Signs of Hunter-Gatherer Life Examined in Britain

News reports that footprints and fish traps dated to the Mesolithic period have been found in the Severn Estuary, where the River Severn meets the Bristol Channel, between southwestern England and southern Wales.

Martin Bell of the University of Reading said that the 7,000-year-old traps were made by strong, flexible willow stems woven around wooden stakes to form a V-shaped fence. “The discovery is particularly important because, within the channel containing the fish traps, low tides have revealed hundreds of footprints of people, animals, and birds,” he explained.

The footprints appear to travel between campsites and the edge of the channel where the traps were located. Many of them belonged to small children, he added. To read about traces of a lost Mesolithic world submerged beneath the North Sea, go to “Letter from Doggerland: Mapping a Vanished Landscape.”

Mesolithic human, bird, and animal prints and 7,000-year-old woven willow-and-wood fish traps have been found during low tides in the Severn Estuary, where the River Severn meets the Bristol Channel, between southwestern England and southern Wales.