Potential for palaeoenvironmental data#
Martin Bell, University of Reading#
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Wetland-edge contexts offer particular opportunities for putting known Mesolithic flint scatters on dryland into a wider palaeoenvironmental and economic context. They can also provide more secure dating. The Kennet valley has several examples. Excavations by John Wymer at Thatcham, Berkshire, were mainly on a bluff at the floodplain edge with some evidence from adjoining peat. More recently, coring on the floodplain by Cathie Barnett (formerly Chisham) has shown that activity extends to the floodplain with a good pollen and palaeobotanical record and distinct episodes of burning within the first millennium (9000–8000 cal BC) of the Mesolithic. In parts of the Kennet valley the development of climax woodland seems to have been delayed and the question remains to what extent it was retarded by human agency and/or natural factors such as grazing pressure, or the activity of beavers. Another Kennet valley site is Ufton Bridge, where a restricted flint scatter on a gravel rise has been shown by coring to extend below surrounding Holocene wetland sediments. Both here and on a number of other Kennet valley sites, early Mesolithic activity is associated with a dark black palaeosol horizon overlain by peat, tufa and alluvium. Similar wetlandedge Mesolithic sites are currently (2013) under investigation in the Somerset Levels at Chedzoy, Greylake and Shapwick, where flint scatters on dry, sandy Burtle sediments immediately adjacent to wetlands have long been known.
Intertidal wetland edges offer comparable palaeoenvironmental potential and are often easily accessible because later Holocene sediments have been removed. Submerged forests have particular potential in this context both in terms of palaeoecology, advancing our understanding of the wildwood, and in terms of the chronological precision they can provide for associated sites and environmental sequences. For instance, a submerged forest at Stolford, Somerset, has been shown to span the Mesolithic–Neolithic transition, a period which more widely has evidence for complex environmental changes, the nature and chronology of which need clarification by investigation of sites of this type and date.