These stone assemblages are often large, dominated by particular tool types and are found at many different types of site including both funerary and domestic settings.

Recent research into the contexts of these various tools from sites across the Northern Isles has demonstrated aspects of continuity and change within and between assemblages. This variability within the artefactual record can be interpreted at  broader level in order to assess the social implications which these patterns may represent.

You can read more at:

Clarke, A 2006 Stone tools and the Prehistory of the Northern Isles British Archaeological Report, 406.

Recent excavations at  sites in Northern Britain have added to the repertoire of coarse stone tools known to have been in use during the Mesolithic. By analysing the distinctive wear traces on all the coarse stone tools from a site and by examining their context of deposition it has been possible to identify areas on site where specific activities were being carried out. Coarse stone tools appear to have been subject to some form of structured use and deposition and this appears in the archaeological record in three ways: by the dominance or single use of a particular tool type;  by the presence of discrete deposits of tools; or by a combination of both.  The evidence suggests that some sites were used for specific craft or processing activities over time, whilst other sites were used for multiple activities, perhaps related to repeated visits.

 The full article is published as: 

 Clarke, A 2009 ‘Craft specialisation in the Mesolithic of Northern Britain: the evidence from the coarse stone tools’, in N Finlay; S McCarten; N Milner and CR Wickham-Jones 2009 From Bann Flakes to Bushmills, Oxbow.

This involved a week in Lapland partaking of activities appropriate to a hunter/ gatherer lifestyle: setting camp, making and using stone and bone tools, skinning and butchering a reindeer, cooking and preserving meat, preparing hides, making cooking pits, walking in the wildwood.

For a fuller account read:

Wickham-Jones, CR; Clarke PA and Barlow, A 1986 ‘A Project in Experimental Archaeology: Avasjo 1982’, Review of Scottish Culture 2, 97-104.