Mesolithic
Pleistocene/Holocene Transition
Hunter-Gatherer Complexity
Mesolithic in Europe, Scandanavia, SW Asia, East
Asia
Pleistocene/Holocene Transition
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10-12,000 years ago.
Changes in ice distribution and sea levels irregular.
Core borings of coral beds shows that sea levels at
glacial max were 121 meters below modern levels.
They rose by 20 between 15 and 10,500 years ago, then
a rise of 24 meters in 1,000 years.
Levels had significance to geography.
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Bering Land Bridge formed.
North Sea flooded.
Britain separated from the continent.
Vegetation, Fauna, Temp,
Rainfall
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Northern latitudes after the ice sheet shifted
from glacial tundra to northern forest.
Pleistocene mammals such as mammoth,
mastodon, Bison antiquus, camelids, others
extinct.
Temperatures became warmer, rainfall increased.
All responsible for major changes in complexity.
Why Cultural Changes?
 Why
didn’t changes occur earlier during other
climatic shifts (last interglacial 120,000 years
ago)??
 population density increased
 carrying capacity became stressed, people
couldn’t move as freely so restricted mobility
and greater competition for resources.
Ice Core Data
Sea Level Changes (~330 feet)
Pleistocene
Holocene
Pleistocene Mammal Extinctions
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natural declines
over-exploitation by humans
habitat modification by humans
human introduction of foreign organisms
Consequences
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People began to be less mobile.
Exploit a greater variety of resources.
Changes in Technology
downsizing of projectile points.
 specialized hunting weapons.
 bow and arrow in the Old World around 15,000
 versatile toolkits.
 storage technology, such as basket and clay-line pits
for nut and wild plant seeds
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Hunter-Gatherer Complexity
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Stereotype
Hunter-gatherers move around a lot and live in small
groups
 Based on living, marginal groups such as the !Kung
San and the Inuit.
 Much greater diversity existed at end of Pleistocene.
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!Kung san camp
(http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_agrev/3-Hunting-and-Gathering/hunt-gathering1.htm)l
Hunter-Gatherers
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Gathering in temperate and tropic areas
provides 75 to 80% of the total calories
consumed, with hunting providing the rest.
In existing hunting and gathering cultures,
women usually do most of the gathering, while
the men specialize in hunting.
They live in a small, personal world defined by
the band, which seldom consists of more than
250 people.
http://www.wsu.edu/gened/learn-modules/top_agrev/3-Hunting-andGathering/hunt-gathering2.html
Conditions for more complexity
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Higher-than normal pop, concentrated in relatively
small areas such as river valleys, circumscribed by
geography and neighbors.
More intense, diverse, specialized food gathering.
Food storage and preservation
Permanent and nearly permanet settlements, often
linear.
Highly developed food procurement and processing
technologies.
Divison of labor , Simple social ranking, and trade.
More elaborate ritual and ceremonial beliefs.
Population growth over time
http://www.globalchange.umich.edu/globalchange2/current/lectures/human_pop/human_pop.html
Mesolithic in Europe
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Mesolithic forest and coastal h-gs replaced tundra
reindeer hunters around 13,000 b.p.
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Not impoverished as earlier thought but rich in wildlife such
as red and roe deer, many plant foods.
Coast, estuaries very productive.
Called affluent foragers.
Distinct cultures of the Upper Paleolithic covering
areas of over 38 k sq miles, but in the Holocene
reduced to 6 k sq miles and many different zones and
territories.
European Mesolithic ended around 8,000 B.P. with the
spread of agriculture.
Discovery of a Mesolithic burial at Mezzocorona,
Trento, Italy
The modern town of Mezzocorona is located north of Trento, in the Adige valley, by the
northern margin of the Rotaliana plain, a fertile alluvial fan at the confluence of the
Noce stream and the river Adige.
http://web.unife.it/progetti/notes/emezzoc.htm
Mezzocorona burial
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The burial was formed by a shallow grave,
oriented east-west; the eastern and western
walls were slightly inclined, whereas the
northern and southern ones were almost
vertical.
The northern side of the grave is bordered
by the cliff wall face and the southern side
by one fallen large rock. The deepest part
of the grave is in the middle. On the west,
the grave cut into an occupational level rich
in artifacts (flint, bones, charcoal) and on
the east, into a gravel deposit.
The burial was covered by more than forty
stones of different sizes; they were
assembled directly over the body
(particularly its upper part) and arranged to
form a small tumulus. On some of them,
there were traces of red ochre.
http://web.unife.it/progetti/notes/emezzoc.htm
Mezzocorona burial
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Inside the grave, a skeleton,
probably of a female aged over 30
years, lied in a supine position. She
was oriented east-west, with her
face looking south, her hands on
the stomach and her feet slightly
on top of one another. Both here
head and feet were positioned
above her pelvic girdle. No grave
goods were present.
A preliminary analysis of the
skeleton, which was well preserved,
showed that she had lost her molar
teeth from some time as the roots
had filled in naturally.
http://web.unife.it/progetti/notes/emezzoc.htm
Mesolithic people at Mezzocorona
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The occupation layers are rich in tools, microliths, cores, shatters
and flaking products.
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Among tools, endscrapers, either made from blades, or ogee-shaped,
shoulder shape and nosed flakes are present.
The endscrapers obtained from flakes are short and very short. In
addition to the above-mentioned lithics there were found denticulated
flakes and blades, and notched flakes.
The burins that were present in the assemblage were characterized by
their robustness.
Furthermore triangles are well represented in the microlith
assemblage and especially the long scalene type which have a
narrow base and which are retouched on three sides.
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The double-backed points are generally long.
http://web.unife.it/progetti/notes/emezzoc.htm
NW Europe & Scandinavia
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Maglemose Period (9500-7700 B.P.)
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People lived in large huts with bark and wood floors on
a peat island near a lake.
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Seasonal exploitation of rivers, lakes and terrestrial hunting.
Inland spring and summer settlements are represented by the
Ulkestrup site in Denmark.
Used canoes, one paddle was found preserved.
people fished with bone and antler barbed points, trapped
birds and hunted red deer, wild ox and pig.
In fall bands foraged for hazelnuts and other plants, elk
and other game were hunted, fishing less important.
Starr Carr
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Starr Carr in Yorkshire was a typical Mesolithic site in England.
Around 9,500BP about 20 individuals inhabited the site.
They used stone axes and adzes to fell trees, and made a variety
of barbed bone and antler spear points.
Hunting was the main activity, with red deer, elk, aurochs, and
roe deer being the main prey.
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Hunters used long wooden arrows tipped with small flint blades that were
set in the shaft with tree resin.
Dogs assisted in hunting.
Hazelnuts were collected in the autumn and perhaps stored.
Initial analysis by Clarke suggested winter, short time occupation.
Later analyses by Mellars and Dark showed:
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Late spring/early summer occupation
Purposeful burning of grasses/reed areas around site (land clearing).
Star Carr Location
Star Carr Excavations
http://portfolio.indy-net.co.uk/mesobrit/starcarr.html
Star Carr Artifacts
Burins
Bone “Pins”
Red deer antler head-dress Early Mesolithic, about 9,500 years old From Star Carr,
http://portfolio.indy-net.co.uk/mesobrit/starcarr.html
Oronsay Island sites
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Six Mesolithic shell middens on Oronsay were
discovered in Scotland.
Studies of these sites in the 1970s provided radiocarbon
dates of 6,300 - 4,300 years BP, placing them in the late
Mesolithic period.
The material found within the middens showed that
fish was extremely important in the diet of the
communities on Oronsay.
Around 90% of the fish bones found on the island
were those of the saithe or coalfish. This suggests the
occurrence of marine fishing, although neither nets or
fishhooks have been found.
http://portfolio.indy-net.co.uk/mesobrit/oronsay.html
Area of Oronsay sites
http://portfolio.indy-net.co.uk/mesobrit/oronsay.html
Shell Midden at Oronsay
http://portfolio.indy-net.co.uk/mesobrit/oronsay.html
Scandinavia
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Kongemose Period (7700-6600 B.P.)
Baltic sea coast sites, along bays and near lagoons,
exploitation of marine and terrestrial resources.
 Segebro settlement (larger than earlier ones) which is
now submerged in brackish water.
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occupied year round, but mainly in spring and summer.
 carbon isotope analysis of human bone show that fish and
sea mammals were major diet.
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Scandinavia
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Ertebolle Period (6600-5200 B.P.)
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Culmination of Mesolithic culture, occupying coastal
settlements year round, wide range of food resources, wide
variety of tools.
Greater social complexity, such as cemetaries and more
diverse technology.
Vedbok Bogebakken cemetary had at least 22 people of
different ages buried.
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extended positions.
grave goods.
some showing evidence of violent death, such as projectile
points embedded in bone.
Southwest Asia
(Mediterranean and Middle East)
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Transition to more complex hunter-gatherers (1412,000 B.P.).
Small and highly mobile hunter-gatherer bands, found
in a wide variety of environments, variation in tool kits.
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11,000 B.P. significant environmental and vegetational
changes.
more concentrated stands of wild cereal grains (emmer
wheat, barley, etc.) and nuts (almonds and pistachios).
harvestable over longer periods of time, less temperature
sensitive.
Franchthi Cave, Greece
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Characterized by two new developments:
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(1) the appearance of large quantities of fish bones,
particularly those of large fish;
(2) the appearance of substantially larger quantities of
obsidian from Melos as a material in the local chipped stone
industry.
These two developments were initially considered to be
closely related and to show that the inhabitants of
Franchthi Cave not only sailed to Melos (150 kms.
away) for obsidian but also fished in deep water for the
first time.
There is still no pottery or architecture.
Burial at Franchthi
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The earliest burial found at Franchthi is of
Mesolithic date:
a 25-year-old male buried in a contracted position in
a shallow pit near the mouth of the cave.
 The pit was covered with fist-sized stones; there
were no burial goods; the young man had died from
blows to the forehead, but he seems to have already
been suffering severely from malaria.
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SW Asia
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13-10,000 B.P. Kebaran cultures.
By 10,000 B.P. people began to more intensively
exploit these plant resources called the
Natufians.
exploited wild emmer and barley, nuts, gazelle
hunting also important.
 larger populations, more sedentary hamlets, clear
signs of social ranking .
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Important sites
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Jericho
Three separate settlements have existed at or near
the current location for more than 11,000 years.
 The position is on an east-west route north of the
Dead Sea.
 Wild plants and animals (especially gazelles).
 Later becomes one of the first areas of plant
domestication.
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Excavations at
Jericho
http://www.webpages.uidaho.edu/~rfr
ey/PDF/220/220%20Jaricho.pdf
Clay modeled on human skull, Jericho ca. 9,000 BP
http://www.angelo.edu/faculty/rprestia/1301/li
st_of_illustrations1.htm
Ain Mallaha
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The size of the settlement totaled about 2,000
square meters.
The houses of the settlers were between 7 and 9
meters in diameter and were very well built
which suggests that they were permanent
houses.
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The inside floor of the house was about 4 feet below
the ground outside.
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/eyna/hd_eyna.htm
Catal Hoyuk, Turkey
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Settlement in southern Anatolia, dating from
around 7500 B.C.E. for the lowest layers.
Multiple murals and figurines are found
throughout the settlement, on interior and
exterior walls.
Also, clay figurines of women have been found
in the upper levels of the site.
Catal Hoyuk Excavations
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/
Interior of House with two
Lionesses facing each other
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/
Auroch heads on walls in houses
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/
Deity seated on a throne flanked
by two lionesses
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/
Catal Hoyuk Reconstruction
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/
Interior of House Reconstruction
http://www.catalhoyuk.com/