ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a rapid survey of the range and chronology of prehistoric watercraft as they relate to England, based upon key archaeological discoveries. On the basis of the current evidence, boat-based mobility during the very early Holocene relevant to the chapter appears focused across the Southern Bight area, that is, the area of the southern North Sea between Flanders and the Thames Estuary. Luukkanen observes that in reindeer territories, the traditional hunting method was to spear the wild reindeers from small deer skin canoes at a water crossing, on their seasonal migration from the forest to the coast in spring and back to the forest in autumn. Archaeological evidence for such craft is incredibly rare: worked reindeer antlers from the area Schleswig-Holstein in northern Germany, which may have been used as frames on skin-boats, have been dated to the Ahrensburgian culture.
