The Lydstep pig – missing meal or ancestral offering?
Some of the most extraordinary finds to date from the late Mesolithic have
been made at Lydstep, Pembrokeshire, which allow us a rare snapshot of a transitory moment
in prehistory. In 1917 a pig skeleton, dated to 6,300 years ago, was found trapped beneath
a tree trunk, with two broken flint points in its neck. It appears that it eluded its hunters,
only to die later of its wounds in the cover of the forest. Although many finds of animal
bone have been retrieved from deposits associated with the submerged forests, it is very
rare to find clear signs of hunting. Further exciting discoveries were made at Lydstep in
2010 when a local resident contacted Dyfed Archaeological Trust to report footprints on
the beach close to the location of the pig skeleton discovery. The Trust recorded red deer
hoof prints preserved in the surface of a solidified peat deposit that once formed the floor
of a shallow lagoon in the later Mesolithic. Human footprints were also present, including
those of children, their prints deeply embedded into the peat as if they had stood patiently
waiting in one place – perhaps as part of a hunting party laying ambush in the reeds
around the watering hole? It appears that the hunters might have gone hungry that day, although
an alternative interpretation of events is that the pig did not escape but its body was
used as a votive offering at the water’s edge, pinned down by a tree trunk. Such ritualistic
acts associated with water are known to have been widespread in later periods and it is
possible, although difficult to prove, that Mesolithic communities saw the water as the
home of their ancestors.
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