Located a few miles outside my hometown of Liverpool lies a nature reserve. This reserve is located on a sandy spit of land in the floodplain of the River Alt. Today it is home to a bird sanctuary that is famous for its wildlife. As well as being home for migrating birds, Lunt Meadows is home to one of the most important archaeological sites in the country.
The Lunt Meadow Findings
8,000 years ago, the area of Merseyside was a very different place. There was no football stadiums and the Liver Birds where still a long way off. The Ice Age had ended 2,000 years earlier [1], although technically we are just in a warmer period of that same Ice Age, and Britian was becoming the island that we recognise today. The Mesolithic period, ranging from 9,000 to 4,300 BC for the UK [2], was a time of hunter-gatherers and Lunt was no different [3].
Whilst several sites from this period have been found across the UK, evidence of how these nomadic tribes lived has been hard to find and limited. With the consensus being that these people lived in small groups that travelled around and only build temporary camps [4]. That is, until 2012 when the Environment Agency and Wildlife Trust were looking to create a wetland and flood alleviation scheme on some disused farmland in Lunt, just outside of Liverpool. During an excavation that took place prior to the development of the site, Ron Cowell and his team, of the Museum of Liverpool, discovered something very interesting. Digging down through the different layers of sediment and revealing stone tools, revealed that Ron had discovered a Mesolithic settlement of astonishing importance.
As mentioned earlier, most archaeologists believed that the small tribes of people that inhabited this time moved about seasonally. It was believed that they headed inland during the summer months and took advantage of the sea for food during the colder months. It is this seasonal movement that gives rise to the name “hunter-gatherer” [5]. But Ron’s discovery brings up questions to just how mobile these people where.
What makes Lunt so special is that the buildings that were found there seem to be of a much more organised and permanent settlement, unlike the transient camp found not too far away at Tarbock in Knowlsey. The three Lunt buildings measure an impressive 6-8 meters across and seem to have been used multiple times over a few generations, although exact dating is still to be achieved. What we can say is that the site was flooded and unusable by 7,500 years ago [6]. The site sat at the bottom of a shallow lake for a few hundred years before being consumed by sea water via the River Alt, which spread as far as Sefton Village around a half a mile away. This was key to the protection and survival of the site [7].
The Wider Mesolithic Area
Locals to the Sefton area are aware that Lunt is not the only evidence of early settlers. In the dunes that line the coast, Mesolithic footprints have been found in the sands. Around 30 years ago a set of both adult and children’s footprints were uncovered by the tides. The footprints, dating from a few hundred years after the Lunt site, had been preserved in layers of mud and offer a time limited glimpse into the lives of these people [8]. I recall hearing that it seems the children where running, could they have been playing? Did their parents struggle to keep them focused on the task at hand? I love this idea and find it brings them alive to me.
Spiritual Beliefs at Lunt Meadow
The interesting thing me is that Lunt shows a glimpse into the possible spiritual beliefs of the inhabitants. At the site were found 2 pits of stones, one being in a neat circle and the other being a more tightly packed oval made up of overlapping stones. In the centre of these circles, they found Iron Pyrite, Fools Gold, which surely must have had some significance. These pits seem to be receptacles for broken stone tools; some possibly being broken during use and others showing signs of being broken intentionally. They were clearly placed in the pits very shortly after the breakage shown by their sharp edges and with a lot of care and reverence. This raises the tantalising idea of offerings and sacrifice, which is reinforced by the finding of further pits at the same area of the site. Further to this, in the centre of one of the buildings, they have found the burnt remains of a tree stump. The evidence suggests that this stump had been burnt elsewhere and placed into the ground [9]. What this offering represented, the archaeologists are not sure yet, but it suggests an integrated spiritual connection between the outdoors and these people seen in other animistic peoples. Melon sized Mica rich Granite boulders that had been dyed red from iron rich coil where also found buried under the huts. These boulders were flanked by a blue flint blade and a small pebble. There were two of these flint-pebble pairs at each boulder, placed at opposite sides of the central stone [10].
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Sources
[4] ibid
[5] https://historic-liverpool.co.uk/lunt-meadows-mesolithic-settlement/
[7] ibid
[8] https://www.nauticalarchaeologysociety.org/in-search-of-the-formby-footprints
[10] https://historic-liverpool.co.uk/lunt-meadows-update-mesolithic-site/
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