An Early Mesolithic Seasonal Hunting Site in the Kennet Valley, Southern England

Abstract

A small-scale excavation, undertaken in advance of building works at Faraday Road, Newbury, Berkshire, encountered an apparently intact Early Mesolithic layer containing abundant worked flint directly associated with animal bones. The site lay on the floodplain of the River Kennet in an area already well-known for Mesolithic remains and certainly represents an extension of the site found at nearby Greenham Dairy Farm in 1963. The flint assemblage was dominated by obliquely-blunted microlithic forms accompanied by a restricted range of other items. The animal bones were, unusually, dominated by wild pig with clear evidence of both primary butchery and food waste. Spatial analysis of the bone and flint assemblages indicated discrete activity areas, possibly associated with hearths. Both pollen and molluscan data were recovered which, together with the results of soil micromorphological examination, confirmed an Early Holocene date for the formation of the Mesolithic layer. Radiocarbon dates place the site in the late 10th–early 9th millennium BP. The paper re-examines the nature of known Early Mesolithic activity in this part of the Kennet valley, with particular reference to the specific environmental conditions that seem to have prevailed. It is concluded that the Faraday Road site represents one part of a continuum of Early Mesolithic occupation that stretches along a considerable length of the floodplain, with each focus of activity witnessing repeated, but intermittent, occupation spanning a period of more than a millennium.