Review by George Nash.
The concept of a ‘Mesolithic’, a Middle Stone Age, has been with us since the early 1930s, and many thousands of sites dating to this period have been discovered since, some submerged under our coastal waters. Excavations at Starr Carr by Grahame Clark in the 1950s revealed a complex society that not only seasonally exploited the upland landscapes of northern Britain but also possessed a ritual life, evidenced by an assemblage of 21 red-deer antler masks, probably used in some form of religious ceremony.
During the mid-20th century, little was still known about this 6,000-year period in British prehistory. The period is defined by a number of
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