The earliest occupation of Europe: the British Isles

Gamble, Clive, Roberts, Mark and Bridgland, David (1995) The earliest occupation of Europe: the British Isles. In, Roebroeks, Wil and Van Kolfschoten, Thijs (eds.) The Earliest Occupation of Europe. (Analecta Praehistorica Leidensia, 27) Leiden, NL. University of Leiden, pp. 165-191.

Abstract

The evidence presented here suggests that the British Isles was first colonized at the beginning of the temperate or interglacial stage that immediately pre-dates the Anglian cold Stage. Lithostratigraphic and chronostratigraphic modelling correlates the Anglian with Oxygen Isotope Stage 12, which is dated to between 478 and 423 Kyr BP. Accordingly, the earliest occupation of Britain occurred around half a million years ago. The early colonizers are assigned, from the Boxgrove specimen, to the species Homo cf heidelbergensis. One hundred thousand years later, at Swanscombe, this group begins to exhibit some cranial skeletal characteristics usually associated with the Neanderthal lineage. Throughout the period covered by this paper there is apparent stasis in the lithic industries, which include both biface dominant assemblages and flake tool dominant assemblages. Strict division between these two types of assemblages is no longer tenable on typological or chronological grounds.

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