THE first phase of the archaeological investigations on the Rifle Range nature reserve in Kidderminster has been completed.

It was strongly suspected that the Rifle Range area was an important location for new Stone Age man and with the help of DEFRA and Mercian Archaeology a series of investigative trenches were excavated.

This was done in an area of the site that could potentially be used to recreate the rare lowland heath habitat.

The recreation work would potentially disturb large areas of soil and possibly lose any clues from this part of our history.

Unfortunately, from the archaeological point of view, no evidence of Stone Age man was unearthed, but a fine fragment of Roman pottery was discovered.

In the next few weeks, phase two of the project will be completed,which aims to look at the site's much more recent Second World War heritage and features.

While I have to admit I am disappointed we did not unearth a wealth of prehistoric finds, this does mean that all being well we can start up a rather challenging project to see if we can re-establish heath on a piece of pasture adjoining the nature reserve.

All the talk of Stone Age man on the Rifle Range once again made me start to think about what sort of environment those early people would be living in.

Firstly, the country as a whole would have been much more sparsely populated with some 2,500 people, which compares to the 90-odd thousand who live in the Wyre Forest district alone today.

The landscape would have larger numbers of animals living wild on it, with probably the most numerous being the red deer, which would have out-numbered people 500 to one.

There would also have been quite a few species roaming around which have become extinct from modern Britain, which would certainly have made life in prehistoric England a little more scary.

There would have been nearly three times as many wolves as people, and more than five times as many brown bears - both of which would have pre-dated early man.

Fortunately, at this time, there were no really big cat species, but there were considerable numbers of lynx.

On occasions in the much more distant past, before the great ice ages, there is evidence supporting the claim that there were big cats, lions in fact, living in England, and even hippos living in the big rivers, but this was well over 20,000 years ago, long before new Stone Age man.

Other animals which are relatively common in our times were quite scarce in the Mesolithic age.

Foxes and badgers have both greatly benefited from the changes in the environment and the elimination of their competitors and predictors, with nearly five and 10 times respectively the numbers of these animals found today than then.