Exploring the site of the prehistoric settlement at Star Carr

The northern side of the field rises slowly and, on the gentle slope looking down towards the lower ground where the cattle are, four deep trenches have been dug. The earth is black and peaty, a bank of removed soil heaped between two of the trenches.

This is Star Carr – the most important Mesolithic, or middle stone age, site in Britain. It is, says archaeologist Dr Nicky Milner, probably equal in importance to Stonehenge.

Eleven thousand years ago, the wide, open field where the cattle are now grazing would have been a large, shallow lake that extended for several kilometres along the Vale of Pickering towards the sea. And here, where these trenches have been dug, was what archaeologists believe was a thriving Stone Age settlement.

The site dates back to at least 8,500 BC – 6,000 years before the earliest of the pyramids were built. The Ice Age was just over, Britain was still connected to continental Europe by a land bridge, and as the ice retreated northwards, people followed it, crossing from the continent and settling in the thickly wooded country on the edge of this lake.

Here, they built what appears to be a wooden platform like stone age decking along part of the lake shore – and they built houses.

This week, archaeologists announced they had discovered, right here, the remains of the oldest known house in Britain. It was a circular affair, about ten feet across. “There was a hollow, with post-holes around it,” says Dr Milner, an archaeologist at the University of York. “There would have been wooden posts in the ground, holding up a cover, probably of reed.”

It is the only house archaeologists have found here so far, but they are confident there were more.

“What we have excavated is just one piece of a 100-piece jigsaw,” Dr Milner says. “We would have been extraordinarily lucky to open up a trench and find the only one. So I certainly like to think there are more.”

All the evidence suggests there were. Because from the many artefacts discovered here at Star Carr over the last half century, archaeologists have been able to piece together a picture of an advanced, thriving community.

Trenches were dug here as long ago as 1950, and there have been a number of excavations since.

The finds have included that extraordinary wooden platform, made of split wood, which experts believe may have been used by the inhabitants of Star Carr to stabilise the muddy lake shore.

Stone axes were used to work the wood. “The platform is made of split aspen timbers, and it is the earliest evidence of carpentry in Britain,” says Dr Milner’s colleague, Dr Chantal Conneller, of the University of Manchester.

Stone tools have been found all over the site – axes, arrowheads, and tools for working bone and antler. And it is clear that the Stone Age people who lived here had sophisticated skills.

Among the more extraordinary of the finds over the years are 195 barbed spear or arrowheads carved from antler. They are incredibly rare, Dr Milner says – 97 per cent of all such barbed points found in Britain were found here.

Most are now held safely in museums such as the British Museum. But she holds one up for me to examine: a wicked, carved piece of antler with three barbs sticking out from one edge that was presumably used for hunting or spearing fish. “It would have been much longer than this originally,” Dr Milner says.

Archaeologists have also found beads made of shell and amber, also incredibly rare for the period and evidence that these people were into personal adornment. And, perhaps most extraordinary of all, they have found, over time, no fewer than 21 red deer headdresses. These are red deer skulls with the antlers still attached.

The skulls are pierced with holes at the back, thought to have been made so the wearers could tie the skulls to their own heads. It is possible also that deer skins hung from the headdresses, Dr Conneller says.

“We think maybe they would have been used for ritual dances.”

Evidence has been found of domesticated dogs – and, from similar sites in France, archaeologists believe the people who lived here may have buried their dead, although no burials have been found here.

So what kind of community was this? The site dates from 4,000 years before farming reached these shores. So these people were hunter-gatherers: they lived off the land, hunting and foraging for food.

There was plenty of food around, Dr Milner says – wild boar, venison, elk, wild cattle known as auroch, and fish from the lake. The people of the settlement certainly had boats, Dr Conneller says – possibly launched from the wooden platforms they built along the lake’s edge.

“They had boats, and paddles. There were islands in the lake, and they had little dug-out canoes to get around the lake.”

There was plenty of plant food as well, though none of it farmed, Dr Milner says. The TV adventurer Ray Mears once did a ‘wild food’ show which showed just how much edible plant life was around. “Things like water lily seeds you can eat, tubers from various kinds of reeds, lots of things.”

So while these people may have lived in the Stone Age, they were very far from being cave men, Dr Milner says. They were sophisticated, they were busy carvers of wood and bone, they ate well so they were probably quite healthy – “we have to move away from the idea that these were people who were dying young” – and there are signs of social complexity too, in the deer head-dresses and the rituals they suggest.

It is difficult to speculate about whether they had a social hierarchy, Dr Milner admits. But many hunter-gatherer cultures today have shamans, or medicine men, and it may be that the people who wore those headdresses were Stone Age shamans.

One of the most interesting things about this settlement from an archaeologist’s point of view, however, is the fact that it suggests these hunter-gatherers were … well, settled.

There is evidence people used this site for between 200 and 500 years. We do not know how many people lived here at any one time – or even that all those who lived here made this their permanent base.

Also, there is evidence from modern hunter-gatherer societies, our only point of reference, that sometimes groups of 100 or so can come together for some kind of ritual celebration.

That may well have happened here, Dr Milner says.

So there may have been people who came here only occasionally, and others who made this into a more-or-less permanent home. The sheer size of the site, however – it stretches along the field, beneath where cars are parked in the distance – suggests that it was large, and busy.

For Dr Conneller, the evidence is enough to make us think again about the ways in which our earliest British ancestors lived.

“This changes our ideas of the lives of the first settlers to move back into Britain after the end of the last ice age,” she says. “We used to think they moved around a lot and left little evidence. Now we know they built large structures and were very attached to particular places in the landscape.”

Including this extraordinary place, on the edge of an ancient lake, in the heart of what was one day to become North Yorkshire.

Excavations at Star Carr

THERE have been a number of excavations at Star Carr, perhaps the most famous being that of Cambridge archaeologist Grahame Clark, from 1949 to 1951. In one trench, he unearthed an almost perfectly preserved, 11,000-year-old tree, thought to be a silver birch, its bark still intact. Around the tree were found the red deer headdresses that are such a feature of Star Carr.

There were further excavations in 1985 and 1989. And archaeologists working on the site today first began excavating in 2004 and have come back several times since.

The ancient house that has caused so much excitement this week was found during a dig two years ago – but archaeologists have only announced the details now, because they wanted to do further research first.

It is thought to date to at least 8,500 BC – making it 500 years older than what was Britain’s previously oldest-known house, at Howick, in Northumberland. Today, the house has been covered with earth again to preserve it.

At the time nearly 11,000 years ago when Star Carr was a thriving settlement, archaeologists believe there were a number of other settlements in Britain.

There were 14 around the shores of this one lake alone, suggesting it may have been a centre of activity, and others elsewhere in the country.

But they were few and far between, Dr Milner says – and there is nothing to suggest they compared with this site, certainly in terms of the quality and number of artefacts found. The wooden platform, a kind of Stone Age decking, is unique in Britain.

But Star Carr is at risk of being damaged by acid conditions caused by peat drying out due to modern farming and drainage techniques. There have been some worrying signs of deterioration, Dr Milner says – including a bone completely demineralised by acid.

The main aim of the latest excavation, funded by English Heritage and the Natural Environment Research Council, is to assess the risk of damage to the site.

English Heritage, which is to schedule the site as a National Monument, will then decide how best to care for it.

The dig ends next week, when the peat covering will be replaced to reduce the risk of damage.