21 Chapter 3 The Lower/Middle Palaeolithic Resource Assessment and Research Agenda by Francis Wenban-Smith, Terry Hardaker, Robert Hosfield, Rebecca Loader, Barbara Silva, Keith Wilkinson, David Bridgland and Kate Cramp Introduction of Pleistocene sediments; and then the questions are: what do they contain in the way of Palaeolithic remains, This review of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic resource and how important are these remains for current in the Solent-Thames region considers the region as a research? Central to answering these questions is the whole, embracing the five county authorities of Bucking - nature of the sediment containing any remains, how it hamshire, Oxfordshire, Berkshire, Hampshire and the Isle formed, and the taphonomy of the evidence contained. of Wight. Previous reviews (Table 3.1) have given a This section is based, therefore, upon reviews of the detailed picture of the resource in each county. This range of Pleistocene sediments within the region, their synthesis combines this information to provide a more differing formation processes, and consequently the general overview of the nature, distribution, diversity and varied potential importance of any contained potential importance of the resource in the region. Palaeolithic remains. Attention is then given to the Before addressing these central themes, some general distribution, prevalence and potential of the Palaeolithic background is provided on the British Palaeolithic, and remains in the different deposits in the region, and to the Pleistocene geological period during which it identification of key areas/sites. occurred. Following this, the current landscape of the The resource review is then followed by an interpre- Solent-Thames region is reviewed, focusing on tive overview of our current understanding of the Lower/ topography, drainage and bedrock geology, but also Middle Palaeolithic in the region. This looks at the considering the potential for paleoenvironmental and regional history of occupation within the wider national human remains ; these contemporary landscape aspects context, and presents interpretations of lifestyle and are intimately related to the present survival and distribu- behaviour. The final section briefly reviews the end of tion of Pleistocene deposits, and the story they tell of the Lower/Middle Palaeolithic in Britain, and the transi- climatic change and landscape development through the tion to Upper Palaeolithic. long period covered by the Lower/Middle Palaeolithic. As will become clear, the approach taken to the core object of reviewing the Lower/Middle Palaeo lithic Background resource in the region is deposit-centred rather than find-centred. Clearly artefact finds are the most direct The inheritance: the British Palaeolithic in global evidence of the Palaeolithic; but, research into, and context understanding of, the period depends almost more upon the context of discovery than upon the finds themselves. The Palaeolithic, or Old Stone Age, is the earliest period Most importantly, the potential for the existence of a of prehistory, representing the very substantial period of Palaeolithic site is initially contingent upon the presence time for which our main surviving evidence is lithic Table 3.1 County reviews of the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Resource County Author Title Link/Availability Berkshire Hosfield, R. Solent–Thames Research Framework: Lower/Middle Palaeolithic Resource (Berkshire) Buckinghamshire Silva, B. An Archaeological Resource Assessment of the Lower/Middle Palaeolithic in Buckinghamshire Hampshire Wilkinson, K. The Palaeolithic of Hampshire Isle of Wight Wenban-Smith, FF. The Isle of Wight: a Review of the Lower and & Loader, R. Middle Palaeolithic Resource Oxfordshire Hardaker, T. The Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of Oxfordshire 22 Solent-Thames Research Framework for the Historic Environment artefacts. Globally, the Palaeolithic begins in the east tion became much more frequent in Britain, although African Rift Valley over two million BP (years Before certainly not continuous. Further periodic deteriora- Present), with the manufacture of simple stone chopping tions in climate would have made Britain uninhabitable, tools by Australopithecines, a group of bipedal apes with and existing populations must either have again died a brain capacity not very different from the modern out, or moved southward to the continent. Britain would chimpanzee. The initial hominin expansion out of Africa then have become inhabitable again as the climate took place between 1.5 and 1 million years ago, and ameliorated. Sea levels would, however, have risen with involved eastward migration across southern Europe the warming climate, and, once the straits of Dover had into Asia (Dennell 2003). The hominins at this stage, been created through breaching the Dover–Calais Chalk named as Homo erectus or Homo ergaster, and much more ridge, probably shortly after the end of the Anglian recognisably human than their Australopithecine (Gibbard 1995), access to Britain would have been ancestors, were capable of inhabiting a range of tropical effectively obstructed during warm periods. The and sub-tropical regions, but could not yet cope with the potential of hominids and other fauna to recolonise seasonality of the higher European latitudes. would have been governed by a sensitively balanced The start of the British Palaeolithic is defined by the combination of the distribution of the refuge population, earliest hominin presence in Britain as reflected in lithic its rate of expansion as climate changed and the rate of artefacts. Clearly this is therefore not an easily fixed sea level rise. Once a population had returned to Britain date, but one liable to vary in conjunction with new it would then be isolated from the continent by high sea- discoveries and with improved dating of existing level until the following climatic deterioration. This remains. Initial expansion into Britain and northern history of contact with the northern European mainland Europe seems to have consisted of very occasional through the Palaeolithic, and of abandonment and forays during periods of warm climate between 800,000 recolonisation of Britain, or of extinction of its popula- and 500,000 BP. A few very early sites of this age are tion, is still poorly understood. known in France and Spain, as well as one recently The Palaeolithic population of Britain seems to have discovered in Britain at Pakefield on the Norfolk coast flourished for at least 150,000 years following the end of (Parfitt et al. 2005). These pioneer populations failed to the Anglian glaciation. Numerous sites of this period, establish themselves, however, and soon died out. often with very abundant evidence, are found across Following these isolated occurrences of very early southern Britain. Then, after c. 250,000 BP, there seems hominin presence, there then was a major range to have been a marked decline in Palaeolithic occupa- expansion northward into Britain and northern Europe tion. Between this time and the end of the Palaeolithic at c. 500,000 years ago. There are a number of sites from c.10,000 BP, there again seems to have been only very this period with evidence of stone tool manufacture sporadic incursions into Britain by the Palaeolithic (Roebroeks & van Kolfschoten 1994; 1995), associated populations that were relatively abundant and almost with the early western European Homo heidelbergensis, continuously present on the European continent. As is named after a jawbone found in a quarry at Mauer, near explained in more detail further below, this period of Heidelberg, in Germany. The main British site is absence coincides with the spread across Europe and Boxgrove in West Sussex, where an extensive area of western Asia of the Neanderthal people, their undisturbed lithic evidence is associated with abundant subsequent extinction and the first appearance in Britain faunal remains and palaeo-environmental indicators, as of anatomically modern humans in c. 30,000 BP. well as fossil remains of two hominid individuals (Pitts The other key points to take on board when consid- & Roberts 1997; Roberts & Parfitt 1999). These ering the Palaeolithic are that it is an immensely long comprise two lower front incisors from one individual, period of time, at least 600,000 years in Britain, and that and a shinbone from another. Hominid remains from almost the only evidence of the period are stone artefacts this period are so rare that the Heidelberg and Boxgrove that we recognise as humanly worked. These are found in finds comprise the full northern European skeletal a range of natural Pleistocene deposits, and our record of this early ancestor. understanding of the Palaeolithic is mostly based upon One of the key factors to bear in mind when consid- our interpretation of the context in which lithic artefacts ering the British Palaeolithic is that it coincides with the are found, and study of associated faunal and floral second half of the Pleistocene geological period (aka remains. These lead to dating of sites and construction of ‘The Ice Age’). During the Pleistocene, there were frameworks of material cultural change, climatic and repeated climatic oscillations between warm, interglacial palaeo-environmental reconstruction, and, on rare conditions and severe cold. This would have inevitably occasions when artefacts are undisturbed, direct resulted in major variations in the character of day-to- reconstruction of hominin activity. day existence over time, as well as upon long-term