People like Cheddar Man were hunter-gatherers — they did not farm or keep domestic animals (except, possibly, dogs), did not grow crops, and did not maintain permanent settlements in the way that later Neolithic communities would. Instead, they moved through the landscape according to the seasonal availability of food resources, exploiting different areas and different species at different times of year.
The evidence from Gough’s Cave and other Mesolithic sites in Britain suggests a diet centered on large mammals — deer, aurochs, wild pig — supplemented by fish, shellfish, birds, and plant foods including hazelnuts, which leave clear archaeological traces and were apparently an important caloric resource. Isotope analysis of bones from Mesolithic individuals can provide more specific information about diet, but the specific dietary profile of Cheddar Man himself is not established from sources accessible for this article.
What the cave artifacts tell us about the people who occupied Gough’s Cave during the Mesolithic is that they were technologically sophisticated in ways appropriate to their economic strategy. Flint tools found in the cave include the small, carefully shaped blades called microliths that are characteristic of Mesolithic technology — tools designed to be hafted into composite weapons like arrows and spears, enabling efficient hunting of the mobile, fast-moving animals that formed the basis of the Mesolithic diet.
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## The Cave Before Cheddar Man: A Much Older Occupation
One of the most important guardrails in understanding Cheddar Man is the distinction between him and the human remains found at the same cave from a much earlier period.