Introduction to Week 4

So in this last week we are going to cover animals. Animals of course provided all sorts of important resources for people in the Mesolithic, from the meat and marrow which people ate, to the hides and sinew for clothing, to the bones for tools. Animal remains also tell us about the environment that people were living in, and from the tools we find, we can think about how different animals might have been hunted, trapped and fished. But one of the most amazing discoveries from Star Carr are the antler frontlets or headdresses, found deposited at the lake edge along with large quantities of bone, wood and flint. Why were people making these artefacts? What did they do with them?

And why were they depositing them in the lake in this way? These are just some of the fascinating questions we’ll be exploring this week.