A Lower Palaeolithic industry from the Cromerian (MIS 13) Baginton Formation of Waverley Wood and Wood Farm Pits, Bubbenhall, Warwickshire, UK

Abstract

Artefacts of Cromerian (MIS 13) age recovered from extensions to the classic site of Waverley Wood Farm Pit, Warwickshire, give new insights into the Lower Palaeolithic and Pleistocene geological record of the English Midlands. The Baginton Formation in the area to the south and southwest of Coventry has been the major source of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts in the Midlands since the first discoveries in the 1930s. Current sand and gravel workings at Waverley Wood and Wood Farm Pits near the village of Bubbenhall, have provided artefacts of quartzite, andesite and flint together with sparse large mammal material. Some of the Lower Palaeolithic finds were in situ in the succession providing, for the first time, firm evidence of their geological provenance. The variety and number of the artefacts allows detailed evaluation of the largest group of Lower Palaeolithic tools to be found in the West Midlands. The petrology of some of the tools and associated clasts in the gravels at the base of the Baginton Formation allow speculation on the origin of the rock types from northwest and eastern England which may have been brought to the West Midlands by a pre-Anglian glaciation or just possibly by human transport.

Improved age constraint for pre‐ and post‐Anglian temperate‐stage deposits in north Norfolk, UK, from analysis of serine decomposition in Bithynia opercula

“…This value is comparable with that for Waverley Wood (W % 4.81 AE 0.17; Westaway, 2009a), a temperatestage fluvial site in central England thought to represent the last temperate stage before the Anglian glaciation (e.g. Keen et al, 2006). Both on this basis and taking account of the temperature calibration of protein degradation in Fig.…”

An aminostratigraphy for the British Quaternary based on Bithynia opercula

“…The discovery of Acheulian hand-axes in primary context at Boxgrove, Sussex, dispelled any remaining doubt, although some of the geochronology at the site indicated an MIS 11 age (Bowen and Sykes, 1994), a view at odds with the mammalian biostratigraphy suggesting an MIS 13 age (Roberts, 1994; Roberts and Parfitt, 1999). Bithynia does not occur in the archaeological horizons at Boxgrove but our data clearly support the pre-Anglian age for other archaeological sites in southern England, such as Pakefield (Parfitt et al., 2005) and Waverley Wood (Shotton et al., 1993; Lang and Keen, 2005; Keen et al., 2006). Indeed, the data show that human occupation occurred within at least two distinct pre-Anglian stages, the older (Pakefield) associated with Mimomys and the younger (Waverley Wood) with Arvicola .…”

Biostratigraphic and aminostratigraphic constraints on the age of the Middle Pleistocene glacial succession in north Norfolk, UK

“…Interestingly, several beetle species, such as Micropeplus hoogendorni (¼ M. dokuchaevi), are only known in Britain from Happisburgh 1, Waverley Wood and the Pools Farm Pit nearby (Shotton et al, 1993;Maddy et al, 1994) and Mathon in Herefordshire (Coope et al, 2002), suggesting that these sites might all be contemporary (Coope, 2006). Waverley Wood is another site that has yielded Arvicola and archaeology (Shotton et al, 1993;Keen et al, 2006) implying an age younger than sites with Mimomys, such as West Runton. The timing of the Mimomys-Arvicola transition in western Europe is critical and has consequently been much debated (e.g.…”