| Reconstructing past environment | ||
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To help us understand how Mesolithic people at Howick lived it is important that we know something of their environment. For example, we could ask;- § Was the climate like today? § What sort of trees and other plants were growing there? How different was the coastline? |
| We can answer these and other questions by looking at the sediments which were deposited here during the last 10,000 years and particularly through studying the small plant and animal fossils contained within those sediments. At Howick we found that there was a complete record of changing environments locked away in the sediments which accumulated in the small valley just to the South of the site. |
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We took cores through these sediments and found that almost 8m metres of clays (containing many small fossils) had been deposited during the last 10,000 years. From the microfossils we have been able to tell what the environment was like when the Mesolithic site was occupied. How can reconstruct the conditions of 10,000 years ago? Every animal or plant has its own particular requirements for heat, water, food etc. and we can use this fact to reconstruct past environments from the fossils that we find in the sediments. Flowering plants and trees are particularly useful since they produce millions of individual pollen grains which are extremely tough and can survive for thousands of years buried in sediment. Every plant has its own distinct pollen, below are some examples |
