Britain's most important Mesolithic site — a lakeside settlement where Britain's earliest known house was built and shamanic headdresses of red deer antler were made 11,000 years ago.
Star Carr is the most important Mesolithic site in Britain and one of the most significant of its period in all of Europe. Located in the Vale of Pickering in North Yorkshire, the site lies on the edge of what was once a large glacial lake, its shoreline occupied by hunter-gatherer communities around 9000–8500 BC — just a few thousand years after the last British ice age. The boggy lakeside conditions preserved extraordinary organic materials that would normally decay entirely, including worked bone and antler, timber structures, and plant remains.
The discoveries from Star Carr have repeatedly rewritten the understanding of early post-glacial Britain. The site has yielded the earliest known house in Britain — a three-metre-wide timber-and-reed structure dating to c.8500 BC — the oldest known worked wood in Britain, twenty-one red deer skull headdresses (possibly used in shamanistic ritual or hunting disguise), and the earliest known examples of shaman-associated artefacts in Europe. Recent excavations (2004–15) revealed that the site was far larger and more intensively occupied than previously realised, with evidence of repeated return to the same lakeside location over several centuries. The ongoing degradation of the peat that preserved the site is one of the most urgent conservation challenges in British archaeology.
Britain's richest Mesolithic site, Star Carr provides irreplaceable evidence for the lives of Britain's earliest inhabitants after the last ice age, including ritual, domestic architecture, and material culture unique in northern European prehistory.
Repeated seasonal occupation of the lake edge by hunter-gatherer communities. Birch woodland management, platform construction, and intensive use of red deer.
The lake gradually fills with peat, sealing and preserving the site. The Vale of Pickering slowly becomes the boggy landscape of the historic period.
Britain's earliest known house — a circular timber structure with a reed floor, c.8500 BC
Twenty-one red deer skull frontlets with antlers, perforated for wearing — interpreted as shamanic headdresses or hunting disguises
The oldest worked wood in Britain — a paddle-like wooden artefact
Hundreds of barbed antler and bone points (harpoons) used for hunting and fishing
A pendant of shale bearing the earliest known Mesolithic geometric decoration in Britain
Aubrey generates in-depth historical research for any location in Britain — drawing on Domesday records, Roman heritage, scheduled monuments, and medieval history to reveal the full story of a place.
Research a location near Star Carr