 Ie, mae'r Natash yw'r Uneddaeth a'r Udoedd Phd ddiwrnodol i'r Uneddaeth. Rydyn ni'n fivr o dr Amy Little a Prof. Nihimola. Mae'n oedd yma yn y peth gwaith wnaeth yma, mae'n oed i'r angen i'w ymweld yn llunio'r analysau oedd yn ymdweud i'r bwysigol yn ymddangos. Rwy'n ei wneud, rydyn ni'n gweithio'r cyffredinol yn ei ddweud o ffaisio'r slywedol. evaluate, because it is unpublished data, and StarCars is a hot topic, as I'm sure you all know. The slides are blue, and they've gone ansterisk if it's unpublished data. Most of it isn't, because as I said, I'm quite early on, but just as an appreciation if you don't mind. So before I start, I thought it would be worth just explaining to you what's driving my research and why I'm undertaking this as part of, for my PhD. Beth yw'n gwybod i'n cael ei gynnig o'r cyntaf ar gyfer mezzolithu meethau? A o amgylchio'r data o'r cymryd cyd-Ysbryd yng Nghymru, ac mae'n rhan o'r data o'r cymryd y ffordd a cyfnodd y cyfryd yn cael ei gilydd y bwysig o'r cyfryd yn cael ei gilydd o'r cyfryd yng Nghymru i'r cyfryd eu cyffryd yng nghymru. Yn gyrfa o'r cyfryd, mae'n gwybod i'r cyfryd ynghylch ynghylch o'r cyfryd ynghylch o'r cyfryd. Ndoedd am y ddechrau Starr Carau,因為'r ddweud, a y gallwn ei ffnodd gan eistedd, rwy'n dechrau ati'r ff Studi'r ddweud, ond mae'n aell, yma'r rwy'n mynd i gyd yn ymdyn nhic eu ei wath. Mae'n boligio o ran hwn yn ymdyn nhu'n ei ddweud. Mae'n rhaid i yw'r welfa yma, a'n gwybodaeth allanolai methu. Mae'n unig o'i rhan o'r troi allanolau, beth mae'n ei ddweud yn ymdyn nhu'n ei ddweud i'n i'n gwybodaeth. ond we have evidence for humans there across those 800 years. Just to put it into context, we are dealing with a time when the UK was still connected to mainland Europe through the land bridge of Dogaland, and that's just worth noting when I explain the implications for this research. It's also worth noting that Starcar is part of a network of other sites around a paleo lake, Lake Flickston, which again causes implications for when we're interpreting site because it is a part lake, part dry land site. So the site was first excavated in the late 1940s by Graham Clark at Cambridge University, and really from a very early stage it was characterised by exceptional organic preservation, as you can see in the image behind me. It was then revisited by Professor Nicky Milner and her colleagues at universities of Chester and Manchester in the early 2000s, and as you can see again in the images behind me to my left and to your right, the site has a really beautiful display of wetland and dryland areas, and when Professor Milner went back and excavated, the full extent of the site was essentially opened up or as much as we could excavate at the time, and this gave us a real picture of exactly what was happening at the site. So what did we actually find during the excavations? This is especially the one from 2000, so this is not discussing Clark's excavations. So most notably, as I said, the organic remains are exceptional, and this is really highlighted through the antler frontlets. We found an additional 12 antler frontlets during these excavations, and these are humanly modified red deer skulls with antlers, as you can see from the splitting of the antler. We also found the first evidence of mobile art or the earliest evidence of mobile art in Britain through the shale pendant, and this is an engraved pendant that's perforated with flint, and we found also accompanying that with shale beads. And then also we found some really beautiful wooden artefacts, so the digging stick being a really beautiful example, and birch bark rolls, which were obviously used for tar production. Now onto the flint, which is why it's relevant to the session today. So there were over 24,000 flints found, and as you can see by the black dots, a lot of these are located within the dryland areas of the site, and this is why my research is really focused within these areas, as this is the kind of hotspots. And although you don't need to work out the nitty gritty, the colours here that you can see in the dryland areas, they represent the structures, and as you can see again, the black dots are really quite concentrated around these areas. Most of the flint was actually made from tilflint, and it's worth noting that 16% of the assemblage was burnt, which obviously has implications for the micro wet analysis. So in terms of the evidence of structures, which is the main part of my research, so there's evidence of at least three structures at Starr Car. This is excluding the wetland areas, so as you can see in the pictures to the bottom of the screen, there was a beautiful array of wetland platforms that were discovered within the lake fringe, within this, as you can see, the image here of the fringe between the wetlands and the dryland. This is not part of my research, as you have to draw the line somewhere. For the dryland structures, in my presentation, whenever I talk about structures, I will be talking about just the dryland areas. These three structures have a very different character, each of them has their own sort of signature, and I will hopefully be able to explain this further as I go through. So firstly, I just wanted to present the Starr Car structures in a context. So what else have we found from Britain in regards to structural evidence? So from these other mesolithic sites within Britain, famous ones again, so Howick in Northumberland and Mount Sandel in Ireland being probably some of the other most famous ones. These both dates to the Lake Mesolithic and have varying evidences of structures. Mount Sandel is evidenced by oval-shaped pits, whereas Howick evidences three structures that are kind of dipped hollows. As relevance for today's session, the micro-ereanalysis undertaken on both these sites was fairly extensive, but both sites, as I said, do date to the Lake Mesolithic. So in terms of comparability to Starr Car, there's nothing really of a comparison really. And so I really want to emphasise with this slide that Starr Car is a unique site and that's why it is the focus of my research. And with the fact that it has three structures within one area, it really offers us a real sort of opportunity to explore the ideas of using space. Just to give a bit more of an idea of the types of deposition we're seeing with the flint, I chose this example that was undertaken by Professor, sorry, Dr Amy Little, giving her information. And she undertook micro-ereanalysis on the flint, some of the flint from Starr Car. This is a wonderful example, I think, because it's showing essentially a flint cache and micro-ereanalysis showed that all of these flint pieces were undertaken within an animal processing activity. And because of the deposition, so this is within the wetland platform, the deposition of the flint is quite clustered, as you can see. And from this, the interpretation of this deposition is that it potentially was wrapped in a bag or some kind of container which is subsequently disintegrated and these flint pieces have then fallen around the structure. So I think by bringing in the richness that you get from micro-ere, from refitting, and from this close excavation of archaeological material, I think you can really begin to see the depth of interpretation that can be gained. This flint cache was probably used within one type of activity and it does make you wonder why. It's going beyond function, it's going beyond efficiency. Something maybe slightly interesting is happening with the deposition and I wanted to see if this is also reflected within the dryland areas. So how am I going to do this? The method, as you can see behind me, is quite typical for micro-ereanalysis. As the flint is a huge assemblage of flint, I'll be plotting different typologies around the structures to essentially organise a subsample that I can aim to do within my three years. I'm looking at around 400 to 500 pieces. So as you can see, the spatial plots of the flint or some of the typologies behind me, the typologies are giving us glimpses at possible activity areas or possible different uses of these structures. The central structure in the middle is in all four, so this is the blades, microburins, striker lights and scrapers. The central structure within all four seems to be clearer than the other two. So you can begin to see from these typologies that we're getting glimpses of what we could interpret from the micro-ereanalysis. I think for me this shows that typologies are really interesting, but they also can only take you so far when looking at these tools and how they're used especially within a settlement. So as I mentioned, Dr Amy Little already has undertaken a small micro-ereanalysis of some of the flint based on 126 positive identifications of micro-ere polish. She was able to show hints at potentially the different uses of these structures. So you've got again the central structure showing quite a different signature to the eastern and the western structures. So again, we're hinting at this potential different usage of these structures. So to give you a bit of a glimpse of what I've been up to, again this is just, this is very preliminary, so please don't take these, what I say now is sort of the be all or end all of my PhD. I have been looking at blades within the eastern and central structures as they are the most complete structures that we find with hollows and post holes around it. As you can see from the micrographs, sorry, could you mind up taking a picture? Sorry, this is the unpublished stuff, sorry. So from what you can see from the micrographs, there's plant working evidence which is quite typical for blades as we've heard earlier, but there's also a variety of other activities. So unlike other sites that we see within the mesolithic that they can also the use of these different structures, Starka doesn't seem to have this sort of structure based to a particular activity. We in fact seem to see a variety of activities being undertaken within the structure or these structures which again, like I said, is quite different from stuff that we've seen from other mesolithic sites. However, this is just preliminary. And so just to draw it towards a conclusion, what can we say when we tie in the chronology within the site? So we're very lucky at Starka. We have a really complex chronology that's been created. So the central structure, as you can see, is very much linked to the early occupations of the site, whereas the western and the eastern structures are linked towards the more middle, sort of later occupations. So for me, when we link this in with a microwave analysis and the information gained from the typologies, it adds so much nuance to our interpretation because we're able to say, well, seeing a slightly different pattern in the use of the central structure is perhaps not that surprising when it was definitely occupied and lived in by a different generation of individuals. And I think also it then sort of begins to colour your interpretation in regards to the western and the eastern structure with perhaps there being a more of a link between those structures being potentially contemporaneous or at the very least visible during a similar period. So just to conclude, what do I mean by social implications and how am I going to try and access that through the structures? From ethnography we know that dwellings can sometimes be far more than just homes and homes can be more than dwellings. And so I think for me I want to really try and access what these structures were and we don't know what they looked like and we don't know how they were used. However, I do think microwave analysis will be able to give us some insight into this. And when chronology is added to our understanding of the microwave analysis I do think you get a richness of what people were actually doing at the site rather than just identifying areas of activity which is really exciting but we're able to put people back into the picture which I think is really important for looking at sites but especially within prehistory when sometimes it's all too easy to forget that these distant people in the past were present and they were acting and active within the site and making and curating these areas. So thank you very much for listening and thank you to the session organisers as well for accepting my best teaching.