Mesolithic Scotland and Its Neighbours: The Early Holocene Prehistory of Scotland, its British and Irish Context and Some Northern European Perspectives

In 1999 the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland organised a conference in Edinburgh in 1999 in order to raise the profile of the Mesolithic in Scotland whilst stressing its place within the wider context of Mesolithic archaeology in northern Europe. This volume presents the proceedings. Twenty-three papers focus in turn on Scotland and its setting, the archaeology of Scotland, Britain and Ireland and northern Europe. Drawing on the latest archaeological and environmental evidence, the papers discuss, for example: Scotland's physical environment after the ice; vegetation change in the early Holocene; mammals and Mesolithic middens; early foragers; coastal occupation; material culture; structural evidence; the Mesolithic on the Isle of Man; the Mesolithic in Ireland, Wales and England; burials and cemeteries in southern Scandinavia; Danish shell middens; the material culture of southern Norway; peat-bog sites in Poland. Each section is followed by a discussion.