Time and Change in Mesolithic Britain c. 9800-3600 cal bc

Abstract

The Mesolithic has been characterised as temporally homogeneous: a period of stagnation or degeneration with hunter-gatherers focused on routine economic practices in an endlessly repeating seasonal round. Characterisation of the Mesolithic as timeless and unchanging derives in part from our current poor internal chronological resolution, which appears even more acute given the recent ground-breaking advances for chronological precision in adjacent time periods. However, these tendencies are exacerbated by a focus in Mesolithic studies on an outdated and simplified bipartite typological framework for the period, linked to a small number of well-preserved sites that come to stand for human lifeways across millennia. These approaches produce a peculiar temporal model within Mesolithic studies. We argue that we need both more accurate and precise chronologies, and narrative approaches that write stories of these people in their own emergent and uncertain times. To begin to do so, this paper presents a new chronological framework for British Mesolithic assemblages, based on collation, audit, and Bayesian modelling of radiocarbon measurements associated with particular microlith forms. With this new approach, we outline different understandings of temporality and inhabitation for the period c. 9800-3600 cal bc.