Aimée Little

Technological Analysis of the World's Earliest Shamanic Costume: A Multi-Scalar, Experimental Study of a Red Deer Headdress from the Early Holocene Site of Star Carr, North Yorkshire, UK

Shamanic belief systems represent the first form of religious practice visible within the global archaeological record. Here we report on the earliest known evidence of shamanic costume: modified red deer crania headdresses from the Early Holocene site of Star Carr (c. 11 kya). More than 90% of the examples from prehistoric Europe come from this one site, establishing it as a place of outstanding shamanistic/cosmological significance. Our work, involving a programme of experimental replication, analysis of macroscopic traces, organic residue analysis and 3D image acquisition, metrology and visualisation, represents the first attempt to understand the manufacturing processes used to create these artefacts. The results produced were unexpected—rather than being carefully crafted objects, elements of their production can only be described as expedient.

A late Mesolithic lithic scatter from Corralanna, Co. Westmeath, and its place in the Mesolithic landscape of the Irish Midlands

This report discusses a surface collection of late Mesolithic date from Corralanna, Co. Westmeath. The site, which was discovered after peat extraction in 1999, is characterised by a lithic assemblage comprised almost exclusively of chert, two axes, some coarse stone tools and a small range of organic finds including uncarbonised hazelnut shells. This discussion reviews the material from Corralanna, with an especial emphasis on the character of the chipped stone assemblage, placing the site in its appropriate landscape and archaeological contexts. Three radiocarbon dates from hazelnut shells were obtained. These are not demonstrably associated with the lithics, but the dates are in keeping with late Mesolithic stone tool technology. Although the assemblage is derived from a surface collection, and suffers from some of the problems associated with this, the site at Corralanna offers a significant contribution to our understanding of Mesolithic settlement in the midlands, an area rich in Mesolithic archaeology, but one that has been somewhat neglected until recently. The creation of this report was facilitated by a Heritage Council Unpublished Excavations Grant.

Stone Dead : Uncovering Early Mesolithic Mortuary Rites, Hermitage, Ireland

In Europe, cremation as a burial practice is often associated with the Bronze Age, but examples of cremated human remains are in fact known from the Palaeolithic onwards. Unlike conventional inhumation, cremation destroys most of the evidence we can use to reconstruct the biography of the buried individual. Remarkably, in Ireland, cremation is used for the earliest recorded human burial and grave assemblage (7530–7320 bc ) located on the banks of the River Shannon, at Hermitage, County Limerick. While we are unable to reconstruct in any great detail the biography of this individual, we have examined the biography of a polished stone adzehead interred with their remains. To our knowledge, this adze represents the earliest securely dated polished axe or adze in Europe. Microscopic analysis reveals that the adze was commissioned for burial, with a short duration of use indicating its employment in funerary rites. Before its deposition into the grave it was intentionally blunted, effectively ending its use-life: analogous to the death of the individual it accompanied. The microwear traces on this adze thus provide a rare insight into early Mesolithic hunter-gatherer belief systems surrounding death, whereby tools played an integral part in mortuary rites and were seen as fundamental pieces of equipment for a successful afterlife.