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n foraging societies, kinship is the basis of all social and economic relationships. Though communal work is carried out, the immediate family is the primary unit of production and consumption. General divisions of labor were probably according to age and gender, though some cross-over was certainly common. Unlike most societies that followed, including all modern cultures, it is highly probable that these societies were about as egalitarian as any human community has ever been. If a hierarchy did exist it would have been by virtue of knowledge and skill not ownership, gender or property and control. These people had no real property save for the clothes they wore, select tools that only they would have used and possibly personal spiritual items they owned such as jewelry. Their life was based on an ethic of sharing as with such small groups, sharing and cooperation is essential for survival.
They adapted their living patterns to environmental conditions, such as food availability and climate. Their calendar, if they had a formal system of time keeping, would not have been dominated by movements of the sun and moon such as the calendars of agriculturist. Though they certainly could have followed the movements of these large bodies, their time-keepers would also have been documenting the small quieter voices of the world they lived in, seasonal changes in climate and the budding, leafing, migrating, fruiting, nesting, hatching, birthing cycles of the creatures and plants that shared their world and on whose existence their life depended. It is likely that their cosmology and mythology would have included all of these players, their interdependence and the nature of their relationships with them.
It is impossible to know exactly how cultures that existed thousands of years ago created and maintained social structures. Because of the nature of their lives as foragers, we cannot look at later agricultural/pastoral societies from the same region and try to extrapolate what may come from an earlier time. What is left to us is to study "modern" foraging cultures, keeping in mind the difference in circumstances, and analyze what archaeological evidence is available. From this combination we can begin to formulate a portrait of how these societies may have functioned.
 They practiced a wide range of residential strategies, based on environmental conditions and human needs.
There was planning and repetition, favored sites were long in use; there was regard for the past.
There was innovation through the generations; foragers were takers of opportunities rather than opportunistic.
Dispersal and mobility served to reduce the risk of resource depletion, but also expressed an ethic of cooperation and integration by which all groups members were bound.
There was management6 of resources in the form of altering the local environmemt. The deliberate burning of the woodland increases both the plant and animal resources available to the Mesolithic population. Mellars (Ungulate Populations, Economic Patterns and the Mesolithic Landscape, 1976) estimates that plant and animal food yeild would be increased by 500-900% in a woodland environment with a planned strategy of burning. These effects would be:
- ~~An increase in the mobility of human populations by destroying dense undergrowth.
- ~~An increase in the growth of vegetable resources particularly seed-like grasses like Goosefoot, nut bushes like Hazel and tuber plants like Bracken.
- ~~An improvement in hunting conditions by reducing the amount of cover available to animals.
- ~~An increase in the total number and population densities of animal populations by increasing the quality and quantity of forage resources.
- ~~An increase in the growth rate of young animals and the maximum size attained by mature animals.
- ~~Controlling the distribution of animas, making hunting more predictable and thus more efficient.
- (Malers and Reinhardt; Patterns of Mesolithic land use in southern England; a geological perspective. 1978)
There was some storage for later time, such as winter months, though was no significant accumulation of surplus food or goods beyond what was needed for a given period of time.
There was no obvious social difference between the generations or between the sexes in so far as this can be judged from burial findings. In Ireland no burials have yet been found. However, more than 145 Mesolithic burial sites containing over 1,700 individuals have been recovered in 23 European countries, mostly in France and Denmark. The graves are found usually in groups, in open country, in caves, under natural rock overhangs or in mollusk deposits. Most of the bodies are of middle-aged adults and infants, many of the adults show signs of deficient nutrition and injuries. Though inhumation was frequent, cremations, re-deposition burials7, partial burials, and secondary burials8 occurred as did grave construction of wood and stone and many double burials. Graves good such as tools, jewelry, animal and human figurines were found especially with the 20- 40 year olds. In some cases there was coloring with red ochre, sacrificial pits, animal remains and hearths.
Membership in groups probably fluctuated. The broad cultural grouping at some sites suggests open membership at a wider scale. Possibly connected to an open system of mating between groups.
There was a sense of the past, present and future. This is reflected in economic strategies and in the presence of the human dead in habitation sites.
Distinction can be made between funeral rites and ancestor veneration. Human remains have turned up in small quantities at sites other than formal burial grounds.
A practical ethic of sharing and cooperation may have been reinforced by a conceptual order that united people and nature, the living and the dead.
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