Notes on Palaeolithic Flakes from Ilford

Abstract

of the scarcity of artefacts in this fossiliferous brickearth, these flakes are of considerable value as evidence of man's activity during the accumulation of the deposit. The three flakes were recorded by J. J. Wymer (1968,, but he wisely refrained from attempting to identify the cultural tradition which they represented. Many earlier writers have identified flakes as 'Mousterian' or 'Levalloisian' without paying sufficient regard to the strict criteria which should be applied when making such attributions. In view of the very few artefacts recorded from the Ilford Brickearth, there is little doubt that when A. S. Kennard (1916, 255) referred to 'Levalloisian finds' from this site he was making an assessment of the two blade-like flakes found by his friend Frank Corner, and I must confess that I 'followed suit' (Oakley 1963, 89). On retirement from the staff of the British Museum (Nat. Hist.) I resolved to ask a specialist in flint technology to re-study and make a professional assessment of the Ilford flakes. Through his visiting the Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre at 60 Banbury Road, Oxford, I was able to interest Dr Mark Newcomer in this problem, with the result that he undertook to write the notes which follow,, while his wife prepared the accompanying drawings ( fig. 1-3).It may be helpful to the reader if I place the Ilford artefacts in their geological context. Extensive pits for brickearth were worked throughout the nineteenth century at the northern end of the Uphall Road, Ilford (now in the borough of Redbridge), notably on the west side (TQ 436856). These workings attracted much attention from geologists on account of the quantities of fossil mammalian bones and teeth, and molluscan shells, which were brought to light from time to time. The Ilford Brickearth is particularly renowned for the tusks, molars and bones of elephant. More than 100 individuals of elephant had been reported from the Ilford pits by the 1870s (Woodward and Davies 1874, 395). The majority of the elephant remains from Ilford belong to the early species of mammoth, Elephas (Mammuthus) trogontherii, but examples of the straight-tusked elephant, Elephas (Palaeoloxodori) antiquus have been recorded in small numbers in lower and upper levels of the brickearth. A recent exposure through the brickearth was described by Rolfe (1958) who reported that it was 10 ft (3^05 m) thick, resting on 3 ft (0-9 m) of fossiliferous sand. The base of the brickearth ranged from 33 ft (10 m) to 25 ft (7-6 m) above Ordnance Datum along a N to S line.