Swanscombe Palaeolithic site

Swanscombe Skull Site
Site of Special Scientific Interest
Monument marking the place where the first part of the skull was discovered in 1935
LocationKent
Grid referenceTQ 597 742[1]
InterestGeological
Area3.9 hectares (9.6 acres)[1]
Notification1988[1]
Location mapMagic Map

Swanscombe Skull Site or Swanscombe Heritage Park is a 3.9-hectare (9.6-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest in Swanscombe, north-west Kent, England.[1][2] It contains two Geological Conservation Review sites[3][4] and a National Nature Reserve.[5] The park lies in a former gravel quarry, Barnfield Pit,[6] which is the most important site in the Swanscombe complex, alongside several other nearby pits.[7]

Hand axes found by Marston at Swanscombe in the British Museum (not on display)

The area was already known for the finds of numerous Palaeolithic-era handaxes—mostly Acheulean and Clactonian artifacts, some as much as 400,000 years old—when in 1935/1936 work at Barnfield Pit uncovered two fossilised skull fragments. These fragments came to be known as the remains of Swanscombe Man but were later found to have belonged to a young woman.[8] The Swanscombe skull has been identified as early Neanderthal[9] or pre-Neanderthal,[10] (sometimes as Homo cf. heidelbergensis[11]) dating to the Hoxnian Interglacial around 400,000 years ago.[6]

Animals found at the site include the straight-tusked elephant (Palaeoloxodon antiquus), Irish elk (Megaloceros giganteus), fallow deer, red deer (Cervus elaphus), aurochs (Bos primigenius), Merck's rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis), and the narrow-nosed rhinoceros (Stephanorhinus hemitoechus), Barbary macaque (Macaca sylvanus), wild boar (Sus scrofa), Eurasian beaver (Castor fiber), as well as the European rabbit (Oryctolagus cuniculus).[11][12] A small number (6, representing 1.3% of the total) of the bones found at Swanscombe show evidence of butchery by hominins.[11] The environment at the time of deposition has been suggested to be a temperate forest of oak, alder and hazel, with some grassy areas.[13]

The skull fragments were found in the lower middle terrace gravels at a depth of almost 8 metres (26 ft). They were found by Alvan T. Marston, an amateur archaeologist who visited the pit between quarrying operations to search for flint tools. A third fragment from the same skull was found in 1955 by Bertram and John Wymer. Swanscombe is one of only two sites in Britain that have yielded Lower Paleolithic human fossils, the other being Boxgrove Quarry, West Sussex, where 500,000-year-old leg bones and teeth ("Boxgrove Man") have been found.

Further excavations, carried out between 1968 and 1972 by Dr John d'Arcy Waechter, uncovered more animal bone and flint tools and established the extent of the former shoreline on which the bones were found. Most of the bone finds are now in the Natural History Museum in London, with the stone finds at the British Museum.

The other key paleolithic sites in the UK are Happisburgh, Pakefield, Pontnewydd, Kents Cavern, Paviland and Gough's Cave.

  1. ^ a b c d "Designated Sites View: Swanscombe Skull Site". Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Natural England. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
  2. ^ "Map of Swanscombe Skull Site". Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Natural England. Archived from the original on 4 March 2016. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
  3. ^ "Swanscombe - Barnfield Pit (Quaternary of the Thames)". Geological Conservation Review. Joint Nature Conservation Committee. Archived from the original on 12 January 2018. Retrieved 12 January 2018.
  4. ^ "Barnfield Pit (Pleistocene Vertebrata)". Geological Conservation Review. Joint Nature Conservation Committee. Archived from the original on 15 January 2018. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
  5. ^ "Designated Sites View: Swanscombe Skull Site". National Nature Reserves. Natural England. Archived from the original on 24 May 2018. Retrieved 14 January 2018.
  6. ^ a b "Swanscombe Skull Site citation" (PDF). Sites of Special Scientific Interest. Natural England. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 January 2018. Retrieved 15 January 2018.
  7. ^ White, Tom S.; Preece, Richard C.; Whittaker, John E. (June 2013). "Molluscan and ostracod successions from Dierden's Pit, Swanscombe: insights into the fluvial history, sea-level record and human occupation of the Hoxnian Thames". Quaternary Science Reviews. 70: 73–90. doi:10.1016/j.quascirev.2013.03.007.
  8. ^ Francis Wenban-Smith, Interpretation Archived 2013-07-26 at the Wayback Machine. Retrieved 6 May 2008
  9. ^ Hendry, Lisa (15 December 2017). "First Britons". Natural History Museum. Archived from the original on 4 August 2018. Retrieved 17 April 2019.
  10. ^ Ashton, Nick (2017). Early Humans. London, UK: William Collins. p. 147. ISBN 978-0-00-815035-8.
  11. ^ a b c Smith, Geoff M. (October 2013). "Taphonomic resolution and hominin subsistence behaviour in the Lower Palaeolithic: differing data scales and interpretive frameworks at Boxgrove and Swanscombe (UK)". Journal of Archaeological Science. 40 (10): 3754–3767. doi:10.1016/j.jas.2013.05.002.
  12. ^ Ashton, Nick (July 2016). "The human occupation of Britain during the Hoxnian Interglacial". Quaternary International. 409: 41–53. doi:10.1016/j.quaint.2015.11.055.
  13. ^ Key, Alastair; Deter, Chris; Muthana, Angela; Dolding-Smith, Jessica; McFarlane, Gina; Mahoney, Patrick (December 2020). "Rediscovery of fossils from the middle gravels and lower loam at Barnfield Pit, Swanscombe, Kent (UK)". Journal of Archaeological Science: Reports. 34: 102668. doi:10.1016/j.jasrep.2020.102668.