The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-prot purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details. Abstract: New data from the complex Lower Thames locality at Purfleet, Essex, reinforce the correlation of interglacial deposits there with Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 9, the second of four postAnglian (MIS 12) interglacials recorded in the river terrace sequence east of London. Arising from various developer-funded archaeologically-driven projects, and primarily the construction of 'High Speed 1' (HS1: formerly the Channel Tunnel Rail Link), the new evidence includes additions to palaeontological knowledge of this interglacial, notably from ostracods and vertebrates, results from isotopic analyses of shell and concretionary carbonates, and the first application of numerical geochronological techniques at Purfleet. These analyses, combined with mutual climatic modelling of the ostracods, confirm that deposition of the fossilferous deposits coincided with interglacial conditions, with similar-to-or warmer-than-present summer temperatures and colder winters, providing a suggestion of greater continentality. OSL and amino-acid racemisation support correlation of the interglacial with MIS 9, whereas the climatic and sedimentological evidence points to correlation with the earliest and warmest substage (MIS 9e). There is also evidence that a greater part of the Purfleet sequence might date from the interglacial, although whether these also represent MIS 9e or later parts of the complex stage cannot be determined. The additional archaeological material is consistent with previous interpretations of a tripartite stratigraphical sequence of lithic traditions: basal Clactonian, above which is Acheulian (handaxe manufacture), followed by one of the earliest British appearances of Levallois technique.
ABSTRACTNew data from the complex Lower Thames locality at Purfleet, Essex, reinforce the correlation of interglacial deposits there with Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 9, the second of four post-Anglian (MIS 12) interglacials recorded in the river terrace sequence east of London. Arising from various developer-funded archaeologically-driven projects, and primarily the construction of 'High Speed 1' (HS1: formerly the Channel Tunnel Rail Link), the new evidence includes additions to palaeontological knowledge of this interglacial, notably from ostracods and vertebrates, results from isotopic analyses of shell and concretionary carbonates, and the first application of geochronological techniques at Purfleet. These analyses, combined with palaeotemperature estimates from the Mutual Ostracod Temperate Range...