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

第一批居住在苏格兰的人大约在9000年前到达，他们在林地内狩猎和采集，这些林地在冰河时代结束后殖民了苏格兰的景观，并在海岸上开发了许多资源，包括贝类，鱼类，海洋哺乳动物和海藻。这段狩猎和采集的时期，被称为中石器时代，一直持续到大约5000年前的农业和新石器时代文化到来。中石器时代的人们几乎没有留下他们存在的痕迹：他们没有建造任何像新石器时代那样的纪念性坟墓，因为他们过着游牧的生活方式，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，而动物骨骼和木制文物等有机遗骸很少幸存下来。对考古学家来说，中石器时代的主要证据是石器及其制造过程中的废弃物。这些工具主要由燧石鹅卵石制成，用作箭头，倒钩，刀片，凿子和锥子。它们的制造方法多种多样，其中一些非常有效地利用了燧石卵石，并显示出高水平的技术技能。在上个世纪，特别是在苏格兰西部，从许多遗址中挖掘出了石制工艺品。这些数据可以提供关于所发生的活动类型的信息（通过确定这些活动的用途），用于重建移动模式（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奥龙赛和里斯加小岛上的贝壳冢。这些都经历了广泛的挖掘，但数以千计的石器工具和制造废料的回收从未被正式研究。该项目旨在通过将Oronsay和Risga的工具与其他岛屿和苏格兰西部大陆上的其他非贝壳垃圾场的工具进行比较，来了解这些垃圾场在中石器时代生活方式中发挥的作用。它还将研究这些工具是否表明生活在Oronsay和Risga的同一批人最终采用了农业和新石器时代的生活方式，或者这些发展是否是由于新的人到达该地区而产生的。它将通过详细比较Oronsay和Risga石器与新石器时代遗址的石器来做到这一点。这是一项耗时的工作，因为需要对20，000多件石制品进行编目，其中许多需要在计算机数据库中详细描述。一旦完成，可以与其他遗址的石器收藏的现有记录进行比较。Oronsay和Risga石器目前存放在剑桥和格拉斯哥大学，但一旦分析完毕，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界的同事，而有关中石器时代的信息展示将在当地的博物馆，如穆尔。

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.