Sea-faring news | Adventure archaeology | The best fish & chips in the world

Dear microburins,

I’m teasing slightly, but glad to see archaeology in local news in North Yorkshire—and a new scoop-it mesolithic news item from the Whitby Gazette.

The North-East Yorkshire Mesolithic Project is completing its current funded phase in 2013 by looking at a ‘coastal’ site near Whitby where flints recovered from volunteer and professionally led field walking suggest activity from the Mesolithic through the Neolithic and Bronze Age. Nearby locations complete the story through to the Roman period (farms, villas and signal stations), Anglo-Saxons (royalty) right up to the present. It’s also a stunning location today, right above cliffs (near Runswick Bay) with views southwards towards Whitby, north over some of the highest sea cliffs in England, eastwards toward Denmark and The Netherlands over the dark North Sea (there since only around 6500 BC).

I’m chuffed I made it into the volunteer field-walking pic (I’m the one in the middle) and may be able to eat Whitby fish & chips off myself? More seriously, the Mesolithic in NE England is compelling—a nexus of chronological, social and territorial themes—and back to the end of the last glaciation (Late Devensian) over 13,000 years ago.
Read more | Summer 2012 adventures →

♦ Spence