Points in Time: The Mesolithic–Neolithic Transition and the Chronology of Late Rod Microliths in Britain

Abstract

SummaryThis paper presents the results of the Bayesian statistical modelling of radiocarbon dates associated with diagnostic late Mesolithic rod microliths from England and Wales. These date estimates are compared with results for the earliest evidence for Neolithic material culture and practices in Britain (Whittle et al. 2011; Griffiths 2011; 2014; forthcoming). The chronology of some rod microlith sites indicates a potential overlap between the earliest Neolithic and latest Mesolithic material culture and practices, in the first three centuries of the fourth millennium cal BC across England and Wales. The locations of late Mesolithic sites suggest regional processes of ‘neolithization’ may have occurred. In the region where we have the best chronological evidence for late Mesolithic sites – in Yorkshire – the location of the very latest Mesolithic sites suggests these lifeways may have persisted in landscapes which had been foci of hunter‐gatherer activity for hundreds of years, and which might have been understood as ‘ancestral’ or ‘persistent’ places.