British and Irish Mesolithic studies have long been characterized by a reliance on broad-scale lithic typologies, both to provide chronologies, and in discussion of ‘cultural’ groups. More recently, traditional narrative structures—period definitions of ‘Early’ and ‘Late’, or culture typologies—have been complemented by a host of other evidence. This has included new studies of site stratigraphy, evidence for seasonality, and material culture chaîne opératoire chronologies, which place a greater emphasis on both temporal precision and the lived experiences of Mesolithic peoples. This paper will consider how the study of organic artefacts forces these narrative scales into acute focus, and presents an opportunity to explore the challenges in synthesizing different forms of data. We discuss how the evidence from sites in Ireland and Britain allows for new approaches, and highlight some of the challenges that this evidence presents, not least the perennial issue of moving from site-specific data to broader narratives. While the nature of earlier prehistoric evidence makes this an especially obvious issue for Mesolithic studies, it is one which generally besets archaeology. We suggest that in order to move beyond this in earlier prehistoric studies specifically, we need to make better use of all evidence sources, however seemingly prosaic, including antiquarian collections in museums, and chance and casual finds. Only by including the raft of available data, and recognizing its utility beyond the sum of individual apparently uninspiring parts, can we begin to move from generalizing narratives to more nuanced archaeological understandings of past material worlds.

中文翻译：

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中石器时代：叙事，年代和有机物质文化

长期以来，英国和爱尔兰的中石器时代研究的特点是依靠大规模的石器类型学，既可以提供年代顺序，又可以讨论“文化”群体。最近，传统的叙事结构（“早期”和“晚期”的时期定义或文化类型学）得到了许多其他证据的补充。这包括新的现场地层研究，季节性证据和物质文化研究年表，它更加强调时间精确性和中石器时代人民的生活经验。本文将考虑对有机人工制品的研究如何将这些叙事尺度变成紧急焦点，并提供一个探索综合各种形式数据的挑战的机会。我们讨论了爱尔兰和英国站点的证据如何允许采用新方法，并着重强调了该证据带来的一些挑战，尤其是从站点特定数据转向更广泛叙述的长期问题。尽管史前早期证据的性质使这一问题在中石器时代的研究中尤为明显，但它通常困扰着考古学。我们建议，为了超越早期史前研究的范围，我们需要更好地利用所有证据来源，无论是看似平淡无奇的证据，包括博物馆中的古董收藏，以及偶然和偶然的发现。仅通过包括大量可用数据，并认识到其实用性超出单个似乎毫无启发性的部分的总和，我们就可以开始从概括性叙事转向对过去物质世界的更细致的考古学理解。