Lunt Meadows Mesolithic settlement • Historic Liverpool

Ron Cowell of the Museum of Liverpool discovered a Mesolithic settlement at Lunt Meadows in 2012. Ron had been leading an excavation there on behalf of the Environment Agency.

Archaeologists analysed the stone tools from the site, as well as the layers of soil from which the tools were extracted. The results showed that the remains are around 8000 years old. This was an age when (it was thought) humans lived in small bands. The bands would move from camp to camp with the changing seasons, taking advantage of the coastal areas in winter. In summer the groups moved further inland.

It’s this movement between different environments, and the methods used to gain food, which are define the ‘hunter-gatherer’ way of life. But the results of the excavation bring in to question just how mobile these people were.

The huts in which hunter gatherers would have lived at temporary camps leave next to no trace in the archaeological record. And yet Ron’s team have found evidence of three much more substantial buildings. These were around 6 metres (19 feet) across, leaving a very definite series of post holes in the sand.

As Ron says on the Inside Out North West film linked to below, this suggests a much more permanent place to live. Lunt Meadows is an extremely rare example of supposedly ‘nomadic’ hunters settling down.

Lunt Meadows: the archaeological context

For anyone familiar with the basics of Mesolithic prehistory this discovery is hugely exciting. It’s been labelled as having the potential to re-write the history of the area. But as locals know, this isn’t the first bit of ancient activity known from Merseyside.

In the dunes which stretch along the Sefton coast, Mesolithic footprints were found 20 years ago. These footprints, not all that far from Lunt Meadows, are preserved in the layers of sand and rock. The footprints are unique as they show the immediate effects on the landscape which people made, merely by inhabiting it.

There are a child’s footprints next to an adult’s, created no doubt as the two walked hand-in-hand along the beach. The coastline may have been further out in those days, but this was still part of the coastal plain. Was this walk following a swifter-moving hunt? Was it a trip to gather food from the bushes here, or was it simply a stroll on a sunny day? Though we’ll never know, footprints are a strikingly immediate record of a human passing by.

Further afield

Ron Cowell has been digging prehistoric sites in Merseyside and beyond for 30 years. In the film we see him suggesting that he’d “been looking for this kind of site for quite a long time”. However, his other digs already give a fuller picture about the prehistory of Merseyside.

The beauty of this area in the Mesolithic was that it had access to a range of different mini-environments. This meant a range of resources were close at hand. There were fresh water streams in the form of the River Alt and Ditton Brook. Alongside this was the salt water of the Mersey Estuary and the Irish Sea. These locations gave access to different types of sea food (fish, shell fish, water fowl), as well as the supply of fresh water.

The river channels also gave easier access inland, while the rest of the landscape might be blanketed in woodland. Woodland, however, provided other sources of food, in the form of nuts, fruit and the animals which roamed there. Ron mentions wild cattle in the film, and there may also have been boar and deer for the taking. These people had fairly sophisticated tools, hewn from Welsh chert, and some local stone, possibly washed up by the tide.

Ancient Merseyside

It’s a great and rare thing when a new site hits the headlines, especially one of such importance as Lunt Meadows. Liverpool is not known for its prehistoric archaeology, yet the Field Unit at the Museum of Liverpool could tell you just how much stuff is there. You just need to know where to look. Combined with the rest of the prehistoric sites on Merseyside the new settlement adds another dimension to our understanding of how people inhabited the landscape so long ago.