Where the material being used to make make personal ornaments at Star Carr is coming from is a question I'm really interested to explore. The first port of call for this aspect of the project was the nearby Yorshire coast. During the Early Mesolithic the coastline around Star Car and to the north would have been in a roughly similar position, while somwhere to the south there was a landbrige to Doggerland and other parts of Europe.

This geographical arrangement is an interesting one as it leaves open the possibility of long distance exchange of materials between different communities. But equally both amber and shale could be potentially sourced from the coast, the former with less predictability and frequency but the latter would likely have been everpresent.

It's been exciting and informative to visit different parts of the Yorkshire coastline and get a better sense of the availbility of materials and their similarity or disimilarity to those used for making shale beads and pendants and shale pendants at Star Carr, based on the condition and physical properties. As the project advances, this will be supplemented with elemental testing.