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The Mesolithic in Britain proposes a new division of the Mesolithic period into four parts, each with its distinct character. The Mesolithic has previously been seen as timeless, where little changed over thousands of years. This new synthesis draws on advances in scientific dating to understand the Mesolithic inhabitation of Britain as a historical process. The period was, in fact, a time of profound change: houses, monuments, middens, long-term use of sites and regions, manipulation of the environment and the symbolic deposition of human and animal remains all emerged as significant practices in Britain for the first time. The book describes the lives of the first pioneers in the Early Mesolithic; the emergence of new modes of inhabitation in the Middle Mesolithic; the regionally diverse settlement of the Late Mesolithic; and the radical changes of the final millennium of the period. The first synthesis of Mesolithic Britain since 1932, it takes both a chronological and a regional approach. This book will serve as an essential text for anyone studying the period: undergraduate and graduate students, specialists in the field and community archaeology groups.
The Origins of Britain (1980) follows the path of man’s occupation of Britain from the scattered pockets of habitation in the earliest Palaeolithic period through to his growing domination of the landscape and his capacity to mould his environment evident in the late Bronze Age. Among the many subjects which the book discusses in detail are the extent of knowledge of astronomy and mathematics in Neolithic and Bronze Age Britain, and the extent to which the pattern of life in the Iron Age was already set by the end of the preceding Bronze Age.
While awe-inspiring cave paintings were a hallmark of the Upper Paleolithic Era in Europe, they became uncommon in the Mesolithic Period that followed. Scholars believe that this, along with a number of other changes observed in the transition to the Mesolithic Period, was a reaction to a changing environment, caused by the melting of glaciers at the end of the last glacial period. This title paints a vivid picture of a key period of human history. Descriptions of specific discoveries and sites—such as England’s Starr Carr and India’s Bagor—help readers understand how archaeologists learn about life in the Mesolithic Period.
Providing evidence about prehistoric life in Britain, this book focuses on the little studied communities of the South West and Wales. It offers useful case studies from nationally important Bronze Age sites such as Brean Down on the Somerset Levels.
This study, first published in 1978, explores the evidence for pre-Roman settlement in Britain. Four aspects of the prehistoric economy are described by the author – colonisation and clearance; arable and pastoral farming; transhumance and nomadism; and hunting, gathering and fishing. These aspects have been brought together to formulate a structure which contains the evidence more naturally than chronological schemes that depend on assumed changes in population or technology. The book draws upon environmental evidence and recent developments in archaeological fieldwork. It also provides an extensive exploration of the published literature on the subject and the scope of the evidence. Originally conceived as an ‘ideas book’ rather than a final synthesis, the author’s intention throughout is to stimulate argument and research, and not to replace one dogma with another.
The beginning of the Neolithic in Britain marks the end of a hunter-gatherer way of life with the introduction of domesticated plants and animals, polished stone tools, and a range of new monuments. Julian Thomas offers a coherent argument to explain the process of transition between the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods.
Places the evidence for the Late Upper Palaeolithic and Mesolithic periods, conventionally viewed mainly in terms of stone tool typologies, in a wider ecological and geographical context.For 7,000 years after the last ice age, the people of the British Isles subsisted by hunting wild game and gathering fruits of the forest and foreshore. Belonging to the late Upper Palaelithic and Mesolithic periods, these hunter-gatherers have hitherto been viewed mainly in terms of stone tool typologies. late Stone Age Hunters of the British Isles departs from this conventional approach, reassessing the archaeological evidence and placing it within a wider ecological and geographical context.This well illustrated study, which includes case studies, maps and photographs, provides a balanced approach to the study of a period that demands multi-disciplinary treatment. It outlines a range of considerations that have a bearing on the study of early societies in the British Isles, and also forms a useful guide to communiites themselves as represented by known archaeological sites.
Malcolm Lillie presents a major new holistic appraisal of the evidence for the Mesolithic occupation of Wales. The story begins with a discourse on the Palaeolithic background. In order to set the entire Mesolithic period into its context, subsequent chapters follow a sequence from the palaeoenvironmental background, through a consideration of the use of stone tools, settlement patterning and evidence for subsistence strategies and the range of available resources. Less obvious aspects of hunter-forager and subsequent hunter-fisher-forager groups include the arenas of symbolism, ritual and spirituality that would have been embedded in everyday life. The author here endeavors to integrate an evaluation of these aspects of Mesolithic society in developing a social narrative of Mesolithic lifeways throughout the text in an effort to bring the past to life in a meaningful and considered way. The term ‘hunter-fisher-foragers’ implies a particular combination of subsistence activities, but whilst some groups may well have integrated this range of economic activities into their subsistence strategies, others may not have. The situation in coastal areas of Wales, in relation to subsistence, settlement and even spiritual matters would not necessarily be the same as in upland areas, even when the same groups moved between these zones in the landscape. The volume concludes with a discussion of the theoretical basis for the shift away from the exploitation of wild resources towards the integration of domesticates into subsistence strategies, i.e. the shift from food procurement to food production, and assesses the context of the changes that occurred as human groups re-orientated their socioeconomic, political and ritual beliefs in light of newly available resources, influences from the continent, and ultimately their social condition at the time of ‘transition’.