Ancient flints found on Cairngorms | Forum

Mr Altres Mar 30, 2004 11:11:23

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/3581355.stm

Archaeologists are excited by a discovery which they say proves that early Scottish settlers travelled through the Cairngorms 7,000 years ago.
Over 80 pieces of worked flint and quartz dating from the Mesolithic period have been found at a site in Glen Dee near Braemar.

The finds were made by chance during conservation work on footpaths. Experts say it proves people moved through the landscape in seasonal cycles gathering and hunting for food.

Most of the knowledge of the period so far has come from sites on the coast. This is believed to be the first find from such an early date in the Cairngorms.

Dr Shannon Fraser, archaeologist for the National Trust for Scotland in the North East, said: "We suspected that major route ways through the Cairngorms, such as the Lairig Ghru, may have been used by our earliest Scottish settlers as they moved through the landscape in seasonal cycles, fishing, hunting and collecting other foods and useful materials. "But without any physical evidence for the presence of these people, we just couldn't prove it.

"What is so exciting is that these tiny fragments of worked stone, some only a few millimetres long, suggest that these groups of people may have been very familiar with what even today are considered to be extremely challenging Highland landscapes."
Further study funded by Aberdeenshire Council has demonstrated that both tool-making activities and the use of the tools themselves were happening at the site. The finds include both broken tools and the waste flakes produced when working pieces of flint.

Caroline Wickham-Jones, a consultant archaeologist specializing in the Mesolithic of Scotland, said: "This is a very important find because it helps to fill in one of the most glaring of gaps in our knowledge of the early settlement of Scotland: what was going on in the interior of the country."

BrigantesNation Mar 30, 2004 11:42:02

Replying to Mr Altres

This is interesting. We think of Meso peeps as being firmly hunter gatherers, yet there is a growing train of thought that their was much less diff between the Meso and Neolithic times than we think - farmaing being a more gradual development than the Neolithic explosion we tend to think of.

At both Thornbrough and Stonehenge there are Meso pits. Thornbrough had a double pit alignment of 32 pits. Given the ultra low number of people this indicates a surprising amount of effort (possibly) for hunter gatherers in an environment supposed to be totally tree covered and boggy. The pit's at Thornborough were big - 1x2m and at least 1m deep.

Could it be that the great henge sites have their inspiration in much earlier times than we think?

FourWinds Mar 30, 2004 13:01:02

Replying to Mr Altres

I think that one of the most interesting parts of that is this:

"The finds were made by chance during conservation work on footpaths. Experts say it proves people moved through the landscape in seasonal cycles gathering and hunting for food."

It actually says that people used this path to move through the landscape! This actually points out the age of many of our routes: Where you walk, you have walked for thousands of years.