ABSTRACT
The last Ice Age came to an end around 9600 bc. Tundra landscapes that supported reindeer herds were colonized by birch and soon became thick deciduous woodland with dispersed fauna including red deer and pine marten. Except in the far north, relative sealevels rose so that Britain, formerly a peninsula of Europe, became an island at some point around 7000-6000 bc. In this rapidly changing environment, people continued to live by hunting and gathering for several thousand years until domesticated plants and animals appeared c. 4000 bc (Mithen 2003). This period was the Mesolithic (Figure 3.1).
