How to examine climate change in the past
At Star Carr, we were lucky enough to work with an expert team of climate and environmental scientists based at Royal Holloway and the University of Southampton. They used a …
Course: Exploring Stone Age Archaeology: The Mysteries of Star Carr
Geochemistry at Star Carr
On some archaeological sites soil geochemistry is used to try and understand what activities have taken place, though this has rarely been undertaken on Mesolithic sites. Dr Charlie Rowley undertook …
Meet the team
Professor Nicky Milner is the lead educator on this course. Nicky is the Head of Department of Archaeology and Co-Director of the recent excavations at Star Carr with Dr Chantal …
What might they have been used for?
In this film Nicky explains that there are two dominant theories about how these headdresses were used – as part of costumes used in hunting red deer, or in shamanic …
Digitising the headdresses
The fragility of the headdresses unfortunately means it is not possible to handle them once they have been conserved. As a consequence we cannot test how they might have been …
Experimental archaeology: making a headdress
This is an additional video, hosted on YouTube. Please note that this film contains some footage which might upset some viewers. The deer that was used in this film was …
Analysing the headdresses
This is an additional video, hosted on YouTube. Once the headdresses are removed from the ground, Dr Ben Elliott examines the artefacts in detail. In this video he is examining …
Excavating antler headdresses
This is an additional video, hosted on YouTube. In the excavations directed by Clark, a total of 21 antler frontlets (often called headdresses) were found. These are extremely rare artefacts …
Bone and antler artefacts
A number of different types of bone and antler artefacts have been found at Star Carr. The most famous are the headdresses which we will come to soon, but there …
A mysterious deposit of red deer bones
One of our most intriguing discoveries was a collection of red deer bones in part of the detrital wood scatter. Becky Knight our zooarchaeologist explains what she found. Further resources …
Discovering fish in the lake
Finding fish bone at Star Carr has been an important discovery. No fish bones were found during Clark’s excavations and for many years Mesolithic scholars debated why they were not …
The species found at Star Carr
The following species have been found at Star Carr: Fish: European perch, northern pike Birds: common crane, red-breasted merganser, red-throated diver, great crested grebe, little grebe, Brent goose, common scoter, …
Introduction to plants
Welcome back to another week of learning. Plants were important in so many different ways to Mesolithic people – from food, to making tools to creating shelters. This week we …
Introduction to Week 4
We move now to our final week of the course. This week we will learn about the animal remains from the site and here Nicky explains what is in store.
What did people do in the houses?
From the refitting carried out by Dr Chantal Conneller and the microwear analysis undertaken by Dr Aimee Little on flint tools around and within the eastern house structure we can …
These articles are from the online course:
Exploring Stone Age Archaeology: The Mysteries of Star Carr