Sometimes, on archaeological digs, you can often find the unexpected. Such was the case on a 1984 dig organised by the Trent and Peak Archaeological Trust as they searched for an old Roman road by the River Wye near the current site of the A53 that runs from the town centre towards Burbage. Rather than the Roman road, they found Lismore Fields, the oldest settlement in the area now known as Buxton.
The settlement the archaeologists found was approximately 6000 years old, dating back to the Stone Age. The Stone Age lasted 3.4 million years (based off archaeological findings in Ethiopia) so, to be more specific, the findings at Lismore Fields date from the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods. The Mesolithic Period (the ‘Middle Stone Age’) lasted from 9000-4300 BCE. It is an historical period best known for the Cheddar Man, the remains of a Mesolithic man found at Cheddar Gorge, Somerset. Most people of the Mesolithic period lived as nomadic hunter-gatherers. The Neolithic period (the ‘New Stone Age’), followed the Mesolithic, lasting from 4300-2000 BCE. This was the final stage of cultural and technical evolution of the Stone Age. This period saw the nomadic hunter-gatherers begin to settle permanently and cultivate land for farming.
Lismore Fields can be dated to these periods through the discovery of three buildings: one Mesolithic roundhouse and two Neolithic longhouses. It is unclear if all three buildings stood at the same time as the holes for the support beams of the Mesolithic roundhouse were, at some point, filled in. The Neolithic longhouses at Lismore Fields are the only ones of their kind that have been found in the Peak District and are amongst the best preserved in the UK.
Lismore is interesting site not just for the quality of its structural remains. Stores of cereal and grain were found at the site, meaning that Lismore Fields could be the oldest example of cereal cultivation in Britain. Sites such as these help us mark the turning of the Mesolithic and Neolithic periods and the move Stone Age human made from hunter-gathers to settled farmers. Pollen analysis of soil samples from Lismore shows evidence of crab apples, hazelnuts, flax and emmer wheat being cultivated on the site.
The settlers at Lismore Fields had to eat their newly-grown food out of something. Buxton Museum and Art Gallery is the home of the ‘Grimstone-ware’ bowl, a fragmented pot that, when analysed, revealed traces of milk, various animal fats, and vegetable substances. The existence of this pot shows again this transition from nomads to settlers as pots such of these would have been cumber-some for any hunter-gathers continuously on the move. At 5,500 years old, it is one of the oldest pots found in Britain.
What an expected find by the archaeologists on the 1984 dig! Its discoveries like the longhouses, cereal stores that help historians fill in the gaps and further our understanding of human progression thousands of years after the actual events. The ‘Grim-ware’ bowl and other Stone Age artifacts housed at Buxton Museum are currently safely in storage whilst the building is temporarily closed. Hopefully, we will be able to display them again soon!
Featured image: DERSB:2017.28.9 Early Neolithic bowl of Grimstone ware, from Lismore Fields, Buxton
Buxton Museum and Art Gallery 