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Malcolm Lillie.
Hunters, Fishers and Foragers in Wales: towards a social narrative of Mesolithic lifeways.
Oxbow. 2015

In the Mesolithic period, throughout Europe, hunter-fisher-forager communities occupied a diverse range of ecological zones, exploiting resources from coastal, lacustrine and riverine contexts and from lowland to upland areas. Using data from the regional sites and monuments records as the basis for the study of hunter-fisher-forager groups during the Mesolithic period in Wales, this volume endeavours to provide an holistic overview of life in the Mesolithic. The nature of the archaeological record for Mesolithic Wales, and for Britain in general, is such that a much wider reading of the Mesolithic is necessitated in order to provide fundamental insights into what life was like for Mesolithic groups at the northwestern edge of the European landmass.

Comparisons are drawn between the European evidence, ethnographic parallels and anthropology as the volume develops. The use of these sources of evidence is undertaken in order to offer insights into the nature of Mesolithic Lifeways and the ways in which Mesolithic groups articulated their socio-economic, political and ritual beliefs in light of the newly available resources, and how these articulations were re-negotiated as the Mesolithic progressed. At the end of the Mesolithic period we see shifts in the nature of the evidence for Mesolithic world views and social conditions that link into other changes as contacts with groups from the continent, with the knowledge of farming, occur.

Ultimately this volume attempts to interpret the past and understand the implications of the symbolic aspects of hunter-fisher-forager lifeways and the way that these influenced the everyday articulations of cultural landscapes and the material signatures of this activity.