Mesolithic and Neolithic bone artifacts were analyzed with the aim of contributing knowledge regarding technological achievements, food procurement and processing, personal adornment and other aspects of social behavior. Part I presents the methodology involving the integration of data obtained through experimental replication, surface traces, metric analysis, ethnographic analogy, and archaeological context. Replicative experiments were performed to reconstruct manufacturing techniques and test functional hypotheses. Surficial topography was examined using a scanning electron microscope for the identification of manufacturing and use traces. Five key measurements were devised for evaluating gross morphology and working surfaces of artifacts. Where applicable, ethnographic analogy was employed as a source for hypotheses about artifact function. Archaeological context was studied to reveal distributional and associational patterns that might contribute evidence pertaining to the use of bone artifacts and their temporal development. Emphasis was placed on comparing data derived from the various methods to determine whether the y supported or refuted one another. Interpretations were formulated on the basis of documented patterns rather than isolated events and, whenever possible, from multiple analytical techniques. Part II demonstrates the general applicability of these methodological approaches through three case studies selected to maximize diversity of cultural affiliation, environmental conditions, temporal duration, preservational factors, and sample size. The first case study is a large, well-preserved collection from the Mogollon-Pueblo village of Point of Pines in the American Southwest. The assemblage is derived from a settlement of brief duration situated in a prairie environment. The second is a medium-sized collection from Tell Abu Hureyra in northern Syria with a long sequence from the Mesolithic through Ceramic Neolithic. The third case study consists of two small samples from Ulu Leang and Leang Burung, rock shelters in Indonesia which offer an interesting contrast in settlement t ype and environment from the two open air sites.

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The aim of this thesis is to investigate the environmental changes across the Mesolithic-Neolithic transition (c.7000-5000 cal BP) at two sites in north-west Europe. Specific research questions focus on the role of fire, the interaction of climate and environmental change and human impacts, and the degree of continuity across the transition. Previous work has led to hypotheses of human impacts in the late Mesolithic, usually through the use of fire, increasing the abundance of food. Detection of these practices and the change to farming in the Neolithic has long been the study of pollen analysts, but in this project additional techniques of NPPs, size-class differentiated charcoal, and silicon and titanium were added at high resolution in order to determine the relationships between the different forcing factors on mid-Holocene environments. Sites were selected close to locations where known later Mesolithic artefacts have been found, with dated archaeological excavations. An upland UK bog site (Dan Clough Moss, near March Hill, West Yorkshire) and a lowland Swedish lake (Bökeberg, Skåne) provided contrasting environments, and enabled a range of proxies to be used from terrestrial peat and limnic sediments. 14C dates from selected macrofossils enabled an age-depth curve to be produced from each profile, with a Bayesian model applied to estimate the age of each sample. Results show a detailed record of woodland change from both areas. At Dan Clough Moss, disturbance phases with evidence of local fires occur frequently (typically every 20-30 years) in the late Mesolithic, and have low magnitude but consistent records of coprophilous fungi. Some phases of disturbance are different however, without the fungal spore evidence, and with heath plants increasing in representation. Drier phases appear to correlate with more local fire, and increased hazel. The transition is marked by a change to longer duration but distant fires, and longer periods of woodland disturbance, increased ruderal species and more heathland. The dates of occupation phases show a late survival of Mesolithic practices, overlapping with the Neolithic by around 300 years. At Bökeberg, a contrasting pattern is shown, with longer-duration phases of inferred human impact being replaced by shorter episodes of fire-associated disturbance after the date of the transition. Pollen and spore zones of disturbance concur with the dated occupation of late Mesolithic sites at the former lake edge. There is some evidence for markedly wetter, and then significantly drier, climate through the transition, and it could be inferred that this influenced the change in food production economies. However, the overall landscape changed only subtly, with more evidence of potential weeds of cultivation. At Bökeberg, there was no overlap- both radiocarbon and palynology suggest an abrupt transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic. The landscape impact of the transition from Mesolithic to Neolithic at both sites was not a clear and consistent one. While Ulmus decline levels and thereafter had increases in weed species and other herbs the overall balance of trees and shrubs changed less than 20%. At both sites, climate may have been influential, although the evidence is inconclusive. Fires were important at both sites and in both periods, but at different scales and duration. Disturbance phases varied within the Mesolithic as well as between the Mesolithic and the Neolithic.

This thesis is concerned with two closely related themes: the inhabitation of the Peak District over the fifth and fourth millennia BC, and the procedures and principles by which we attempt to interpret the durable material traces thereof. A four stage interpretative framework is outlined. Social life is understood through its materiality. The engagement of the self with others is constrained and enabled by that materiality. Archaeologists can represent that process through a textual model. Analogical reasoning mediates each stage and must be made explicit. The Mesolithic and Neolithic, analytical objects constructed through conceptual metaphors, fail to express time and the materiality of practice as mutually constitutive. An integrated theory of landscape and technology is proposed whereby artefacts are understood in terms of relational metaphors, situating them in practice and capturing both their materiality and temporality. Prior research in the study area is critiqued on the basis that the historically specific material conditions therein cannot support models transposed from other regional contexts. A methodology for collection and analysis is developed which privileges those specific conditions in the interpretation of prehistoric technology. Artefact assemblages, it is argued, offer us no unmediated access to prehistoric settlement. No immediate functional equivalence between aggregations similar in composition should be expected. The analysis of stone tools and waste must be integrated with other categories of evidence and interpreted in terms of the potentials offered by their socio-physical context. Original data are analysed in terms of assemblage density, raw material and technological composition, chronological patterning and landscape situation. Integration into the regional corpus, through an explicitly multi-scalar approach, attends to the constitution of social life through practice and developing tradition. The role ascribed to early `monuments' by other archaeologists is particularly brought into question, with respect to the model of relational practice maintained throughout the dissertation.

This thesis explores the development of material approaches in archaeology to discuss the relationship between material engagements in the world and cosmological schemes. In particular, the role of key materials in cosmologies is considered in light of ideas about elements and their fundamental role in the composition of the world. Three materials (wood, fire and water) are then considered in detail using anthropological illustrations to highlight the range of ways wood, fire and water are understood in traditional societies. Archaeological examples from the late Mesolithic and earliest Neolithic are examined in light of these ideas to suggest new possibilities for interpretations of the material remains discussed. These discussions of materials and cosmologies are set against a background of the debates surrounding the transition to the Neolithic. In particular, recent challenges to perceptions of the Mesolithic are considered to highlight the problematic discourses that have traditionally dominated studies of the period. It is amongst these critical reappraisals that this thesis contributes to emerging narratives of lives in the Mesolithic. The use of wood, fire and water is examined in contexts of the late Mesolithic and earliest Neolithic and is suggested to show much continuity in the practices that used wood, fire and water. Similar properties were actively called upon in these continued practices however, their deployment in new contexts and practices is suggested to indicate a shift in the importance of certain properties or characteristics. The implications of this in relation to cosmological schemes suggests aspects of continuity such as connections between materials and the landscape but accompanied by a stronger emphasis on certain relationships and processes within the world such as the transformation of bodies and articulation of community.

This bachelor thesis investigates nitrogen and carbon stable isotopes in Ireland during the Mesolithic and Neolithic. In recent years, the understanding of subsistence strategies in Northwestern Europe has improved and it has shown that the dietary stable isotope data of Neolithic Ireland is an extreme outlier in the region. The aim is to examine the manuring and canopy effect that have often been suggested to be possible contributing factors for this difference. There is no certainty whether this difference is due to diet, land use or any other cause while these effects remain uninvestigated. The effects are studied by comparing dietary isotopes with sources about land use, such as pollen and geochemical data, for four sites: Carrowkeel, Poulnabrone, Knowth and the Mound of Hostages (Duma na nGiall), which together comprise c. 80% of the Neolithic Irish stable isotope record. The manuring effect is not visible in the current stable isotope, pollen, geochemical, zoological and archaeobotanical record. The canopy effect may be reflected in that same dataset. If the canopy effect is indeed the cause of the difference between Irish and Southern British δ13C values, a detailed comparison between the pollen data close to the origin of the carbon stable isotope samples and the carbon stable isotope samples in another area, such as Southern Britain, may explain the outlier position of Ireland in North-western Europe. / Denna C-uppsats undersöker kväve-och kolisotoper i det neolitiska och mesolitiska Irland. Genom en stor tillväxt av data har det blivit tydligt att de irländska kväve- och kolvärdena är extrema jämfört med resten av britannien. Gödslingseffekten och trädskiktseffekten är två effekter som har misstänkts att orsaka denna skillnad. Syftet är att undersöka dessa effekter genom att leta efter samband mellan markbruk och stabila isotoper. Fyra begravningsplatser har valts ut till detta syfte: Knowth, Carrowkeel, Poulnabrone och Duma na nGiall (Mound of Hostages). 80% av alla stabila kol- och kväveisotopvärden härstammar från dessa begravningsplatser. Gödslingseffekten gick inte att identifiera i datasamlingen som innehåller stabila isotopvärden, pollen, zoologisk data, arkeobotanisk och geokemisk data. Trädskiktseffekten möjligtvis bekräftas av datasammanställningen. För att kunna förklara den fullständiga skillnaden mellan syd-brittiska och irländska δ13C-värden behövs en studie som även inkluderar detaljerad data av neolitiskt markbruk från Brittiska ön.

No / Stable isotope analysis has provided crucial new insights into dietary change at the Neolithic transition in north-west Europe, indicating an unexpectedly sudden and radical shift from marine to terrestrial resources in coastal and island locations. Investigations of early Neolithic skeletal material from Sumburgh on Shetland, at the far-flung margins of the Neolithic world, suggest that this general pattern may mask significant subtle detail. Analysis of juvenile dentine reveals the consumption of marine foods on an occasional basis. This suggests that marine foods may have been consumed as a crucial supplementary resource in times of famine, when the newly introduced cereal crops failed to cope with the demanding climate of Shetland. This isotopic evidence is consistent with the presence of marine food debris in contemporary middens. The occasional and contingent nature of marine food consumption underlines how, even on Shetland, the shift from marine to terrestrial diet was a key element in the Neolithic transition.

No / Shallow oval bowls used on the Baltic coast in the Mesolithic have been suggested as oil lamps, burning animal fat. Here researchers confirm the use of four coastal examples as lamps burning blubber-the fat of marine animals, while an inland example burned fat from terrestrial mammals or freshwater aquatics-perhaps eels. The authors use a combination of lipid biomarker and bulk and single-compound carbon isotope analysis to indicate the origin of the residues in these vessels.