Hominid colonisation and the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic of the West Midlands

Abstract

The recognition over the last 20 years that the Quaternary deposits of the West Midlands cover a longer period of time than previously envisaged has led to a re-analysis of their contained Palaeolithic archaeology. Stone tools have been found in the region for over a hundred years and cover most periods of hominid colonisation from the time of the earliest occupants of the country over half a million years ago. Twentieth century research in the West Midlands, often led by Professor F. W. Shotton at the University of Birmingham, correlated the Palaeolithic of the region with the Quaternary geological sequence as it was then understood. Shotton identified the ‘Wolstonian’ glaciation as the key event of the Midlands Pleistocene, around which a chronology for the Palaeolithic could be built and gave an age of less than 250 kyr for this episode. Work since 1985 has compared the Midlands sequence with the oxygen isotope record of the ocean basins and shown that the concept of a relatively recent ‘Wolstonian’ is now untenable and that the former chronology built around it is too short for the observed events in the area. This new time paradigm, with the earliest occupation of the area thought to be c. 500 kyr, has made necessary a reconsideration of the chronology of the Palaeolithic and Middle Pleistocene of the area. This new time framework brings into critical focus the issue of reworking of the archaeology and its true age. The tools themselves present complications of analysis compared to many other areas containing a Palaeolithic record, perhaps most notably through the use of largely non-flint raw materials, some which may have been introduced into the area by early humans or an hither-to unidentified glacial event. This opportunity to present a new chronology of occupation comes out of the work carried out by the ‘Shotton Project’ based at the University of Birmingham, and by the University of Liverpool.

The human colonisation of Europe: where are we?

“…This is especially the case in Britain, where a lot of pioneer work on many of the issues still at stake today has been done, and where many of the archaeological sites under study today were already known before the closing of the nineteenth century (Roebroeks, 1996). During much of the Palaeolithic, the British Isles indeed formed 'the edge of the world' (Lang and Keen, 2005), which makes this northwestern tip of the Eurasian landmass a good laboratory for monitoring the ebb and flow of human occupation and hence hominin adaptations-indeed, this was an important rationale behind the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project. Europe itself serves this purpose for the larger picture of expansion and contraction, situated as it is at the edge of the vast distributions of the Old World's Pleistocene hominins, of which more than a century of Quaternary research has only examined a very small part, as Robin Dennell keeps reminding us (Dennell, 2001(Dennell, , 2003(Dennell, , 2004.…”

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

“…The earliest finds in the latter decades of the 19th century remained rarities until the opening of extensive sand and gravel quarries in the 1930s which began to add to the numbers of earlier discoveries (Evans, 1897;Shotton, 1930Shotton, , 1937Lang and Keen, 2005b). The focus of the recovery of stone tools has always been the area in an arc 7 to 8 km to the south and west of Coventry, where thick sequences of commercially high-grade sand and gravel of the Baginton Formation and the Avon river terraces have been dug for at least 70 years in a series of pits around the villages of Baginton, Brandon and Bubbenhall (Fig.…”

“…A series of finds has been made during this time, most recently in the late 1980s. However, interpretation of these has been made difficult because of the almost total lack of in situ recovery, with the vast majority of artefacts being found on the floors of the pits, gravel processing plant or reject heaps (Shotton, 1930(Shotton, , 1937Fennell and Shotton, 1977;Shotton and Wymer, 1989;Lang and Keen, 2005b). Complications in attributing artefacts to particular source formations were compounded by the occurrence in many of the pits of significant thicknesses of river terrace sediment of the Rivers Avon and Sowe immediately overlying the Baginton Formation.…”

“…Complications in attributing artefacts to particular source formations were compounded by the occurrence in many of the pits of significant thicknesses of river terrace sediment of the Rivers Avon and Sowe immediately overlying the Baginton Formation. These gravels could potentially have contained artefacts contemporary with them in time, but the close juxtaposition of terrace sediments with the Baginton Formation makes reworking from the lower unit a strong possibility (Maddy et al, 1991;Lang and Keen, 2005b). As the Midlands lacked resources of workable flint until the erratics brought by the Anglian glaciation allowed flint-based technologies to be widely used, many of the artefacts found in pre-Anglian deposits are made of local quartzite from the Triassic which is the major hard rock material with an outcrop in the Midlands, or from far-travelled fine-grained igneous rock types of which andesite is the most prominent (Lang and Keen, 2005a,b).…”

Introduction: the Palaeolithic occupation of Europe. A tribute to John J. Wymer, 1928–2006

“…The Late Middle Palaeolithic mammoth site at Lynford, Norfolk, was among the first projects to benefit from the new funding (Boismier, 2003). The Ice Age Network, an extension of the ALSF-funded Shotton Project, which focused on the Palaeolithic resources in the Midlands, has also provided a proactive means of maintaining watching briefs through local networks of extraction sites, and ensuring that new archaeological information is properly and consistently recorded (Lang and Keen, 2005).…”