they occur, for example, in late-Mesolithic Sweden, and in
over a dozen other places throughout Europe. One of the best examples
is the cemetery at Oleneostrovski Mogilnuk in Karelia with over 170
graves containing grave-goods that seem to suggest that they belonged
to an incipient ranked society. There is also a much more limited
example at Cheddar in Somerset.
At Lepenski Vir on the Danube a permanent mesolithic society was
established exploiting the fish in the river. Well-preserved examples
of Mesolithic huts and some charming carved stone 'fish-faces' are
characteristic features of the site. We can also catch a glimpse of
the way of life at this time in south-eastern Spain from the
rock-shelter paintings at Cueva de los Caballos that show scenes of
hunting with bows and arrows and scenes of ritual dancing.
A feature of British mesolithic cultures after about 6000BC when the
country was parted from the Continent is the number of littoral sites.
This is to be expected in an island and perhaps is an early indication
of the British penchant for the seaside! Sites of this sort have been
identified in N. Ireland, in S.W Scotland and in southern England. In
the north, cave dwellings, skin boats, the collection of shell-fish,
harpoons and 'limpet-scoops' are represented in the archaeological
record. At Culver Well near Portland on the south coast the record is
similar with large middens of winkle and limpet-shells and the remains
of a hut-floor and a hearth and a cooking-pit. With a depth of 0.40m
for one midden on which people had been camping, the suggestion must
be of a regular pattern of visits by these people over many years
about 5,500 years ago.
Because the sea was a permanent source of food, people who got their
living from it by scavenging along the shore for shell-fish or,
perhaps, venturing out into shallow water to fish, were able to live a
more stable way of life as the mention of a hut-floor above suggests.
Other hut foundations have been found in similar locations at Mount
Sandal in Co. Derry, Northern Ireland, Howick on the Northumbrian
coast with hearths containing burnt animal bones, dated to c7800BCE,
and near Dunbar in Scotland with a large collection of microliths and
a hearth.
Inland, people were hunting. Their camping places are often only
identified by a scatter of flints and hearths. Around 10,300 and
9,100BP two hunting parties camped at Uxbridge, west of London where
the first group were making flint implements, others preparing meat
and working on leather. The later group used wood as well since it was
now available in the ameliorating climate. At Cheddar remains of
hunting weapons and tools are found in the caves together with the
only complete British Mesolithic skeleton which dates from around
7000BC. Another example of an open site can be quoted in Wiltshire, at
Cherhill, where a RC date of c5280bc was obtained
These people and others like them were hunting deer and gathering food
in the extensive woodlands and forested river valleys of southern
England. It is interesting to suspect that they were burning woodland
perhaps to create artificial glades for browsing deer. When it is
remembered that the dog was domesticated during the mesolithic period
one wonders whether the deer were being herded as semi-domesticated
stock.
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