A) Timeline of the Stonehenge landscape, including radiocarbon dates from Blick Mead and other substantial Stonehenge World Heritage Archaeological Sites. These results indicate that the first farmers and monument-builders in the Stonehenge area experienced open environments currently kept and used by big grazers and earlier human populations.
Much research has checked out the Bronze Age and Neolithic history of the region surrounding Stonehenge, but less is understood about earlier times in this location. In this new paper, Hudson and associates reconstruct ecological conditions at the website of Blick Mead, a pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer website on the edge of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
According to a brand-new research study, hunter-gatherers utilized open woodland conditions in the centuries before Stonehenge monuments were developed.
Research research study examines habitat conditions come across by first farmers and monument-builders.
Hunter-gatherers utilized open woodland conditions in the centuries before Stonehenge monuments were constructed, according to a research study by Samuel Hudson of the University of Southampton, U.K., and colleagues that was released on April 27, 2022, in the open-access journal PLOS ONE.
Much research has checked out the Bronze Age and Neolithic history of the region surrounding Stonehenge, however less is understood about earlier times in this location. This exposes concerns about how ancient individuals and wildlife used this location prior to the building of the popular archaeological monoliths. In this new paper, Hudson and colleagues rebuild environmental conditions at the website of Blick Mead, a pre-Neolithic hunter-gatherer website on the edge of the Stonehenge World Heritage Site.
The authors combine pollen, spores, sedimentary DNA, and animal remains to identify the pre-Neolithic habitat of the site, inferring partially open woodland conditions, which would have been beneficial to large grazing herbivores like aurochs, along with hunter-gatherer communities. This research study supports previous evidence that the Stonehenge area was not covered in closed canopy forest at this time, as has previously been proposed.
A) Timeline of the Stonehenge landscape, consisting of radiocarbon dates from Blick Mead and other significant Stonehenge World Heritage Archaeological Sites. B) A representation of the advancement of plant life history at Blick Mead based on the palaeoenvironmental data. Credit: Hudson et al., 2022, PLOS ONE, CC-BY 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).
This research study also supplies date price quotes for human activity at Blick Mead. Results suggest that hunter-gatherers used this site for 4,000 years up till the time of the earliest known farmers and monument-builders in the area, who would also have actually benefited from the area supplied in open environments. These results suggest that the first farmers and monument-builders in the Stonehenge location came across open habitats already preserved and used by big grazers and earlier human populations.
Further research study on comparable sites will offer crucial insights into the interactions between hunter-gatherers and early farming communities in the U.K. and elsewhere. This study offers methods for combining sedimentary DNA, other ecological data, and stratigraphic information to translate the ancient environment at a website where such details is hard to evaluate.
The authors add: “The Stonehenge World Heritage Site is worldwide recognized for its rich Neolithic and Bronze Age significant landscape, but little is understood of its significance to Mesolithic populations. Environmental research study at Blick Mead recommends that hunter-gatherers had actually already selected part of this landscape, an alluvial cleaning, as a persistent place for searching and profession.”.
Recommendation: “Life prior to Stonehenge: The hunter-gatherer profession and environment of Blick Mead exposed by sedaDNA, pollen and spores” by Samuel M. Hudson, Ben Pears, David Jacques, Thierry Fonville, Paul Hughes, Inger Alsos, Lisa Snape, Andreas Lang and Antony Brown, 27 April 2022, PLOS ONE.DOI: 10.1371/ journal.pone.0266789.
Funding: The authors got no particular funding for this work. Nevertheless, the matching author did get funding from the University of Southampton for basic fieldwork costs.