M25 roadworks reveal earliest UK Neanderthal occupation at Dartford
M25 roadworks reveal earliest UK Neanderthal occupation at Dartford
As anyone travelling on the roads of southeast England between 2006 and 2008 has probably been aware, major improvements have recently been made at the junction of the M25 and A2 motorways, south of the main Dartford crossing of the River Thames (Fig. 1). The roadworks, funded by the UK Highways Agency, with the main contractors Jacobs Babtie and Costain, were accompanied by archaeological investigations carried out by Oxford Archaeology between 2003 and 2006. The archaeological programme had a major Palaeolithic/Pleistocene element under my direction (Fig. 2) that has produced evidence of Neanderthal occupation early in the last glaciation (the Devensian, which lasted from 115 000 to 10 000 bp), during a period when Britain had until now, been thought to have been entirely deserted.
175-179
Wenban-Smith, Francis
d2cdf06f-ff1d-41f7-a57c-a9c8e25a2110
September 2010
Wenban-Smith, Francis
d2cdf06f-ff1d-41f7-a57c-a9c8e25a2110
Abstract
As anyone travelling on the roads of southeast England between 2006 and 2008 has probably been aware, major improvements have recently been made at the junction of the M25 and A2 motorways, south of the main Dartford crossing of the River Thames (Fig. 1). The roadworks, funded by the UK Highways Agency, with the main contractors Jacobs Babtie and Costain, were accompanied by archaeological investigations carried out by Oxford Archaeology between 2003 and 2006. The archaeological programme had a major Palaeolithic/Pleistocene element under my direction (Fig. 2) that has produced evidence of Neanderthal occupation early in the last glaciation (the Devensian, which lasted from 115 000 to 10 000 bp), during a period when Britain had until now, been thought to have been entirely deserted.
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Published date: September 2010
Additional Information:
A scientific paper on the work reported on here has been published in Journal of Quaternary Science - see eprint 159361
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Local EPrints ID: 183339
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/183339
PURE UUID: 3e62afa6-f86c-46ea-a527-23de2acd0690
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Date deposited: 28 Apr 2011 10:53
Last modified: 14 Mar 2024 03:03
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