Life before Stonehenge: The hunter-gatherer occupation and environment of Blick Mead revealed by sedaDNA, pollen and spores.

The Neolithic and Bronze Age construction and habitation of the Stonehenge Landscape has been extensively explored in previous research. However, little is known about the scale of pre-Neolithic activity and the extent to which the later monumental complex occupied an 'empty' landscape. There has been a long-running debate as to whether the monumental archaeology of Stonehenge was created in an uninhabited forested landscape or whether it was constructed in an already partly open area of pre-existing significance to late Mesolithic hunter-gatherers.