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Europe, Medieval

See Medieval Archaeology in Europe

European Mesolithic

What Is the Mesolithic?

In 1932 grahame clark defined the Mesolithic as the period “between the close of the Pleistocene and the arrival of the Neolithic arts of life” (J. G.D. Clark 1932, 5). This is the definition adhered to by the majority of those who study the period, and it is how the term will be used here. It is a deliberately loose definition, referring only to a somewhat imprecise period of time rather than to a rigorously defined cultural stage separate from what preceded and succeeded it. However, not all who study the period accept this definition. Some agonize about links with the Paleolithic and insist that the period should be referred to as the Epipaleolithic (e.g., Rozoy 1989); others, mainly in eastern Europe, consider that ceramics and claimed sedentism mean that the later part of the period should be termed “Neolithic” (e.g., Dolukhanov 1979). The Mesolithic thus has the dubious distinction of being the only major period in European prehistory whose very name is a matter of dispute among its students.

The Place of the Mesolithic in European Prehistory

The Mesolithic was the last of the major periods in European prehistory to be named. christian j. thomsen’s three-age system of Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages was published in 1836. The first age was divided into the Paleolithic (of glacial age) and the Neolithic (of postglacial age) by Sir John Lubbock (later known as lord avebury) in 1865. The term Mesolithic was first used in 1872, but it was not systematically applied until the early years of the twentieth century (J. G.D. Clark 1980; Rowley-Conwy 1996).

That the period was not recognized for so long is rooted in the history of archaeology in the nineteenth century. Prior to 1858 prehistoric archaeology scarcely existed. After that date it emerged from a fusion of two distinct lines of study. On the one hand were geologists, who studied nonhuman aspects of the distant past; on the other were historical archaeologists, who studied material culture in the context of historically documented societies. Before 1858 these two groups had nothing in common: it was not believed that humans lived at the same time as the glacial deposits and bones of extinct animals that the geologists studied, so the geologists had nothing to say on the subject of early human societies. The historical archaeologists claimed the pre-Roman “Celtic” period but made little in the way of a systematic attempt to study it. william pengelly’s excavations at brixham cave in 1858 demonstrated the contemporaneity of humans and extinct mammals in a glacial climate, a position generally accepted by 1863. This brought humans into the area studied by geologists, and most of the early Paleolithic specialists had a geological background. Meanwhile, the historical