These little rolls of birch bark are 10,000 years old. They may have been waiting to be used as firelighters. Or perhaps their resin was to be used as glue to fasten microliths to a bit of mesolithic technology. A lot of them were found at Star Carr. Whatever they were intended for, they are now available for your viewing delight at the British Museum. Mmm.
A bracket fungus from Starr Carr which would have been prepared and used for catching and nurturing a tiny spark to start a fire. It’s 10,000 years old. And now it resides in the British Museum for strange people like me to come and thrill in front of. Marvellous.
Looking east across the settlement site. The inset shows the position of the lake based on site and excavation plans.
Looking west across the site. The area in shadow to the left would have been the shore of Lake Pickering.
The archaeologist who helped lead the dig that found Britain’s oldest house said the site was still giving up its secrets 10 years on.
Star Carr hit the headlines in 2010 when a circular Stone Age structure found was dated to about 8,500 BC.
Archaeologist Nicky Milner said working on the site was akin to time-travel.
“It’s as close as you can get to being in a Tardis. It was an absolute dream, it took up 15 years of my life,” Dr Milner said.
Ray Mears, bushcraft expert and TV presenter, was one of those who helped unlock the purpose of wood found at the site.
Star Carr is a Mesolithic, or Middle Stone Age, site near Scarborough in North Yorkshire dating to almost 11,000 years ago.
“In this second session we will be looking at the Mesolithic period and making a ‘Star Carr’ type shale pendant. The Mesolithic is the period when people repopulated Britain after the last major Ice Age event. ”
eventbrite.com/e/making-a-mesolithic-star-carr-type-pendant-tickets-80688061163
Stone Age Britons may have developed a prehistoric secret code.
Mysterious markings engraved on an 11,000 year old pendant found in Yorkshire suggest that the area’s ancient Mesolithic inhabitants used a system of long and short lines to represent events or objects in numerical form.
The markings appear to have been inscribed on the pendant in a deliberately faint way – and archaeologists suspect that that may have been in order to render many of them almost invisible when not being examined closely.
The site they were discovered on – at Star Carr in the Vale of Pickering – was used for ritual activities – probably ceremonial dances performed by prehistoric shamans.
continued.....
Archaeologists excavating what they claim is Britain’s oldest house have secured more than £1m in funding.
The circular structure at Star Carr near Scarborough was found in 2008 and dates from 8,500BC.
Archaeologists from the Universities of Manchester and York say the site is deteriorating due to environmental changes.
The European Research Council has given them £1.23m to finish the work before information from the site is lost.
Time running out
Nicky Milner, an archaeologist from the University of York, said the site was deteriorating rapidly.
“The water table has fallen and the peat is shrinking and it is severely damaging the archaeology,” she said.
“The water keeps the oxygen and bacteria out and because they are now going into these deposits that is causing a lot of problems.
The area was settled by hunter gatherers about 11,000 years ago
“We haven’t got much time left to excavate and we want to do some specialist analysis before all this important information vanishes forever.”
The site was first discovered in the 1940s and has since been the subject of extensive research.
The latest excavation led to the discovery of what would have been a 3.5 metre diameter house occupied by hunter gatherers about 11,000 years ago.
The remains were dated by radio carbon and the type of tools used helped identify the house as being from 8,500BC.
Large settlement
The discovery suggested that people from this era were more attached to settlements than had been previously thought.
Items such as the paddle of a boat, arrow tips, masks made from red deer skulls, and antler head-dresses which could have been used in rituals, have all been uncovered.
Dr Milner said: “What we have here is a massive site, we have structures and we have a timber platform on the edge of what would have been a lake. This suggests that people were living here for quite a long period, for generations, in a large group.
“We have to do more excavation to understand more.”
Star Carr would have been settled at the end of the last Ice Age and the team believes it may also offer insights into how people reacted to climate change.
There is at least a dozen press reports on this, from the Guardian to the Daily Mail which got the reconstruction wrong but provides most of the photos, the following from the Yorkshire Post...
“Archaeologists said today they have discovered Britain’s earliest house, in the North Yorkshire countryside.
Teams from Manchester and York universities who are working at Star Carr, near Scarborough, said the Stone Age house dates to 8,500 years BC, when Britain was still connected to mainland Europe.
The team, which also uncovered an 11,000-year-old tree trunk, unearthed the 3.5m circular structure next to a former lake.
The house predates the house previously thought to be Britain’s oldest, at Howick, Northumberland, by at least 500 years.
The team said they are also excavating a large wooden platform made of timbers which have been split and hewn. It is thought to be the earliest evidence of carpentry in Europe.
Dr Chantal Conneller and Barry Taylor from the University of Manchester have been working with Dr Nicky Milner from the University of York at Star Carr since 2004. The house was first excavated by the team two years ago.
According to the archaeologists, the site was inhabited by hunter-gatherers from just after the last Ice Age, for between 200 and 500 years.
They migrated from an area now under the North Sea, hunting animals including deer, wild boar, elk and enormous wild cattle known as auroch.
Although they did not cultivate the land, the inhabitants did burn part of the landscape to encourage animals to eat shoots and they also kept domesticated dogs.
Dr Milner said: “This is a sensational discovery and tells us so much about the people who lived at this time. From this excavation, we gain a vivid picture of how these people lived. For example, it looks like the house may have been rebuilt at various stages. It is also likely there was more than one house and lots of people lived here.
“The platform is made of hewn and split timbers; the earliest evidence of this type of carpentry in Europe. And the artefacts of antler, particularly the antler head-dresses, are intriguing as they suggest ritual activities.”
Dr Conneller said: “This changes our ideas of the lives of the first settlers to move back into Britain after the end of the last Ice Age. We used to think they moved around a lot and left little evidence. Now we know they built large structures and were very attached to particular places in the landscape.”
Mr Taylor added: “The ancient lake is a hugely important archaeological landscape many miles across. To an inexperienced eye, the area looks unremarkable – just a series of little rises in the landscape.
“But using special techniques I have been able to reconstruct the landscape as it was then. The peaty nature of the landscape has enabled the preservation of many treasures including the paddle of a boat, the tips of arrows and red deer skull tops which were worn as masks.
“But the peat is drying out, so it’s a race against time to continue the work before the archaeological finds decay.”
Universities and science minister David Willetts said: “This exciting discovery marries world-class research with the lives of our ancestors. It brings out the similarities and differences between modern life and the ancient past in a fascinating way, and will change our perceptions for ever. I congratulate the research team and look forward to their future discoveries.”
The research has been made possible by a grant from the Natural Environment Research Council, excavation funding from the British Academy, and from English Heritage, which is about to schedule the site as a National Monument. The Vale of Pickering Research Trust has also provided support for the excavation works.
The world-renowned Star Carr site, which dates back to 9,000BC, was first discovered by local man John Moore in 1947 after he came across a flint blade in a field and began digging for artefacts.
He found a number of other significant sites in the area before excavation went ahead between 1949-1951 and 1985-1989. Dr Conneller, Dr Milner and Mr Taylor recommenced excavation in 2004.
yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Britain39s-earliest-house-is-unearthed.6467344.jp
the Guardian report..
guardian.co.uk/science/2010/aug/10/britains-oldest-home
The Daily Mail.....
ITV news (once past the chocolate advert)
itv.com/yorkshire/stone-age-des-res58472/
Details of site on Pastscape
The buried remains of an Early Mesolithic settlement site on the edge of a former lake at Star Carr. The site was identified by John Moore in 1947 and partially excavated in 1949-51. Further archaeological excavations in the 1980s and the 2000s have demonstrated in situ evidence of built structures. During the Mesolithic period the monument site was a peninsula of dry land that extended southwards into Lake Flixton, a former lake of nearly 5km by 2km. This peninsula can now be seen as a rise in the ground surface. Radiocarbon dating and archaeological evidence indicates that the site was occupied on a seasonal basis intermittently over about a couple of centuries around 9,000BC.
Excavations in the 1980s found parts of a timber platform with evidence of carpentry using stone tools, representing the earliest known example of carpentry in Europe. In 2008 a further structure 5-6 metres in diameter was identified, which was defined by scatters of flintwork and a hollow surrounded by post settings. It has been interpreted as a hut and is sited on higher ground than the platform on the western side of the peninsula. Discovered during the 1949-51 excavations was a brushwood floor thought to overlay what would have been reedbeds. Artefacts found at the site include organic material not found at any other Mesolithic site in Britain, antler frontlets, barbed points made from antler, flints, microliths and plant remains. Peat drainage is having an adverse affect on the unexcavated organic remains which rely heavily on waterlogged soils for their preservation.
Due to current renewed interest in Star Carr I’ve added the following text I wrote elsewhere.
Star Carr must be one of the most unassuming yet archaeologically important sites it is possible to visit in the British Isles. An empty field hides below its surface the waterlogged remains of what was once a Mesolithic settlement standing on the eastern shores of the now vanished Lake Pickering, a glacial lake formed by meltwaters at the end of the last ice age that stretched as far west as the Hambleton and Howardian Hills towards the north of York. At this time lower sea levels meant Britain was not yet an island being still connected to the continent and as the ice retreated hunters followed herds of migrating animals across land which is now under the North Sea and began to move into new territories. One of these that seems to have been particularly to their liking was beside Lake Pickering where they burned back the sedges and rushes on the marshy edges of its shore and laid down mats of brushwood and a trackway of split timbers to make a platform out into the clearer water – evidence of a wooden oar suggests they also used boats to move out onto the lake to fish.
It is thought that the edge of the lake was not used as a habitation area but that camps would have been set up a short distance to the north on slightly raised ground. These would probably have been temporary seasonal camps and archaeologists seem to be divided on when the site would have been in use, analysis of plant remains suggests the main activity taking place here was during the summer months while finds of worked and natural deer antler suggest people were hunting here during winter.
Although animals such as auroch, elk and boar were taken as food sources it seems that red deer held a special place in the Mesolithic world view of these people. Not only were they hunted in large numbers but they are also responsible for the most famous finds at Star Carr – the antler headdresses. These consisted of the frontal forehead bone of red deer stags with the longer parts of the antler trimmed off and holes drilled through the bone to form either eye-holes or to tie the headdress to the wearer. What these were used for has fired the imagination of many writers (this one included) – were they worn as disguises to allow the hunters to get close to their prey or were they worn during ceremonies where perhaps a tribal leader would enter a trance state to try to commune with the spirit of the animal? Whatever their purpose it seems to have been an important one as twenty one of these headdresses where found here and it appears that they were placed into the wet areas of the site perhaps as an offerings after use. A more pragmatic reason could be they they were submerged to soften the bone prior to it being further worked and what we could be looking at is Star Carr as a production centre with the headdresses being traded further afield.
This theory could be supported by the finds of nearly two hundred barbed antler points which would have been tied to the end of poles to make spears or harpoons for catching fish. Other finds from the site include many flint artifacts such such as scrapers, burins and microliths, pieces of worked and unworked antler and bone as well as wood working tools. Several perforated stone beads, perhaps used as jewelry, hint at the more personal lives of the occupants of the site.
At some point the site was abandoned, perhaps the settlers moved elsewhere as the level of the lake fell although luckily the ground remained waterlogged and a layer of peat slowly formed helping to preserve so much of the organic remains that make Star Carr such a unique and archaeologically rich resource. It slipped from memory until it was rediscovered in 1947 by local archaeologist John Moore and was then excavated between 1949-1951 by Sir Grahame Clark whose discoveries, particularly of the headdresses, sparked so much interest in this quiet corner of Yorkshire. Further excavation work during the 1980’s and within the last ten years have helped to shine more light on the activities that were taking place on this shore line and carbon dating of organic remains have given us a date range of activity at Star Carr of between 8770BC-8460BC suggesting that the site remained important for many generations of Mesolithic families.
Despite all that has been learned from the study of the area much remains unexcavated and the true extent of the site has yet to be discovered however recent research indicate that drainage is now threatening the very existence of Star Carr. Falling water levels mean that the water-logged peats that have protected the bone and wooden artifacts that make the site so important are now drying up leading to the decay and destruction of these irreplaceable items with some experts predicting that much will be lost within 5-10 years. To lose all that can be learned from this unique 10000 year old site would be a real archaeological shame.
This mesolithic lakeside settlement, dated to around 7500BC was investigated by Professor Grahame Clark (Excavations at Starr Carr: An Early Mesolithic Site at Seamer near Scarborough, Yorkshire -Cambridge University Press 1954), while Jacquetta Hawkes calls it ‘the most informative Middle Stone Age site in Britain‘
Starr Carr has since been reburied.
Edit: New evidence suggests the site dates from 8700BC and was seasonally occupied over a course of 200-300 years
Marvellously, you can read online or download for free, two brand new books about the site that analyse Chantel Conneller, Nicky Milner and Barry Taylor’s excavations between 2003-15.
Volume one is called ‘A persistent place in a changing world’ and the second is ‘Studies in technology, subsistence and environment’.
The site was occupied / used for about 800 years. The first people there deposited worked wood, articulated animal bone and flint tools into the lake. The next period was the main phase of occupation, in which large timber platforms were made at the lake’s edge, and items were still being deposited into it. And in the last phase both the dry land and the wetland margins were still being used, “often for craft activities,” and making axes and tools – and the oldest known British Mesolithic art – a shale bead – was found there. I love a shale bead, me. They’re in chapter 33 of the second volume. The famous antler frontlets are in chapter 26.
Information plus videos of work at the site.
A particularly superb thing about this archive is the ‘Query’ section, via which you can bring up photographs of many wonderful things.
