The role of shell middens in the Mesolithic settlement of Western Scotland and the transition to the Neolithic: A technological study of chipped stone

大约9000年前，第一批居住在苏格兰的人来到这里，他们以狩猎和采集为生，生活在冰河时代结束后的林地和海岸上，那里有许多资源，包括贝类、鱼类、海洋哺乳动物和海藻。这个狩猎和采集的时期，被称为中石器时代，一直持续到大约5000年前农业和新石器文化的到来。中石器时代的人几乎没有留下他们存在的痕迹：他们没有像新石器时代的人那样建造任何巨大的坟墓，而且由于他们过着游牧生活，他们的定居点往往是短暂的。此外，其中许多现在被埋在风沙和泥炭下，而有机遗骸，如动物骨头和木制文物，很少幸存下来。对考古学家来说，中石器时代的主要证据是石器和制造过程中的废料。这些工具主要由燧石卵石制成，用作箭头、倒钩、刀片、凿子和锥子。它们的制作方法多种多样，其中一些方法非常有效地利用了燧石卵石，显示出高水平的技术技能。在过去的一个世纪里，人们从许多地方，特别是苏格兰西部，挖掘出了大量的石质文物。这些资料可以提供关于已经发生的活动类型的信息（通过确定它们的用途），用于重建运动模式（通过追踪原材料来源）和建立地点之间的关系（通过比较工具的类型及其制造方式）。一些最重要的中石器时代遗址是位于奥朗塞和里斯加小岛上的贝壳丘。这些遗址经历了大规模的挖掘，但出土的数千件石器和制造业废料从未被正式研究过。本项目旨在通过比较来自Oronsay和Risga的工具与来自其他岛屿和苏格兰西部大陆的其他非贝壳midden遗址的工具，来了解这些midden在中石器时代生活方式中所扮演的角色。它还将研究这些工具是否表明，居住在Oronsay和Risga的同一群人最终采用了农业和新石器时代的生活方式，或者这些发展是否源于新到达该地区的人。它将通过将奥朗塞和里斯加石器与新石器时代遗址的石器进行详细比较来做到这一点。这是一项耗时的工作，因为需要对2万多件石制文物进行分类，其中许多需要在计算机化数据库中进行详细描述。一旦完成，就可以与其他地点的现有石器收集记录进行比较。Oronsay和Risga石器目前存放在剑桥大学和格拉斯哥大学，但分析后将存放在苏格兰国家博物馆，供其他研究人员使用。这项研究将发表给学术同事，而有关中石器时代的信息展示将在当地的博物馆，如马尔。

The first people to live in Scotland arrived around 9000 years ago and lived by hunting and gathering within woodlands that had colonised the landscape after the end of the ice age and on the coasts where many resources including shellfish, fish, sea mammals and seaweed could be exploited. This period of hunting and gathering, referred to as the Mesolithic, continued until farming and Neolithic culture arrived at around 5000 years ago. The Mesolithic people left few traces of their presence: they did not construct any monumental tombs like those of the following Neolithic period and because they lived nomadic lifestyles their settlements were often ephemeral. Moreover, many of these are now buried below blown sand and peat, while organic remains such as animal bones and wooden artefacts, have rarely survived. The principal type of Mesolithic evidence for archaeologists is the stone tools and the waste from their manufacture. Such tools were primarily made from flint pebbles and used as arrow heads, barbs, knife blades, chisels and awls. They were manufactured in a variety of ways, some of which made very efficient use of the flint pebbles and display high levels of technical skill. Collections of stone artefacts have been excavated from numerous sites throughout the last century, especially in western Scotland. These can be informative about the types of activities that had taken place (by identifying what they were used for), for reconstructing patterns of movement (by tracing raw material sources) and establishing relationships between sites (by comparing the types of tools and the way they were made). Some of the most important Mesolithic sites are the shell middens on the tiny islands of Oronsay and Risga. These have undergone extensive excavations but the thousands of stone tools and pieces of manufacturing waste that were recovered have never been formally studied. This project intends to undertake such work to understand the role these middens played in Mesolithic lifestyles by comparing the tools from Oronsay and Risga to those from other, non-shell midden sites on other islands and the mainland of western Scotland. It will also examine whether the tools suggest that the same people who lived on Oronsay and Risga eventually adopted farming and a Neolithic lifestyle, or whether these developments arose from new people arriving into the region. It will do this by detailed comparisons of the Oronsay and Risga stone tools with those from Neolithic sites. This is time consuming work because more than 20,000 stone artefacts will need to be catalogued, many of which will need to be described in detail within a computerised database. Once complete, comparisons can be made with existing records of stone tool collections from other sites. The Oronsay and Risga stone tools are currently stored at Cambridge and Glasgow Universities but once analysed will be deposited in the National Museum of Scotland for other researchers to access. The research will be published for academic colleagues while informative displays about the Mesolithic will be constructed in local museums, such as on Mull.