Unearthing clues about Stone Age life

The North-East Yorkshire Mesolithic project will investigate areas of the moors, along the coast and in the Tees Valley that were previously inhabited by middle Stone Age people to build up a more detailed picture of how they lived from 10,000 to 4,000 BC.

With funding from English Heritage, the project is a partnership involving the North York Moors National Park Authority and the Hartlepool-based Tees Archaeology, the official archaeological service for four local unitary authorities in the area.

Specialists from Durham University will also be analysing pollen grains to assemble a picture of the Mesolithic environment and results from the project will be used to raise awareness and understanding of the period among visitors to the national park.

The project began because experts wanted to fill significant gaps in their knowledge of the local Mesolithic period, gained through limited sampling. The first phase involved a year inspecting collections at local museums and English Heritage made funding available to extend the project for another two years.

Mags Waughman, the park authority's archaeological conservation officer, said: "This is an exciting project which will give us a much clearer picture about the Mesolithic period - the time between the end of the last Ice Age and the appearance of early farming when the population was nomadic and lived by hunting and gathering wild foods."

The park authority's archaeological volunteers will be shown how to recognise Mesolithic flint tools and identify sites from scatterings of flints sometimes found eroding on moorland footpaths. Once trained, they will be out on the moors throughout the summer and autumn looking for, and recording evidence of new sites.

The term Mesolithic comes from the Greek words mesos, meaning middle, and lithos, meaning stone. Mesolithic people hunted fish and gathered nuts, fruits, berries and shellfish.