Mesolithic Dwellings at Farnham, Surrey

Abstract

EXHIBITS illustrating the culture of the inhabitants of mesolithic pit-dwellings at Farnham, Surrey, are now on view in the Prehistoric Galleries of the British Museum (Bloomsbury). These dwellings, on a site which is the only one of its kind as yet found in Britain, have been excavated by Dr. and Mrs. Grahame Clark. The results of the excavation, which has occupied two seasons, were described by Dr. Clark at a recent meeting of the Prehistoric Society. The site of the settlement, which is the property of the Farnham Urban District Council, consists of a number of irregularly shaped pits, three feet deep in places, which have been scraped out of the gravel of the old Blackwater River. These pits represent the chief habitations of a mesolithic people, who probably spent their summers hunting on the Lower Greensand, when they lived in temporary shelters. Four huts have been excavated. In one pit there was a hearth and near another there were signs of a post, which probably had supported some light framework arranged tent-wise. Generally, however, the roofing seems to have been of the nature of a lean-to. Large numbers of microlithic implements were discovered, with flint axes, scrapers and waste flint cores and flakes. Altogether, between forty and fifty thousand worked flints have been discovered, and fifteen thousand flints cracked by fire have been found. These houses are, as stated, the first of their kind to be found in Britain; and they probably represent the first type of habitation in use in Britain other than the cave. They are considered to date from about 3000 B.C., and support the contention that artificially constructed dwellings are more ancient than has been thought. On the Continent, evidence is accumulating that mesolithic man was nomadic, inhabiting light shelters in the summer, and more or less permanent dwellings, usually of the pit-dwelling type, in the winter. The exhibits now shown in the British Museum are drawn from two of the dwellings excavated, and include a large and representative selection of the implements found.