The majority of the 17 papers in this volume were presented as conference papers at the Theoretical Archaeology Group (TAG) conference in 1999 at Cardiff, Wales, in the session 'Peopling the Mesolithic in a Northern Environment'. The approach adopted was to investigate the social Mesolithic, a radical departure from traditional approaches to the period, which tends to focus on flint typologies rather than people. Many of the themes and debates raised by these papers have been discussed and argued at a number of subsequent conferences, sessions and day schools on reconstructing the social Mesolithic. The debate continues, and hopefully the papers in this volume will engender further discussion.