The discovery of Mesolithic arrowheads on the Isles of Scilly with clearly continental European roots challenges the most deeply embedded ideas of Mesolithic specialists. While the disturbed stratigraphic context prevents a full understanding of the complete technical system, we must draw some conclusions regarding the Neolithic transition, and the ways and means of prehistoric navigation. At a more methodological level, this important discovery raises questions about our reading of features of technology, such as the nature of the transfers and whether they were exchanges or copies.
The Late Mesolithic: Europe without Britain and Ireland?
The development of industries with regular blades and trapezoidal microliths (or trapezes) characterises the Late and Final Mesolithic in Western Europe (Fortéa Pérez Reference Fortéa Pérez1973; Kozlowski Reference Kozlowski and Kozlowski1976; Rozoy Reference Rozoy1978), also called the ‘second Mesolithic’ (Marchand 2014). It includes some stylistic parameters identified since the 1920s such as trapezoidal arrowheads, wide and regular blades and notched blades as characteristic retouched tools. To these we must add further features identified during the 1980s and 1990s, such as the geometry of the core (flaking by parallel planes on a narrowed surface), its orientation (unipolar flaking) and the nature of the flaking technique. Around the west Mediterranean basin, blades were detached using pressure flaking (Binder Reference Binder1987; Perrin et al. Reference Perrin, Marchand, Allard, Binder, Collina, Garcia-Puchol and Valdeyron2009), and by the use of indirect percussion farther north (Marchand 2014). We do not know which of the two techniques was in use in Old Quay. This package thus combines specific technical, stylistic and functional parameters.
In the syntheses derived from studies of lithic industries since the 1950s, it became obvious that this Late Mesolithic package was found from North Africa to the Rhine, and from the Atlantic to the Alps (Kozlowski 2009), but it was absent from Britain and its adjacent islands, and from Ireland. The most logical explanation for this absence was their island status, i.e. a clear and powerful geographical determinism (Barrière Reference Barrière1956; Clark Reference Clark1958; Jacobi Reference Jacobi1976; Kozlowski Reference Kozlowski and Kozlowski1976, 2009; Perrin et al. Reference Perrin, Marchand, Allard, Binder, Collina, Garcia-Puchol and Valdeyron2009).
What is it and what is it not?
It must be stressed that the number of microliths from the Scilly assemblage and their typological homogeneity rule out a unique event linked to a single traveller. These 57 armatures from Old Quay all belong to the same type: trapezoids with an offset base (‘trapezes à base décalée’ or ‘rhombes’ in French). It is a common form in France north of the River Somme, in Belgium and in the Netherlands. Rhomboids are also present in the Castelnovian of south-east France at the end of the seventh millennium BC (Binder Reference Binder1987: 98), but with more lengthened forms and in association with other trapeze types. The large number of Late Mesolithic sites known in Atlantic France demonstrates the total absence of these rhomboids from Brittany to the Pyrenees (Marchand Reference Marchand, Marchand and Tresset2005): do not look over there!
The data are more scattered in Normandy, but recent discoveries at Auderville ‘Semaphore’ (Manche) or Saint-Ellier-les-Bois (Orne) (Ghesquière Reference Ghesquière2012) reveal typological features significantly different from the Isles of Scilly that are more in accordance with the cultural patterns of Brittany or west-central France.
In terms of long-distance sailing, the possibility of Iberian influences should be totally rejected because the trapeze types there are very different. If the typological links between the Old Quay microliths and the north of France, Belgium and the Netherlands still do not seem to present any problem, a curious typological difference has to be noted that must have a cultural interpretation. The lateralisation of the longest truncation (when the point is directed upwards) is indeed on the right-hand side in Late Mesolithic microliths north of the River Seine, whereas farther south it is to the left. This detail is not as insignificant as it might appear, given that it is operated at the scale of the European continent (for a synthesis see Loehr Reference Loehr1990). It appears then that the Old Quay rhomboids have north European forms and ‘southern’ lateralisation. Nobody has yet provided a satisfactory explanation for this question of lateralisation, other than to write—by default—that it came from stylistic or cultural choice.
The tip of the iceberg?
Debates centred exclusively on microliths have been and remain a great problem for Mesolithic studies. We must be careful not to focus purely on items related to weaponry, which reflect only one activity of prehistoric societies. Consideration should be given to the entire technical system, in which the change of one element leads to other changes. Lithic technology, and cultural technology more broadly, become effective tools to address issues of long-distance transfers, whether or not they are accompanied by technical changes at different levels. Despite the mixed stratigraphy at Old Quay, particular sequences of production with high technical investment (use of indirect percussion or pressure to produce the bladelets), it may be possible to detect specific tools or lithic raw materials in this assemblage during future studies. The nature of transfers (exchanges, copies, human displacements) could then be better appreciated.
Anderson-Whymark, Garrow and Sturt choose a scenario of regular mobility between southern England and northern France, or Belgium (scenario three). This implies at least partially maritime movement, which ultimately meets the latitudinal axes established for millennia through Doggerland. Typological comparisons show that they do not include Channel crossings to western France nor long-distance navigation. The directions are ‘orthogonal’ to those proposed by Alison Sheridan (Reference Sheridan, Finlayson and Warren2010) for Neolithic contact or travel from Brittany to the Irish Sea at the beginning of the fourth millennium BC. The Atlantic coast was not a major axis for traffic during the Mesolithic and the neighbouring territories are more a series of cul-de-sacs in the circulation of ideas and techniques. With its departure from the main axis, the Neolithic transition is also a geographical revolution.
If we accept scenario three, the general pattern of mobility at the end of the Mesolithic should produce other material evidence. So British archaeologists are asked: is this assemblage unique in southern England? The answer for the moment escapes scientific demonstration and we must instead employ intuition drawn from experience. Recent work on the expansion of the Early Neolithic (Late LBK in northern or western France; Impressa in southern France), for example, shows that once certain stylistic characteristics are identified in an area, new discoveries quickly multiply. A single point in space quickly finds neighbours when the keys have been found. We can predict that a multitude of such assemblages will be identified between Cornwall and Kent, and why not in Norfolk too? Either way, Britain's ‘splendid isolation’ is broken.
