The liminal zone between coast and land was very important for Mesolithic communities throughout Europe. For many decades this relationship has been examined through a purely economic lens. But surely, as is the case today, the sea drew these prehistoric peoples for a myriad of reasons and imprinted a lasting impression on their consciousness. This paper explores human relationships to coastal areas on the eve of farming. During this period, Mesolithic communities in maritime zones maintained a stalwart attachment to the sea in the face of an ever increasing pressure to alter the earth. In many cases, it is in the coastal zones that Mesolithic peoples took the longest to adopt farming. The renegotiation of space and worldview between Mesolithic and Neolithic peoples in these areas is at once a complicated but intriguing one. Although Mesolithic communities may have been vastly different from the neoteric Neolithic cultures that eventually supersede them, they both shared an engagement with the sea that went beyond the economic.

Tom Lawrence (Oxford Archaeology)