Issue 115

Nov / Dec 2010

news

All the latest archaeology news from around the country

features

On the Trail of Viking Women

Jane Kershaw reports on an astounding quantity of Viking-style jewellery found in England

THE BIG DIG: Bestwall Quarry

At this large site in Dorset local, largely unfunded amateurs were nominated to manage the archaeology with fascinating results

Life Between the Nations

The wartime correspondence of German refugee archaeologist Paul Jacobsthal

Excavating the Living Dead

Alistair Barclay examines the stories of the many people who were buried on Boscombe Down, Wiltshire

The Human Remains Crisis

Change is promised, but fieldwork continues under conditions that many are unhappy with

The Little House by the Shore

The directors of the Star Carr excavation update readers on the endangered organic remains

The Varmints Show

In the Varmints' third exploration, we introduce Great Excavations – The Musical

on the web

Neolithic excavations online and the Cranbourne Chase gets an overhaul

CBA Correspondent

From CBA Director, Mike Heyworth on academia

letters

Your views and responses

ISSN 1357-4442

Editor Mike Pitts

feature

The little house by the shore

We reported three years ago that the wood and animal remains that make the Mesolithic site of Star Carr, North Yorkshire, so important, were in danger of disappearing. New excavations by Barry Taylor, Chantal Conneller and Nicky Milner confirm these fears – and show there is still much of interest to learn.

On a warm August afternoon we were gently excavating through peat. When an excited shout interrupted the quiet hum, we gathered round to see what had been found. It was the broken end of a Mesolithic antler point, some three inches long (7.5cm) with exquisitely shaped curved barbs and incised decoration along its side. When complete the point would have been hafted on an arrow or spear and used for hunting, but around 10,000 years ago it had broken and ended up in a shallow reedswamp close to a lake shore. Discoveries like this are always exciting, but for us the real thrill lay in the fact that it occurred at the country's most iconic mesolithic site – Star Carr.

Today Star Carr is gently undulating farmland, but after the end of the last ice age it was a wooded peninsula on the north-western shore of a large lake. During the early Mesolithic (10,000–8500BC) this area was inhabited by groups of people who camped around the shore and lived by hunting animals and collecting wild plants. Over time thick deposits of peat filled in the lake and buried the ancient landscape, and preserved an extraordinary archaeological and environmental record.

The prehistoric site was discovered in 1947 by John Moore, a local archaeologist, but it came to international attention through the excavations carried out by Grahame Clark, soon to be professor of archaeology at the University of Cambridge, between 1949 and 1951. Clark's truly spectacular discoveries included tools made from bone and antler, such as the barbed points, headdresses made from the skulls and antlers of red deer, and amber and shale beads. These were found with animal bones and flint artefacts in a layer of unworked wood, that Clark called a "brushwood platform", arguing that it been laid down at the lake edge to form a stable occupation area.

"All the bone and antler found during the last 5 years has been in a terrible condition".

Further discoveries were made during excavations directed by Tim Schadla-Hall (1985) and Paul Mellars (1989), some 20m to the east of Clark's. In one of these trenches (VP85A), part of a platform constructed from deliberately split planks of willow or aspen provided the earliest evidence for carpentry in Britain. No other British Mesolithic site has ever yielded such an array of organic artefacts and, over 60 years since the original excavations, Star Carr continues to dominate our understanding of this period.

But despite its importance we know surprisingly little about the site itself. Clark's excavations, although meticulous for their time, told us very little about the environment in which the artefacts he found had been deposited. It had also been impossible to radiocarbon date his artefacts because of the way they were conserved. The small scale of subsequent work had made it difficult to characterise the timber platform, and there had been almost no investigations on the adjacent dry land.

Star Carr remains an enigma. Since the 1970s archaeological surveys have mapped the entire lake shore and discovered over 20 more early mesolithic sites, yet none of these has even a fraction of the organic artefacts that were discovered at Star Carr. To explain this, several researchers have argued that the latter was a special place for deliberately depositing objects, particularly of red deer antler, into the lake or wetlands.

It was with these issues in mind that we undertook our own fieldwork programme. Our first priority was the dry land, which we investigated by fieldwalking in 2004 and then by testpitting the following summer. This showed that the landward component of the site was far larger than had been thought, with evidence for early Mesolithic activity, mostly in the form of flint tools and manufacturing debris, extending over 150m from Clark's original excavations (feature, Sep/Oct 2007).

From 2006, we began to investigate the Mesolithic shore. Here we hoped to learn more about what people were doing in the wetlands, in particular the unusual acts of deposition that had been recorded by Clark. We were not disappointed. In one of our first trenches (SC22) we discovered pieces of worked antler that were radiocarbondated to around 8500BC. In 2007 (trench SC24) we discovered a separate area of timber platform or trackway, once again constructed from split willow or aspen planks – a continuation of the platform discovered to the east in the 1980s, or a separate timber structure.

Our excitement was tempered, however, as we realised that preservation levels had deteriorated significantly since Clark's excavations and the site itself was under dire threat. The antler we recovered was flattened and degraded whilst some of the animal bone had been reduced entirely to collagen. In 2007 our fears were confirmed when research carried out by Andy Needham (University of York) showed that the peat had become very acidic. Worse still, the artefact specialists all agreed that any buried organic material would be completely destroyed in only a few years. With the support of English Heritage more detailed geochemical analysis was undertaken by Andy Needham and Steve and Julie Boreham (from the University of Cambridge) to assess the site's remaining potential.

Plan of recent and older trenches. Grey=Clark; Yellow=Mellars; Blue=2006–2008; Red=2010. Click for larger image.

In 2008, at the request of English Heritage (see Science, Sep/Oct), we delayed further work in the wetland deposits and focused instead on the dry land, excavating a relatively large area just above the lake shore (trench SC23) close to where the timber platform had been discovered in the 1980s. We had recorded a large scatter of mesolithic artefacts the previous summer, but when we extended the trench we found something new and altogether unexpected.

This was a ring of holes (which would originally have held posts) arranged around a shallow hollow almost three metres wide. The deposits within the hollow were highly organic and it is likely that it had been lined with plant material, possibly reeds; finds of burnt stones suggest that it had contained a small hearth. The arrangement of the postholes points to occasional repair or rebuilding. We recorded several more hearths outside the posthole ring, along with evidence of flint working and animal processing. The structure dates to around 8500BC, making it the earliest known in Britain, at least five centuries older than larger pit houses excavated recently in Northumberland, Lothian and the Isle of Man, all distinguished by quantities of burnt hazelnut shells (News, Sep/Oct 2009).

Once again, however, our excitement was diminished by disturbing news about the site's preservation: geochemistry showed that the extreme acidity extended across the entire area. Worse still, it appeared that most of the antler and bone artefacts had already been destroyed and that the wood, including any surviving elements of the platform, was deteriorating quickly. The question was only how long before the organic material that had made the site so famous was finally lost forever?

Working with English Heritage, who had begun proceedings to schedule the site, we devised a further season of fieldwork. In 2010 we would re-excavate parts of older trenches, including Clark's Cutting II (1950), VP85A (1985) and SC24 (2007), and then extend them to assess the adjacent archaeology. We would take Clark's trench south into the lake to establish the extent of the Mesolithic wetland activity, and we would open a new trench (SC33) to determine the extent of the timber platform. The work was funded by the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC). The results have shown that even in its twilight years, Star Carr still has much to teach us.

Clark's trench provided the first of many surprises as we discovered two broken barbed points and a collection of animal bone missed during the 1950 excavation. These finds lack their original provenance, but are unlikely to have been conserved and provide us with a rare opportunity to date artefacts from the original site.

As we excavated south and found artefacts over 20m from the former lake shore, it became clear that Mesolithic activity had been far more extensive than Clark had thought. One of the most exciting finds was a piece of coppiced wood that had been carved into a straight pole or dowel with a bevelled end, currently being studied by Maisie Taylor. It may have been a digging stick or a thrusting spear haft.

At the other side of the site we reexcavated and then extended the 1985 trench (VP85BA), giving us our first opportunity to record the timber platform with modern techniques. As we exposed it we realised just how large the timbers were and what a considerable undertaking it must have been to fell and work such substantial pieces of wood using only stone and antler tools. The question remained, however, where did the platform go and did it join up with the timbers we excavated in 2007 in SC24?

To answer this we opened a new trench between the two (SC33), and for over a week we waited as the team got closer and closer to the early mesolithic levels. Finally, a series of large timbers began to appear through the peat and we realised that we had found the southern edge of the platform. This was the first conclusive evidence for a substantial wooden structure, over 20m long, that appeared to follow the line of the lake shore. Not to be outdone, the team cleaning back the section in Clark's trench also discovered another set of worked timbers that appear to represent a further section of platform.

Another important discovery was the presence in several of the trenches of flint artefacts, including a large concentration of working debris, in the peat well above the level of the timbers. As the peat would have taken over a century to form, these flints must represent a second phase of early mesolithic activity, after the construction and use of the platform.

Our understanding of preservation at the site has also improved, though the news is mixed. The 1985 excavation yielded large quantities of bone and antler directly north of the platform, but when we extended that trench to the west we found none, suggesting they have degraded entirely. In trench SC33, however, bone and antler did survive – in a highly degraded state – and small quantities of both were also present in the extension of Clark's trench. Whilst very poorly preserved, organic artefacts can be found.

The spectacular results from this and previous excavations have shown that we can still learn much about Star Carr. We generally regard mesolithic people as living in small groups, moving over long distances and making little impact on their landscape. Yet finds such as the structure and the extensive timber platform imply a considerable labour investment, communal effort and at least semi-permanent occupation. The site is deteriorating rapidly, but we hope that in the next few years we will be able to excavate the remainder – whilst at least some of the organic materials still survive – ensuring that Star Carr will retain its preeminence in the British Mesolithic.

Barry Taylor is completing a PhD at Manchester University, Chantal Conneller is lecturer in archaeology at Manchester University and Nicky Milner is senior lecturer in archaeology at the University of York. They jointly direct the current Star Carr excavations.

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