Since the production of Finlay’s essay there has been promising work on the research of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic archaeology in South Lanarkshire. The publication of Howburn Farm has shown the lifeways of Palaeolithic people learning how to use locally available, albeit inferior, materials such as chert. As well as showing the open air working sites for primary, high waste work to keep mess outwith dwellings and undertaking fine work beside the fire. While sites belonging to the Mesolithic have been shown in more upland locations which is unexpected due to the concentration of sites in the flood plain at Daer Valley. This shows that people were utilising all parts of the valleys.
The new research outlined above is concentrated within South Lanarkshire limiting the understanding of the Palaeolithic or Mesolithic wider in the Clyde Valley (Figure 3: New Palaeolithic and Mesolithic Sites in the CVARF Area). The call from Finlay to continue searching for Palaeolithic and Mesolithic activity in unusual circumstances has so far not been answered to produce new sites in these areas. It is interesting to note that although it can be argued there is a preference in wider Palaeolithic and Mesolithic research on Coastal and estuarian locations this is not evident for the Clyde Valley area. There are two main concentrations within the Clyde Valley in South Lanarkshire and the Muirshiel Hills covering Inverclyde and Renfrewshire, both of these concentrations reside in upland locations. There is a currently unknown resource in the Clyde Valley in estuarian locations.
Coastal sites related to Mesolithic lifeways have also been more varied throughout Scotland when compared to the current historic record seen throughout the Clyde Valley including, shell middens and estuarian footprints at the Severn (Scales 2007). Finlay discusses missing these organic features of Mesolithic life creates a fragmentary picture of the period and the possibility of finding unexpected discoveries is missed. Unfortunately, the new sites discovered since the production of the 2015 essay has still relied on lithic artefacts and the lifeways of people travelling through the Valleys of South Lanarkshire is still unknown.
Happily, there have been more Mesolithic sites discovered through commercial activities which as all new sites discussed through this chapter were discovered this way. Although this again is concentrated throughout South Lanarkshire, which adds to the current bias within the archaeological record. The recent archaeological research of Mesolithic routeways at the Chest of Dee with clear parallels with Daer Valley, South Lanarkshire and Midross, Loch Lomond shows that the landscape was anything but static. This directly opposes the picture currently seen through the historic environment record as the concentration within South Lanarkshire shows a static picture of Palaeolithic and Mesolithic occupation.
Finlay discusses the ways to enhance archaeological research throughout the Clyde valley as locating and re-evaluating antiquarian assemblages, many of which are missing such as Woodend Loch (2015, 12). Enhanced understanding of lithic technologies enables further understanding of these artefacts as some lithics have been reinterpreted as not Mesolithic, but much later and Howburn Farm artefacts originally described as Mesolithic lithics were discovered to be Palaeolithic discussed by Ballin et al (2018). As mentioned in ‘The Nature of the Evidence’ three of the assemblages recorded as Mesolithic are in possession of the finder and two others were not located in museum assemblages which highlight the challenging nature of the historic record as it exists today. This is especially prevalent when the smaller concentration of sites in the Muirshiel Hills have not been revisited since the discovery by Newhall in the 1960s.