Hunter-gatherers
As the climate improved, mesolithic hunter-gatherers extended their range into Scotland. The earliest evidence to date are flint artefacts found at Howburn Farm, near Elsrickle in 2005. This is the first and so far only evidence of Upper Paleolithic human habitation in Scotland, which appears to fall between the Younger Dryas and Lomond Stadial periods when cold conditions returned relatively briefly.
An early settlement at Cramond, near what is today Edinburgh, has been dated to around 8500 BC. Pits and stakeholes suggest a hunter-gatherer encampment, and microlith stone tools made at the site predate finds of similar style in England. Although no bones or shells had survived the acid soil, numerous carbonised hazelnut shells indicate cooking in a similar way to finds at other Mesolithic period sites including the slightly earlier Star Carr and Britain's oldest house, the Howick house in Northumberland dated to 7600 BC, where post holes indicate a very substantial construction, and the finds are interpreted as being a permanent residence for hunting people. This suggests that hunter-gatherers could also have settled down in Scotland.
Other sites on the east coast and at lochs and rivers, and large numbers of rock shelters and shell middens around the west coast and islands, build up a picture of highly mobile people, often using sites seasonally and having boats for fishing and for transporting stone tools from sites where suitable materials are found. Finds of flint tools on Ben Lawers and at Glen Dee (a mountain pass through the Cairngorms) show that these people were capable of travelling well inland across the hills.
At a rock shelter and shell midden at Sand, Applecross on Wester Ross facing Skye, excavations have shown that around 7500 BC people had tools of bone, stone and antler, were living off shellfish, fish and deer using pot-boiler stones as a cooking method, were making beads from seashells and had ochre pigment and used shellfish which can produce purple dye.
Read more about this topic: Prehistoric Scotland