The Use of Antler in Mesolithic Britain#

Ben Elliott#

(University of York)#

[email protected], http://www.york.ac.uk/archaeology/research/research-students/benjamin-elliott/

This thesis aims to characterise the use of antler in the British Mesolithic, and to place this within the broader context of human and deer relations during the period. It uses traceological analysis to study worked antler from Mesolithic Britain, building up a picture of the ways in which the chaîne opératoire for the treatment of antler artefacts varied across time and space during the period. This marks the first large-scale application of this method to material from the British archaeological record, resulting in the analysis of 516 pieces of worked antler. In doing so, it extends the current understanding of technological variation within the British Mesolithic further than the previous comparisons between Early Mesolithic sites in North Yorkshire and Final Mesolithic sites in Western Scotland, by including material from 39 sites across England, Scotland and Wales. In terms of its contribution towards our understanding of the English Mesolithic, this analysis results in the identification of new types of antler artefacts within England, and illuminated technical variation within the some of the artefact types identified by previous authors. It also highlights a number of instances of the repair and re-use of objects manufactured from antler, suggesting more complex and extended biographies for these tools than has previously been acknowledged within the English Mesolithic contexts. Further to this, the variations in the use of antler that are identified across Britain help to place the English antler technology into its wider geographical context.

Additionally, this thesis considers variations and consistencies within the treatment of antler as a material, in relation to the dynamic and changing relationship between people and deer during the period. This relationship has become the focus of academic discussion in recent years, following shifts in theoretical thinking within Mesolithic Studies. Several authors have used the treatment of deer remains to argue for variations in the perception of animals within the British Mesolithic, although these have been restricted to a limited number of archaeological sites. This thesis considers the analysis of antler technology within the context of a wider pattern of human/deer encounters and interactions, and draws out subtle differences in the relationships between people, red deer, roe deer and elk during the period.