Elsevier

Quaternary Science Reviews

Volume 101, 1 October 2014, Pages 159-176
Quaternary Science Reviews

Late persistence of the Acheulian in southern Britain in an MIS 8 interstadial: evidence from Harnham, Wiltshire

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.quascirev.2014.07.002Get rights and content

Highlights

  • The site preserves an area of undisturbed hominin occupation and activity.

  • The site is the youngest published, well-dated handaxe site in NW Europe.

  • A range of mammalian and other palaeo-environmental remains are present.

  • The faunal remains included large mammal bones showing signs of hominin interference.

  • The site is dated towards the end of MIS 8.

Abstract

This paper presents evidence of the discovery of a new Middle Pleistocene site in central southern England, with undisturbed evidence of hominin occupation well-dated to an interstadial towards the end of Marine Isotope Stage 8, c. 250,000 BP. The site consists of a preserved remnant of a river terrace and its alluvial floodplain overlain by chalk-rich bankside deposits, all abutting a Chalk bedrock riverbank. It preserves an area of occupation with activity focused on the riverbank, complemented by occasional activity on a palaeo-landsurface developed on the surface of the alluvial floodplain. Lithic technology at the site consists almost entirely of handaxe manufacture, allowing attribution to an Acheulian industrial tradition. Mammalian and other palaeo-environmental remains are present and associated with the occupation horizons, including large mammal bones showing signs of hominin interference. Dating was based on OSL determinations on the sediments and amino acid racemisation of molluscan remains, supported by biostratigraphic indications. Besides being a rare instance of an undisturbed Palaeolithic palaeo-landscape covering several hectares, the site contributes to wider Quaternary research concerns over the ability of Middle Pleistocene hominins to tolerate colder climatic episodes in higher latitudes, and over settlement history and changing lithic industrial traditions of northwest Europe in relation to climate change and British peninsularity. It is suggested that the Harnham evidence may represent an insular population that had persisted in southern Britain since MIS 10/9, which became locally extinct during the glacial maximum 8.2 marking the end of MIS 8.

Introduction

Over the last 50 years our understanding of the British Lower/Middle Palaeolithic record has mainly been enhanced by reinvestigation of sites first discovered and described in the 19th or early 20th century, e.g. Swanscombe (Ashton et al., 1996), Hoxne (Singer et al., 1993; Ashton et al., 2008), Barnham (Ashton et al., 1998), High Lodge (Ashton et al., 1992) and Baker's Hole, Northfleet (Wenban-Smith, 1995). However, it has been rare that entirely new sites, such as the undisturbed landscape at Boxgrove in Sussex (Roberts and Parfitt, 1999) and the evidence of very early occupation on the East Anglian coast at Pakefield and Happisburgh (Parfitt et al., 2005, Parfitt et al., 2010) are discovered and excavated. The decreased discovery of new sites in the later 20th century is probably due to increased mechanisation of quarrying activities together with reduced collector access to active quarries. However, since the early 1990s archaeological evaluations in advance of construction have become more frequently required under the terms of British government planning policy guidance, note PPG 16 (Department of the Environment, 1990). Consequently large transects of the landscape affected by major infrastructural projects have begun to be more thoroughly investigated for threatened archaeological/Quaternary remains. As well as providing for further investigations of known sites affected by such works (e.g. at Baker's Hole, Wenban-Smith et al., in press), this has led to the discovery of entirely new sites – for instance, the Middle Pleistocene elephant butchery site in Kent, found during archaeological work in advance of High Speed 1 (Wenban-Smith, 2013), and the Late Pleistocene Neanderthal site at Lynford, Norfolk, found during routine monitoring of gravel extraction (Boismier et al., 2012).

Here we report on the discovery of a previously unknown late Middle Pleistocene occupation site at Harnham in the Avon Valley south of Salisbury, Wiltshire, UK (national grid reference SU 1520 2785) (Fig. 1). The site, found during archaeological evaluation in advance of a proposed ring road to the south of Salisbury, lies c. 500 m from a small mapped patch of river terrace gravel, but otherwise there was no prior indication, from either geological mapping or previous finds, of the nature of the deposits present or their significant archaeological content. This report reviews the discovery of the site, the geology and palaeoenvironmental remains, the age of the deposits, and provides a summary of the artefactual remains. Of particular relevance to wider Quaternary research issues are (a) the demonstration of British occupation in an interstadial within the cold stage MIS 8, (b) the abundant evidence of a technology dominated by handaxe manufacture, without any sign of Levalloisian prepared-core knapping approaches thought to be broadly coeval in other parts of the UK and north-west continental Europe, and (c) the contribution of the site to increasing understanding of the wider picture of lithic industrial variation and settlement history in Britain and north-west continental Europe in the later Middle Pleistocene.

Section snippets

Background

The site lies within the Hampshire Basin (Melville and Freshney, 1982) in a Chalk-dominated landscape on an interfluve between the Avon and Ebble valleys (Fig. 1) between c. 70 and 75 m O.D. Pleistocene sediments were first described in the Salisbury area by Lyell (1827) who drew attention to the fossiliferous deposits at Fisherton (see Green et al., 1983). Subsequently, the area was investigated by Reid (1903) and Sealey (1955) and most recently by the British Geological Survey (1976).

Current

Site investigation

The site was discovered during archaeological evaluation in advance of a proposed new road scheme – the Harnham Relief Road – to the south of Salisbury in late 2002. Following the discovery of a cluster of handaxes on the surface of a ploughed field along the proposed road route, a fieldwork programme was developed to investigate the Palaeolithic potential of the underlying sediments by fieldwalking, trial-trenching and deep test-pitting. This work identified a buried bank of chalk-rich

Stratigraphy

Individual stratigraphic units and a series of events documenting site development are described in Table 1; a schematic section through the site is shown in Fig. 3B.

The lowermost deposits (phase I) consisted of a series of coarse flint gravels overlying the Chalk bedrock at about 72 m O.D. These gravels contained a variable quantity of chalk clasts, significant amounts of cobble-sized material, mainly nodular flint, but also Palaeogene flint pebbles and Greensand chert were also noted. The

Palaeoenvironments

A schematic sequence of events leading to site formation is presented in Fig. 7. The basal phase I gravel sediments (lying between 72 and 74 m O.D.) appear to have accumulated under fluvial conditions. The coarse character of the gravels and their crude horizontal bedding suggests fluvial aggradation under cool to cold climate periglacial conditions within a braided channel environment. The eastern boundary of these deposits is not currently well-mapped, and they (like the overlying Pleistocene

Dating

OSL dating was applied in an attempt to directly date the sands of phase II at two locations (Table 5). Age estimates are based on sand-sized quartz grains extracted from each sample. Dose rates were calculated entirely by Neutron Activation Analysis (NAA) as the site was not visited and samples were taken by site staff. Low infrared stimulated luminescence (IRSL) values were observed, suggesting good quartz separation had been achieved. A relatively low degree of variability between aliquots

Palaeolithic archaeology

Lithic artefacts were recovered by three methods: controlled fieldwalking, during excavation of trial trenches by a combination of machine and hand-digging, and from small hand-excavated sondages in Trenches 58 and 65 (Fig. 2). At the southern end of Trench 58 a small sondage (c. 1 m2) sampled the phase IV chalk-rich bank-side deposits, which were excavated in seven (10 cm-thick) spits without reaching the base of the deposits. Artefacts identified during the sondage excavation were bagged by

Discussion

The discovery of the site at Harnham is of importance to both Quaternary scientists and Palaeolithic archaeologists. Reliably dated to an interstadial late in MIS 8 around 250,000 years ago, Harnham is the youngest well-dated example of an Acheulian industry in the UK, and one of the youngest in northwest Europe, where most Acheulian sites dating to MIS 8 or later (Tuffreau et al., 2008, Scott and Ashton, 2011) have bifaces in conjunction with significant elements of flake production strategies

Acknowledgements

The authors would like to thank Ken Whittaker of RPS, Mark Beasley and Sean Steadman who managed the project on behalf of Gifford and Partners and Tim Carew of Pre-Construct Archaeology who supervised on-site works. The following individuals are also thanked for help: Denis Bates for help in preparing the figures for publication; Sharon Gerber-Parfitt and Su Bates for undertaking the onerous task of sorting the samples for vertebrate remains; and Gilbert Marshall for sorting micro-debitage from

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