The Mesolithic in Britain: Landscape and Society in Times of Change

Abstract

As the back cover of the book notes, Chantal Conneller’s ‘The Mesolithic in Britain: Landscape and Society in Times of Change’ presents the first true synthesis of the British Mesolithic in 90 years. This is somewhat incredulous to think, but not a trivial point when considering the significance of this publication. To put this into perspective, the central premise around which The Mesolithic in Britain is structured is the proposal of a new chronological framework. When Grahame Clark’s PhD thesis was published in 1932 (the last time a synthesis of this kind was undertaken) the radiocarbon method was still 17 years away from being successfully demonstrated. To say that an update is overdue would be beyond an understatement. There have, of course, been less synthetical treatments of the British Mesolithic (e.g. Palmer 1977, Wymer 1991, Smith 1992), edited volumes (e.g. Conneller and Warren 2006), and summary papers and overviews (e.g. Tolan-Smith 2008). In addition, several parts of the British Isles have benefited immensely from being the subject of regionally focussed collections of papers and studies, including from recent decades, the Mesolithic of Scotland (Saville 2004, Warren 2005), Wales (Lillie 2015), and the northeast of England (Waddington and Pedersen 2007) among others. It has been apparent, since Clark’s treatment of the matter, that the British Mesolithic has never been a monolithic entity. An improved resolution of regional trends only makes the challenge of conducting an overview of the whole, and all the variability that that entails, an inherently challenging proposition to do justice. For a long time, the period has been framed through an ‘early/late’ division, but this has always been overly simplistic, and has increasingly come to obfuscate more than it helps to elucidate. Consequently, this division is eschewed in favour of a newly updated and more highly attuned alternative. The book begins by reviewing the history of British Mesolithic research, from Clark and his predecessors through to more contemporary leaders of the field, such as the late Caroline Wickham-Jones. It explores problems with the traditional framework before suggesting an alternative, comprising four phases with a chapter devoted to each, except for the first phase, which is given two chapters focusing on the differing nature of the earliest Mesolithic record from the north and south. These phases are, as follows: (1) 9500– 8200 BC (chapter focus on northern pioneers) and 9300–8200 BC (chapter focus on the ‘Early Mesolithic’ of the south), (2) 8200–7000 BC the ‘Middle Mesolithic’, (3) 7000–5000 BC the ‘Late Mesolithic’ and (4) 5000–4000 BC, the ‘Final Mesolithic’. These divisions are broadly reflective of spatial and temporal trends in microlith typology, underpinned where possible by an expanded and improved radiocarbon database. There is significant utility in this approach. Despite the chronological control brought to bear through radiometric dating, the nature of the Mesolithic record is such that many finds may remain undatable outside of typological affinity. The construction of a chronological framework that precludes the incorporation of a sizable chunk (if not a majority) of the relevant material, would be of limited value. Conneller is keenly aware, however, of the limitations inherent in using a limited sample of cultural referents (i.e. lithics) to infer larger patterns of cultural change and continuity, noting that this new schema should serve to ‘break down the Mesolithic into useful segments for analysis, some of which do seem to be related to a broader suit of new settlement feature, and thus might be seen as examples of “relevant” change’ (p. 24). While seeking to emphasize how life changed between 9300 and 3900 cal BC (p. 23), these divisions can perhaps ‘best be seen as a heuristic for dividing and comparing our data’ (p. 35).