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Gatherer-Hunters

Mesolithic
8000 - 4000 BC.
333-200 generations ago.

Birch woodland on Big Moor gives an impression of how the uplands may have looked in the Mesolithic

For approximately 5,000 years after the end of the last Ice Age people were nomadic - moving from place to place. They followed carefully planned seasonal routes, moving through familiar territory and making the best use of resources as they became available through the year.

For the first 4000 years (the Mesolithic period) people gathered and hunted their food. Small clearings were burnt in forests to attract wild animals and birds, which were killed for food. This was an early form of animal husbandry.

Finding Clues

Archaeological clues for Mesolithic activity are mainly stone tools and waste from their production. The most typical artefacts are small carefully shaped points and barbs, made from flint and chert, known as microliths. Tool scatters vary in size, variety of implements and amount of waste flakes, and represent the locations of activities as diverse as seasonal settlement sites, temporary camps and individual hunting or tool-making events.

Mesolithic tools such as these were used for such activities as preparing food and hunting

Stone tools are often found in the eroding peat on the high moorlands. These were probably used for hunting as the high moorland were not suitable for farming.

Many tools are found at the edges of the reservoirs. In the Upper Derwent Valley there are large finds on more-level ground near to the confluences of rivers. These were probably places where people stayed for longer to make use of the stream, to meet with other people and to prepare tools ready for hunting on higher ground.

Pits filled with charcoal and burnt stone, and associated with stone tools, at Lismore Fields, Buxton may indicate settlement. One of these pits was radio-carbon dated to approximately 6000 BC. Occupation of this area continued into the Neolithic.

Blanket peat began to spread across the moorlands during the Mesolithic

Pollen samples suggest that during the Mesolithic period the upland woodland and post-glacial alpine plants decreased whilst blanket peat spread extensively. It is thought that people burning the woodlands, coupled with the onset of a wetter climate approximately 7,500 to 7,000 years ago, was responsible for altering the vegetation of the area and contributing to peat formation.

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