Mesolithic Studies at the Beginning of the 21st Century

The term ‘Mesolithic’ was born in the nineteenth century from the need to label a ‘hiatus’ period and was not generally accepted as a useful term by many scholars until around fifty years later. It has been championed by some, but still concerns others because of the difficulty of defining what it represents. This volume highlights the enthusiasm for Mesolithic studies in the 21st century and the feeling that there is a need to explore the many facets of Mesolithic lifeways. Approaches are now moving away from the traditional Mesolithic canon that seems to have been based on a particular set of biological and/or ecological perspectives and are now looking for new directions and new theoretical arenas which can only help stimulate Mesolithic debate. The papers in this volume take a range of approaches to a period that has largely been devoid of explicit theoretical discussion. They deconstruct and explore a broad variety of subjects, including mobility, complexity, seasonality, death & burial, gender & sexuality, social relations, music, human agency, ethnoarchaeology and emotion.