Launde, a Terminal Palaeolithic Camp-site in the English Midlands and its North European Context

Abstract

The paper describes a small late Upper Palaeolithic open-air site situated on a prominent ridge top interfluve in the English Midlands. A discrete cluster of worked flint of late Palaeolithic blade technology was discovered within an excavated area of 100 m2. The lithic scatter represents the hearth-side activities of a short-term occupancy by a small hunting group with evidence for provisioning of flint, production of blades/bladelets, and toolkit maintenance. Spatial analysis provides some dynamics to these activities. The assemblage has strong affinities with the Late Glacial–early Post-glacial Long Blade industries of southern England and northern France but displays many attributes that are atypical of the classic sites. The Launde assemblage appears to be a missing fades of the Long Blade tradition. The blade technology and the typology of the projectile points are also closely paralleled further afield in Belgium, the Netherlands and western Germany, what might be termed a late Western Ahrensburgian, probably dating to the early Pre-Boreal at the beginning of the 10th millennium BP.