Palaeolithic and Mesolithic discoveries in South Essex, UK

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The Palaeolithic (450 000 - 8000BC) and Mesolithic (8000 - 4000BC) Periods

These are the names given by archaeologists to the periods with the earliest evidence for human settlement in Britain. Stone tools, particularly flint, form the main type of object which survives from these remote times. Objects of wood and bone might have been just as common but they only survive under very special circumstances. Palaeolithic means Old Stone Age and covers the date range of 450,000 - 8,000 years BC. The Mesolithic, Middle Stone Age, covers the range of 8,000 - 4,000 years BC (before the birth of Christ).

This is the Clacton spear, over 400,000 years old and the oldest wooden implement ever found in Britain. It is the tip of a spear used in hunting. Recently, complete examples of wooden spears of similar age have been found in Schoningen, Germany.

But hold on! If this site is supposed to be about south Essex, why are we looking at a spear from Clacton? Well oddly enough, despite being found in Clacton it actually came from the Thames.

Over 400,000 years ago the sea level was lower and the Thames flowed right across east Essex and out through Clacton, turning towards the sea which then lay well beyond the present shoreline. Over many thousands of years the climate alternated between cold and warm periods, ice sheets grew and shrank and sea levels fluctuated. The Thames was forced progressively south towards its modern channel, and left great sheets of sand and gravel, which now form giant steps in the landscape.

The vast deposits of sand and gravel left by the Thames are, of course, what has made south and east Essex such an important area for mineral extraction. These same deposits of sand and gravel also contain some of the best evidence available in Britain, which can be used by geologists and archaeologists for the study of these remote times hundreds of thousands of years ago.

These four maps show the movement of the Thames south towards its present course, the top left is the earliest in this sequence. As you can see, the familiar placenames of south Essex have a particular significance for geologists and archaeologists, as they have been given to the various deposits of sands and gravels left by the Thames – Barling gravel, Corbets Tey gravel and so forth.

This ridge is the edge of the Corbets Tey gravel terrace viewed from the present Thames floodplain near Gun Hill, West Tilbury. Quarrying for minerals used in construction work and deep excavations required for major infrastructure projects provide opportunities to record and study the evidence contained in the sands and gravels. Corbets Tey gravel was exposed and recorded in 1979.

Steps cut in the side of the former quarry at Dolphin Pit; Thurrock allowed recording to take place before construction of a new access road. The bands of different coloured sands, gravels and clays indicate deposits laid down by the Thames and its tributaries in different environmental conditions. Study of the plant and animal remains preserved within these layers, can be used to reconstruct past environments.

Bones of a jungle cat, like the one shown in this picture were found at Dolphin pit. Such animals now live in swampy areas of tropical regions – frogs form a major part of their diet. The animal life is a reminder of just how different climatic conditions were during the Palaeolithic, sometimes much warmer and at others much colder, when south Essex had a landscape like the tundra found today in the arctic regions.

In the 1960s, the bones of two different kinds of extinct elephant species, a straight tusked elephant and a woolly mammoth, were found in a Quarry at Aveley. This picture by A.J.Sutcliffe shows the excavation of the elephants in the side of the quarry in 1964. A closer look shows the mammoth bones being excavated.

Although the mammoth and the straight tusked elephant were found close together, the mammoth was found rather higher up the quarry side and this difference in height represents a considerable difference in age.

This painting gives an idea of the appearance of south Essex during the period when Woolly Mammoths thrived. Along with the mammoth, Red deer and Woolly Rhinoceros roamed the Tundra.

Flint implements like these from a gravel pit at Barling are the main evidence for the presence of human populations, who lived by gathering wild plant food and hunting animals.

During the Mesolithic, at the beginning of the latest warm period, the one we are still living in, trees began to recolonise south Essex. Woodland spread across the landscape with significant breaks around the edges of lakes, streams and rivers. The changing environment can be reconstructed from plant pollen and other evidence preserved in buried peats and clays.

Such deposits have been exposed and recorded at many locations, particularly during quarrying in the Lea valley. A site at Enfield Lock revealed a sequence of peats and clays, pollen gave good indication of the spread of first pine forest and then mixed hazel/elm woodland.

Evidence from elsewhere indicates that later in the Mesolithic, oak and lime trees dominated the woodland. Also present in the Enfield Lock deposits were dense accumulations of freshwater snail shells.

This map gives a rough indication of the Essex coast as it may have been around 6,000 BC. At that time the Thames swung north to be joined by the Crouch and Blackwater, to form a broad estuarine complex, extensive lowlands would have been available for human occupation, but would have been progressively inundated as the sea level continued to rise. Significant Mesolithic sites have been recorded in the intertidal zones of the upper Crouch and Blackwater estuaries, when they were occupied these sites were located on dry land, perhaps base camps from which the lower lying areas to the east were exploited.

The flint tools of this period were highly distinctive, consisting of very small blades, which could be hafted into wooden handles to form a wide variety of tools. Larger tools such as axes and maceheads were also made. The hills around Rayleigh and Thundersley seem to have been particularly favoured areas for occupation during the Mesolithic and large collections of Mesolithic flint tools were recovered during the course of sand and gravel extraction in the early 20^th century.