head-dress

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Object Type: head-dress
Museum number: 1953,0208.1
Description: Worked red deer antler frontlet. Made from the skull of a large stag. Lines of cut marks made by flint tools show that the skin was deliberately removed from the skull.. The bones forming the top of the nose were then broken off and the edges of the remaining skull part trimmed. The rim of the brain case has been smoothed and interior projections cut and scraped smooth. The antlers were also broken off and the remaining stumps thinned down and trimmed around the base. The two holes in the back of the skull, one through each of the parietal bones, were made by cutting and scraping away bone on both sides. The holes would probably have been used to tie the modified frontlet onto the head.
Cultures/periods: Mesolithic (early)
Production date: 8000BC (circa)
Findspot: Excavated/Findspot: Star Carr, Eastern end of the Vale of Pickering, five miles south of Scarborough, Yorkshire, close to the south bank of the modern river Hertford. The site lies on the southern flank of a low glacial hillock which rises above the general level of the peat , which now occupies the bed of the Mesolithic lake.
Materials: antler (red deer stag)
Dimensions: Height: 16.50 centimetres; Weight: 705 grammes; Width: 33 centimetres
Bibliographic references: Clark 1954 / Star Carr (pp. 168-175); Legge & Rowly-Conwy 1988 / Star Carr revisited; Mellars & Dark 1998 / Star Carr in Context; Dark 2000 / Revised 'absolute' dating of the early Mesolithic site of Star Carr, North Yorkshire, in the light of changes in the early Holocene tree-ring chronology.; Street, 1989 / Jaeger und Schamanen. Bedburg-Koenigshoven ein Wohnplatz am Niederrhein vor 10000 Jahren (pp. 44-53); Bate & Thornton 2012 / Shakespeare: Staging the World (p. 83, fig. 31; p. 288)
Location: On display (G51/dc4)
Exhibition history: Exhibited: 2022 17 Feb - 17 Jul, London, BM, G30, The world of Stonehenge 2012 19 Jul-25 Nov, London, BM Shakespeare: Staging the World 2006 29 May-2007 8 Jan, Germany, Bonn, Westfalisches Museum für Archäologie, Cimate and Man: Life in Extremes 2022 31 Mar-28 Aug, Germany, Hannover, Niedersächsisches Landesmuseum, Grenzgänger. Stone Age encounters between foraging and farming CANCELLED
Acquisition name: Donated by: Sir Grahame Douglas Clark
Acquisition date: 1953
Department: Britain, Europe and Prehistory
Registration number: 1953,0208.1
Conservation: Treatment: 29 Nov 2005; Treatment: 09 Sep 2021

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