Prehistoric Technologies and Hunter-Gatherer Landscapes: Towards new archaeologies of the Mesolithic and Earlier Neolithic

The Mesolithic and Early Neolithic periods in Britain may initially appear as barren ground for narratives informed by social theory. The archaeologist is confronted with extended time scales and a scanty data set comprised mainly of lithics and environmental evidence. In order to understand this period in the same frame of reference as later prehistory we require an explicit theorisation of our practices, drawing out the scales, contexts and materialities of Mesolithic and Earlier Neolithic communities.

We must reconsider what questions it is appropriate to ask of our evidence. More specifically we will examine the interface between two bodies of thought, anthropologically informed landscape archaeology and recent developments in the theory of technology. We feel that the nature of the evidence lends itself to these questions: how do mobile communities incorporate raw material procurement into their seasonal rounds? How is the chaîne opératoîre manifested at a landscape level? At the same time an interrogation of our exisiting models may be appropriate. How are spatial analyses being informed by social models?

This session aims to provide a forum for such theorisation, bringing together varied researchers. By working through, and talking through, these issues we may approach a greater understanding of how hunter-gatherer landscapes were inhabited. Contributions are listed below.

"Round up the usual suspects": a brief introduction

Stone tools within their landscape context

Regional hunter-gatherers studies place dots within a resource filled landscape. Models support this by showing how different ecotones within that landscape can be used in different seasons. Although increasingly detailed, such models are driven by economic considerations. They assume static, unchanging societies, when they may have been occupied hundreds of years apart and reflect a more dynamic, shifting use of the landscape over time. The role of the site is based on its landscape context, rather than direct economic data. Such static resource based models create an illusion of long term stability.

The most prolific data remains the stone tools. We must look at this to understand the actions of people rather than assume behaviour from the landscape facet occupied. Typology offers little in understanding behaviour at this scale, while technology fails to incorporate mobility and raw material accessibility.

The Secret Life of Lydianite

The problems inherent in comparing models of "Mesolithic" and "Neolithic" life are well documented; two traditions of study each with different paradigms and priorities. What separates these conceptual packages when theoretical prejudice is distilled, are disparities in scale and the importance attributed to varying categories of evidence. What they have in common is the production of stone tools embedded, it is believed, in other suites of everyday activities, ways of doing things at various temporal and spatial scales, some of which persist across "the transition". It is from these things that the context for the emergence of Neolithic ceremonial monuments and "complex artefacts" should be understood, as well as the continental heritage. This paper will examine how such a context might be recreated from the way reduction sequences and chaînes opératoîres are manifest at a landscape level, with reference to current research in the Derbyshire Peak.

Fragmented Space? The hunter-gatherer landscape of the Vale of Pickering

In this paper I shall attempt to confront some of the implications I feel have arisen from my work on various spatial aspects of the chaîne opératoîre in the Early Mesolithic landscapes of the Vale of Pickering. I have found that using an approach which breaks down the knapping process into a series of stages (coupled with an excavation methodology that relies extensively on test pits) has the consequence of breaking down the landscape - compartmentalising it into a series of enclosed spaces ('sites' or 'activity areas'). I intend to examine ways to counter this tendency in my work through theoretical and anthropological explorations of landscape' and methodologies such as refitting, to try and draw out the intensities, flows and interruptions composing the 'taskscape'.

"Here's one I made earlier": some critical thoughts on spatial models and Mesolithic settlement and land-use

This paper will draw on the author's own research in the Pennine uplands of Northern England in an attempt to produce a critical review of some of the seasonality/territoriality/resource scheduling models that have been adopted as 'givens' in the reconstruction of past resource exploitation and land-use. In particular the paper will examine the range of assumptions that underpin these archaeological models and will question the efficacy of transporting models wholesale from one cultural context to another. Alternative forms of modelling will be examined and different readings of the available data will be put forward.

Deer Prudence: developing biographical strategies for other Mesolithic narratives

Traditional narratives about the Mesolithic privilege the role of the hunter and emphasise the importance of red deer and subsistence in general. Central to the foundation of many of these boys and arrows narratives is the interpretation of the microlith solely as a projectile component. Such a view can no longer be sustained on the basis of microwear and contextual evidence. This paper examines the need to develop theoretical perspectives on lithic manufacture and use during the Mesolithic that transcend subsistence as the dominant concern. Taking the microlith as a focus several biographical scenarios are presented and their archaeological implications discussed. The development of biographical strategies offers a means to integrate the chaine-operatoire within a broader theoretical remit than is currently the case. Biography provides a link between the life-course of the artefact and the individuals using them; enabling issues of gender and age to be integrated and addressed.

Conceptualising Environmental and Social Change in the Mesolithic and Early Neolithic

Interpretation of the Mesolithic/early Neolithic record is dominated by binary oppositions, most obviously environmental (natural) vs social causality. There are ways we might undermine this duality: through the recognition of the dynamism of the environment during this period, and through recent social theory which can help us conceptualise the integral nature of human action and environment. Without excessive reliance on anthropological analogies it would seem probably that Mesolithic communities did not separate nature and human perception into different realms and that ritual beliefs had a strong geo-teleological component. In this light opportunism in a dynamic environment is in no way inferior to resource scheduling or even environmental `management'. As landscapes change not only do physical resources and opportunities change but so does access to the ritual world. An example used here is an interpretation of the forest clearing as a ritual space, not dissimilar to the constructed spaces in the later Neolithic.

Animals and technologies in the epipalaeolithic and neolithic Levant

In the Levant, as elsewhere, prehistoric worked bone artefacts are routinely considered as being among the first of the "domestic technologies", seen as secondary to lithic tools, and associated with "crafts" (rather than "industries"), such as sewing, needlework, and basketry, i.e. women's work. A critical sociology of prehistoric technology, however, must place bone working in the wider context of people's perception of animals. From the Natufian (ca. 12500bp), animals were used not only as a food resource, but also began to provide the raw material for a wide variety of worked bone implements, became the object of artistic representations, and were occasionally incorporated in burials along with people. That is, animal resources were now drawn into a much wider range of technologies and relations. This increased association points to fundamental changes in people's perception of animals, taking place at the very beginnings of domestication. This paper will explore the possible nature of these changes, and discusses the implications for the making of the subsequent neolithic.

Invisible Traces and half-seen Places: thoughts on landscapes of the Mesolithic

Traditional models of Mesolithic life are based on observed phenomena. Yet it is arguable that it is precisely this which has led to major difficulties in marrying the study of stone tools with wider social concerns. Put simply, the visible may not be a sufficient basis from which to create engaging narratives. I will examine some other ways in which we might look at our evidence, using the overlapping analytical categories of trace, as developed by Walter Benjamin, and place, as characterised by Toren Hågerstrand and Allan Pred. I will propose a series of alternative descriptions of the seemingly mundane evidence which we face, suggesting that there are more pertinent histories within it.