Salt Cellar on Derwent Edge

Numerous stone tools, like these flints and chert microliths found on Kinder Scout,

show that people lived on the uplands and in the valleys during the Mesolithic and early Neolithic (10,000 to 5,000 years ago). These people were mobile, travelling around in order to keep a good supply of resources such as plants, game, timber and water, or to hold gatherings and ceremonies.

Such movement across the landscape would have been based on a complex set of rights negotiated between different families and communities, perhaps invoking ancestors or memory to justify the occupation of specific locations at certain times.

By analysing ancient pollen preserved in peat bogs, we can interpret that at the end of the Ice Age the region looked more alpine with dwarf birch and juniper. This was soon replaced after the retreat of the glaciers by more lush vegetation forming thick forests from the valley-bottoms to the lower moorlands. Higher up there was a more open mix of birch and hazel scrub with alpine plants.

After the Ice Age, peat soon formed on the higher moorlands but was halted from spreading lower down by woodland.

A wetter climate and the burning of woodland to attract large game animals to clearings helped to reduce the woodland cover. Newly opened areas eventually became waterlogged so that peat reached today’s limits during the early Neolithic.

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