with environmental evidence from the site, however, the project team have been able to tease out how this long-vanished structure may have looked 11,000 years ago.
Like the Howick reconstruction, the Star Carr build took a conical form, but the project team emphasise that this is only one possible interpretation of the evidence: while we can be confident of the structure’s footprint, its top has been lost to history and could equally have had a more domed shape. Further deductions – t his time drawing on environmental evidence from the site rather than structural remains – were required as well, in order to decide which materials to use.
The house’s superstructure was built using poles and circular bands of willow, which is known to have grown beside Lake Flixton. How this skeleton should be filled in, however, presented multiple options: it is possible that the walls had been covered with turf or animal skins, though no trace of either has survived to the present day. Instead, the team took their lead from pollen and palaeobotanical analysis, which confirms the presence of reeds growing beside the ancient lake. As these would have been an abundant and ever-growing resource for the Mesolithic builders at Star Carr, they were deemed a suitable material with which to thickly thatch the exterior of the reconstruction.
INTERPRETING EVIDENCE In addition to these archaeologically attested materials, the build (which took place over four days between 7 and 11 August) used replica stone tools based on Mesolithic finds. The project was headed by Professor Nicky Milner (co-director of the morerecent Star Carr excavations) and Dr Jess Bates, both of the University of
Yo r k ; wo r k i n g w i t h D i e d e r i k Pom s t r a and Leo Wolterbeek, specialists in experimental archaeology and prehistoric reconstructions; and supported by Dr Adam Parker, Curator of Archaeology at York Museums Trust.
Speaking to CA beside the then half-built reconstruction, Nicky commented: ‘People are often surprised by how sophisticated life was 11 , 0 0 0 y e a r s a g o – w i t h r e c o n s t r u c t i o n s like this, it brings what is otherwise often viewed as a distant, abstract period to life. You can see that Mesolithic people really understood their environment and the materials around them; they had lots of skills.’
Jess added: ‘At sites like Star Carr we can see Mesolithic hunter-gatherers working collaboratively to build these str uctures, and we are starting to gain insights into how they organised their space within structures, carrying out tasks in certain areas.’
Jess’ PhD research centred on analysing microscopic patterns of wear, polishing, and damage on the flint tools from Star Carr: from these, it is possible to work out what the artefacts were used for, and their distribution within the Mesolithic str uctures also suggests that different areas were used for different tasks. A paper describing these findings was recently published in PLOS ONE (see
LEFT The completed Mesolithic reconstruction, which stood outside the Yorkshire Museum in the second half of August.
‘Further information’ below), and we hope to run a feature exploring this research in the near future – watch this space.
The house stood outside the Yorkshire Museum until 1 September, after which it was dismantled – but the team hope to rebuild it next year, a process that also forms par t of their experiment. Mindful of how mobile Mesolithic people are thought to have been, the researchers wanted to see how easy it would be to take the str ucture apart, store its components, and reconstruct it once more. To this end, the walls were deliberately formed from mats of reeds that could be easily removed and rolled up for later use.
Commenting on how the house build and the ongoing exhibition complemented each other, Adam Parker added: ‘These projects are aimed at a family audience, but are underpinned by academic research using cutting-edge technology and experimental archaeology. The Mesolithic is often depicted as very brown and grey, all sticks and stones – but we want to show how people really lived “after the ice”, and how their objects had biographies and lives too.’
Further information You can read more about the Star Carr Archaeology Project and its research at www.starcarr.com. For more details about visiting the Yorkshire Museum and its exhibition, see www.yorkshiremuseum.org.uk. J Bates, N Milner, C Conneller, and A Little (2024) ‘Spatial organisation within the earliest evidence of postbuilt structures in Britain’, PLOS ONE 19(7); https://doi.org/10.1371/journal. pone.0306908 (open access).
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