This paper presents a review of AMS radiocarbon dating evidence for human occupation of Britain during the Late-glacial Interstadial. The dates are all on humanly modified materials, including artefacts, and on human bone. The CalPal program is used to test whether the earliest evidence of human presence shows any correlation with more widespread climatic events, and if the British chronology differs significantly from that of neighbouring regions of northwest Europe. In the second part of the paper a number of well-dated sites with British Late Upper Palaeolithic 'Creswellian' technology are examined and compared with lithic assemblages from The Netherlands and Belgium. The main conclusions of this work are that expansion of human populations into the northern edge of the upland zone just before or at the beginning of GI-1 was followed by repopulation of the British Isles possibly with very little time-lag. The British Creswellian sites offer evidence of this earliest resettlement, which is mainly focused on the upland margins of western and central Britain.

Flint implements with rounded ends, excavated at several Upper Palaeolithic sites in Denmark and Holland, are interpreted as strike-a-lights used in combination with pyrites. Experimental flints employed in this way show use-wear traces similar to those on the prehistoric specimens. It is suggested that the pyrite technique for fire production pre-dates wood-on-wood techniques, at least in Europe and in Greenland.

Abstract

From the sediments associated with Tertiary rifting in East Africa have come hominid remains and acceptable concentrations of stone artefacts dating before i.5 million years. Fruitful localities occur from Barogali in Djibouti in the north (Chavaillon et al. I987) via the Hadar (

No abstract