Following my introduction post a couple of folks have expressed interest in a project I took part in back in 2000, as part of the millenium celebrations, called Timecamp 2000, where a group of 12 volunteers signed up to recreate certain aspects of Mesolithic life for a week. It was a very similar if smaller version of the 10,000 BC program. I'm just going to offer my personal experience of the project here, but if anyone would like to read the full article written on the project this is the citation:
Rebekah Judeh. In Peopling the Mesolithic in a Northern Environment, BAR Vol. 1157 (15 August 2003).
The Project:
The project was designed by John Stokes as part of the Sandwell Council Millenium project and was aimed at educating the public about the Mesolithic period. Every day of Timecamp was filmed by the local news for short segments and the final weekend of the project was opened to the public as part of the August Sandwell Show so they could visit us and ask questions.
We had several preparatory meetings where we were taught the basics of fire lighting, flint knapping, plant recognition, net making, basket weaving and first aid etc over camping weekends.
The group was composed of people with a range of skills and knowledge- there was a master bowman, a few historical re-enactors, some archaeology students, a journalist and an accountant amongst others. None of us had any specialist knowledge of the period and as this was the days really before Ray Mears much of the stuff we learned was completely new to us, but might seem very basic now.
Sandwell Valley is a nature reserve so we weren't allowed to hunt or fish locally and meat was brought to the camp via local culls. We also had access to drinking water and proper toilets. The project was focussed more upon experiment than survival.
The Camp
The camp was set up in a little clearing surrounded on 3 sides by shrubs and trees. We used a bow drill as a firelighting method which took several hours to get going. We initially had two fire pits, one for cooking and one for smoking meat which we placed under an A-frame covered by foliage to keep flies out. Later we added a third fire inside the hut for warmth at night and we also dug a clay-lined oven pit (filled with hot rocks and ashes) in which we cooked a large chicken over night, which was very successful. We went through immense amounts of firewood, collecting it was actually a full-time job for several people in the camp.
The hut was constructed using large hazel poles covered with hides (reclaimed waste from a local leather factory). We wove coppiced hazel through the base of these poles to about 2 feet, but should probably have gone higher to give it more stability. A heavy rain storm on the last weekend caused it to buckle to one side.
Flint knapping and tool making was confined to a specific workspace to prevent sharp shards of flint getting underfoot. We tried using birch bark tar as glue for the tools, but found that it melted easily under hot sun. We hard-sharpened wood above fire embers and used nettle twine and animal sinew as lashings. We created arrows using coppiced hazel and found that they shot very well (in skilled hands, not so much in mine). We lashed hide from a fresh deer kill onto a frame and created scrapers to remove the fat and then rubbed deer brain into the skin and hung it over the fire in order to tan it. We created large baskets which we made into rucksacks using leather straps to aid with foraging firewood.
Food and clothing.
After day 3 almost all of our focus was upon food, or rather the food we were craving for. During the week we had a complete deer carcass (skinned and butchered by us using flint tools), some chickens and some fish alongside turnips, mushrooms, berries, hazelnuts and local herbs and fruit. The highlight of lunch for me was not however the meat, but the crushed fruit sauces or wild garlic we used to flavour it, the additional sweetness and flavour was necessary for my modern palette and a welcome relief from constant smokey flavour. Most of the food was skewered over the fire embers, but as I've mentioned we also 'oven' cooked one of the birds.
We made our clothing ourselves from reclaimed leather using basic American Indian patterns. We also made shoes or boots from a simple moccasin pattern that were pretty successful.
Social life.
The first 2 days of the camp were busy and very productive. John Stokes was the natural 'leader' of the camp having created and organised much of it, however he was happy to confer and defer to others on general points. Most tasks were self-appointed, if something needed doing people volunteered quickly and happily or simply got on with it themselves. However, even in August, the nights were extremely cold and the new diet was difficult to adjust to, particularly I think for the 2 vegetarians of the group. A few days in some people started to become lethargic, bored and short-tempered regarding the camera crews that would turn up and disrupt everything. This particularly seemed to grate on the 3 'alpha' males of the group and small tensions started to arise, though thankfully those of us in the middle took a proactive stance and became the diplomats of the group to smooth things over. Overall relationships were good and a lot, if not everything, got done.
Nights around the fire were the time for story telling and group bonding. We would often paint our faces with woad and tell funny stories or come up with fun things to do the next day. We all slept together in the same hut, which was a useful bonding experience. We took turns to keep the fire alight through the night with no issues. By the end of the experience I classed all of the relative strangers I'd met there as good friends.
Overall the experience was difficult but fantastic and I would definately be happy to do something similar again (perhaps not on TV though).
A couple of funny memories:
My first funny memory was during the weekend of the Sandwell Show, the whole park was taken over by various stalls and displays. Myself and two friends were walking along one of the woodland paths, dressed in our leathers with spears and baskets foraging for firewood when we came across three people walking towards us all dressed in Star Trek costumes. There was a short period of staring at each other followed by a slight nod as we passed each other and then the sound of laughing from both groups after we'd passed.
My second funny memory was on the final night of the project. There was a torrential rainstorm and the hut started to subside so we all agreed for safety sake to sleep in the parks main building that night. One of the women put a shank of venison in the oven to cook and we all apparently had forgotten how ovens work because a few hours later the smoke alarms went off and a few minutes after that the fire brigade turned up and seemed to find it hilarious that a bunch of bedraggled people in skins had burnt their dinner. It actually made the local newspaper the next day to our complete embarassment!
I've just provided a little overview of the Mesolithic below in case anyone is new to the period:
The Mesolithic.
So the Mesolithic period spanned from c.10,000 BC to 4500 BC. It occurred during the 'climatic optimum' when global temperatures were several degrees warmer than today, which melted the remaining glaciers of the Devensian ice age and eventually flooded the area of the North Sea cutting Britain off from the mainland. Britain would have been heavily forested and people probably followed the main rivers and waterways for movement, as well as the coastlines. People lived in groups of up to 50 people which were composed of extended families. They would have moved seasonally, following migratory animals and would have set up base camps from which smaller groups of people headed out in various directions to hunt and forage. It was probably warm enough usually that these mobile people lived in the open, just taking refuge in tree boles or rock shelters when necessary. Different groups must have met up occasionally to exchange goods, with people changing groups in order to prevent in-breeding. There's no real evidence of conflict between groups at this time and they may have followed strict rituals when crossing into another groups territory. The groups were bound together through family ties but also through rituals, there appears to have been a widespread belief in animisms (animal spirits aiding the hunt) and there was probably a strong oral and dance tradition of passing on knowledge similar to the Aboriginal Dreamtime.
Rebekah Judeh. In Peopling the Mesolithic in a Northern Environment, BAR Vol. 1157 (15 August 2003).
The Project:
The project was designed by John Stokes as part of the Sandwell Council Millenium project and was aimed at educating the public about the Mesolithic period. Every day of Timecamp was filmed by the local news for short segments and the final weekend of the project was opened to the public as part of the August Sandwell Show so they could visit us and ask questions.
We had several preparatory meetings where we were taught the basics of fire lighting, flint knapping, plant recognition, net making, basket weaving and first aid etc over camping weekends.
The group was composed of people with a range of skills and knowledge- there was a master bowman, a few historical re-enactors, some archaeology students, a journalist and an accountant amongst others. None of us had any specialist knowledge of the period and as this was the days really before Ray Mears much of the stuff we learned was completely new to us, but might seem very basic now.
Sandwell Valley is a nature reserve so we weren't allowed to hunt or fish locally and meat was brought to the camp via local culls. We also had access to drinking water and proper toilets. The project was focussed more upon experiment than survival.
The Camp
The camp was set up in a little clearing surrounded on 3 sides by shrubs and trees. We used a bow drill as a firelighting method which took several hours to get going. We initially had two fire pits, one for cooking and one for smoking meat which we placed under an A-frame covered by foliage to keep flies out. Later we added a third fire inside the hut for warmth at night and we also dug a clay-lined oven pit (filled with hot rocks and ashes) in which we cooked a large chicken over night, which was very successful. We went through immense amounts of firewood, collecting it was actually a full-time job for several people in the camp.
The hut was constructed using large hazel poles covered with hides (reclaimed waste from a local leather factory). We wove coppiced hazel through the base of these poles to about 2 feet, but should probably have gone higher to give it more stability. A heavy rain storm on the last weekend caused it to buckle to one side.
Flint knapping and tool making was confined to a specific workspace to prevent sharp shards of flint getting underfoot. We tried using birch bark tar as glue for the tools, but found that it melted easily under hot sun. We hard-sharpened wood above fire embers and used nettle twine and animal sinew as lashings. We created arrows using coppiced hazel and found that they shot very well (in skilled hands, not so much in mine). We lashed hide from a fresh deer kill onto a frame and created scrapers to remove the fat and then rubbed deer brain into the skin and hung it over the fire in order to tan it. We created large baskets which we made into rucksacks using leather straps to aid with foraging firewood.
Food and clothing.
After day 3 almost all of our focus was upon food, or rather the food we were craving for. During the week we had a complete deer carcass (skinned and butchered by us using flint tools), some chickens and some fish alongside turnips, mushrooms, berries, hazelnuts and local herbs and fruit. The highlight of lunch for me was not however the meat, but the crushed fruit sauces or wild garlic we used to flavour it, the additional sweetness and flavour was necessary for my modern palette and a welcome relief from constant smokey flavour. Most of the food was skewered over the fire embers, but as I've mentioned we also 'oven' cooked one of the birds.
We made our clothing ourselves from reclaimed leather using basic American Indian patterns. We also made shoes or boots from a simple moccasin pattern that were pretty successful.
Social life.
The first 2 days of the camp were busy and very productive. John Stokes was the natural 'leader' of the camp having created and organised much of it, however he was happy to confer and defer to others on general points. Most tasks were self-appointed, if something needed doing people volunteered quickly and happily or simply got on with it themselves. However, even in August, the nights were extremely cold and the new diet was difficult to adjust to, particularly I think for the 2 vegetarians of the group. A few days in some people started to become lethargic, bored and short-tempered regarding the camera crews that would turn up and disrupt everything. This particularly seemed to grate on the 3 'alpha' males of the group and small tensions started to arise, though thankfully those of us in the middle took a proactive stance and became the diplomats of the group to smooth things over. Overall relationships were good and a lot, if not everything, got done.
Nights around the fire were the time for story telling and group bonding. We would often paint our faces with woad and tell funny stories or come up with fun things to do the next day. We all slept together in the same hut, which was a useful bonding experience. We took turns to keep the fire alight through the night with no issues. By the end of the experience I classed all of the relative strangers I'd met there as good friends.
Overall the experience was difficult but fantastic and I would definately be happy to do something similar again (perhaps not on TV though).
A couple of funny memories:
My first funny memory was during the weekend of the Sandwell Show, the whole park was taken over by various stalls and displays. Myself and two friends were walking along one of the woodland paths, dressed in our leathers with spears and baskets foraging for firewood when we came across three people walking towards us all dressed in Star Trek costumes. There was a short period of staring at each other followed by a slight nod as we passed each other and then the sound of laughing from both groups after we'd passed.
My second funny memory was on the final night of the project. There was a torrential rainstorm and the hut started to subside so we all agreed for safety sake to sleep in the parks main building that night. One of the women put a shank of venison in the oven to cook and we all apparently had forgotten how ovens work because a few hours later the smoke alarms went off and a few minutes after that the fire brigade turned up and seemed to find it hilarious that a bunch of bedraggled people in skins had burnt their dinner. It actually made the local newspaper the next day to our complete embarassment!
I've just provided a little overview of the Mesolithic below in case anyone is new to the period:
The Mesolithic.
So the Mesolithic period spanned from c.10,000 BC to 4500 BC. It occurred during the 'climatic optimum' when global temperatures were several degrees warmer than today, which melted the remaining glaciers of the Devensian ice age and eventually flooded the area of the North Sea cutting Britain off from the mainland. Britain would have been heavily forested and people probably followed the main rivers and waterways for movement, as well as the coastlines. People lived in groups of up to 50 people which were composed of extended families. They would have moved seasonally, following migratory animals and would have set up base camps from which smaller groups of people headed out in various directions to hunt and forage. It was probably warm enough usually that these mobile people lived in the open, just taking refuge in tree boles or rock shelters when necessary. Different groups must have met up occasionally to exchange goods, with people changing groups in order to prevent in-breeding. There's no real evidence of conflict between groups at this time and they may have followed strict rituals when crossing into another groups territory. The groups were bound together through family ties but also through rituals, there appears to have been a widespread belief in animisms (animal spirits aiding the hunt) and there was probably a strong oral and dance tradition of passing on knowledge similar to the Aboriginal Dreamtime.