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IN F CUSO A home for hunter-gatherers? Reconstructing ‘Britain’s oldest house’ at the Yorkshire Museum A recent experimental archaeology project has seen the construction of a replica of one of Star Carr’s 11,000-year-old structures in York’s Museum Gardens. Carly Hilts visited the build and spoke to Professor Nicky Milner, Dr Jess Bates, and Dr Adam Parker to learn more. The Museum Gardens in York are home to an impressive array of historic buildings, from the dramatic medieval ruins of St Mary’s Abbey to the imposing Roman masonry of the Multangular Tower, as well as the neo-classical grandeur of the Yorkshire Museum itself. During the second half of August, though, visitors to the site could also see a temporary new neighbour to these structures – rather more humble in scale, but based on much older remains: a reconstructed Mesolithic house that was based on evidence from Star Carr. Around 11,000 years ago, the shores of Lake Flixton (near Scarborough in North Yorkshire) were fringed with occupation sites used by huntergatherer communities. Although the lake has long since vanished from the landscape, the environment’s stillwaterlogged and peat-rich conditions have preserved an astonishing array of organic remains, offering invaluable insights into what life was like in the years after the end of the last Ice Age (see CA 282 and 349). The most famous of these sites is Star Carr, which was discovered by John Moore in 1947, and excavated first by Grahame Clark in 1949-1951, and more recently by Nicky Milner (University of York), Chantal Conneller (then University of Manchester, now Newcastle University), and Barry Tay l o r ( Un i ve r s i t y o f Ch e s t e r ) i n 2 0 0 4 2015. These investigations recovered diverse artefacts, ranging from practical tools used for everyday tasks like butchery, crafting, fishing, and lighting fires to items of jewellery and enigmatic antler headdresses – some ALL stated ise less otherw s Trust, un Museum ire : Yorksh IMAGES 52 OCTOBER 2024

IN FOCUS OPPOSITE The Mesolithic build under way outside the Yorkshire Museum, overlooked by the ruins of St Mary’s Abbey. LEFT Excavations at Star Carr, near Scarborough in North Yorkshire, have uncovered an illuminating array of organic remains representing a Mesolithic occupation site. exploitation of specific resources, while the Star Carr artefacts reveal that the hunter-gatherer lifestyle was not a hand-to-mouth struggle for subsistence, but one with sophisticated beliefs and enough leisure time to create objects beyond those needed for survival. ll Campbe Lorne lian : Guze IMAGE of which can currently be seen in Star Carr: Life after the ice, an exhibition running at the Yorkshire Museum until spring 2026 (see p.60). Rather more subtle, but no less significant, though, were a series of ghostly outlines formed from postand stake-holes: traces of structures that had once stood on the lakeside site. The first of these to be identified was dubbed ‘Britain’s oldest house’ (CA 248), as dating evidence put its construction in c.9000-8500 BC, displacing the previous title-holder, the ‘Howick house’ discovered in Northumberland and dated to 8000710 0 BC . Other Mesolithic structures have been identified at wide-ranging locations including East Barnes near Dunbar in East Lothian, Mount Sandel near Coleraine in Northern Ireland (CA 59), Stainton West near Carlisle (as reported by Fraser Brown in New Light on the Neolithic of Northern England, edited by Gill Hey and Paul Frodsham), and Ronaldsway on the Isle of Man. These also post-date the Star Carr finds (see CA 331 for a more detailed discussion of some of them, and the same issue and CA 262 for wider explorations of life in Mesolithic Britain and Ireland), but they nevertheless add to a growing body of evidence that Mesolithic people, often viewed as nomadic communities who are archaeologically elusive compared to the ‘first farmers’ of the Neolithic period, did make some morelasting marks on their surroundings. The ‘houses’ identified to-date may represent temporary settlements marking ‘special’ places returned to periodically, or used during seasonal STRUCTURAL CLUES Almost two decades ago, co-director of the Howick excavations Clive Wadding t on bu i l t a r e c on s t r u c t i on of the Northumberland building (see CA 189 for photographs of this work), and now an experimental interpretation of Star Carr’s first str ucture has also been created, in a collaboration between York Museums Tr u s t and t he Unive r s i t y o f Yo rk , supported by the National Lottery Heritage Fund. Its excavated remains were only slight, represented by a circular outline at least 3.5m in diameter, picked out by post-holes, and with a distinctive hollow in the centre. Using these clues, combined RIGHT Some of the Star Carr antler headdresses. Such objects highlight the sophistication of Mesolithic communities, and they and many other artefacts from the site are currently on display in an exhibition at the Yorkshire Museum. ISSUE 415 53

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IN F CUSO

A home for hunter-gatherers?

Reconstructing ‘Britain’s oldest house’ at the Yorkshire Museum

A recent experimental archaeology project has seen the construction of a replica of one of Star Carr’s 11,000-year-old structures in York’s Museum Gardens. Carly Hilts visited the build and spoke to Professor Nicky Milner, Dr Jess Bates, and Dr Adam Parker to learn more.

The Museum Gardens in York are home to an impressive array of historic buildings, from the dramatic medieval ruins of St Mary’s Abbey to the imposing Roman masonry of the Multangular Tower, as well as the neo-classical grandeur of the Yorkshire Museum itself. During the second half of August, though, visitors to the site could also see a temporary new neighbour to these structures – rather more humble in scale, but based on much older remains: a reconstructed Mesolithic house that was based on evidence from Star Carr.

Around 11,000 years ago, the shores of Lake Flixton (near Scarborough in North Yorkshire) were fringed with occupation sites used by huntergatherer communities. Although the lake has long since vanished from the landscape, the environment’s stillwaterlogged and peat-rich conditions have preserved an astonishing array of organic remains, offering invaluable insights into what life was like in the years after the end of the last Ice Age (see CA 282 and 349).

The most famous of these sites is Star Carr, which was discovered by John Moore in 1947, and excavated first by Grahame Clark in 1949-1951, and more recently by Nicky Milner (University of York), Chantal Conneller (then University of Manchester, now Newcastle University), and Barry Tay l o r ( Un i ve r s i t y o f Ch e s t e r ) i n 2 0 0 4 2015. These investigations recovered diverse artefacts, ranging from practical tools used for everyday tasks like butchery, crafting, fishing, and lighting fires to items of jewellery and enigmatic antler headdresses – some ALL

stated ise less otherw s Trust, un

Museum ire

: Yorksh

IMAGES

52

OCTOBER 2024

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