Palæolithic Implements of the Warren Hill Gravel

Abstract

A SELECTION from nearly 1,300 flint implements in the Sturge Bequest, from the gravel on Warren Hill, near Mildenhall, Suffolk, is on special exhibition at the British Museum, Bloomsbury, and will remain there for about three months. It will be found at the head of the main staircase, and is arranged in two desk-cases, one containing representatives of the main types and the other the specimens illustrated in the Sturge volume, with exceptional pieces showing the remarkable local patina and other special features. The exhibition is intended to show the sequence or association of implements in the same gravel, and to direct attention to the deposit, which is a geological puzzle. The long hill between Mildenhall and Ickling-ham lies at right angles to the River Lark near its south end, and was evidently formed before the valley was cut. The gravel seems to belong to an interrupted line of high-level deposits in a curve from Lakenheath to Snail well, following the southeastern boundary of the Fens. It is now generally held that this gravel bank is a glacial moraine; but there were thousands of implements included in it, and some in an unrolled condition enable a limiting date, if not a sequence, to be supplied on archaeological grounds. The collection shows that, besides first-class hand-axes of St. Acheul character, there was also a striking proportion of flake-implements resembling in form those from High Lodge near the north end of the same ridge; and these are now thought to mark the third stage of the Clacton industry. Their horizon elsewhere is evident, but at Warren Hill it remains to determine the relation between the Clacton and St. Acheul series, and to identify the glaciation producing this apparently homogeneous gravel, which must have been derived from an area, once thickly inhabited, in the neighbourhood. There is now a good opportunity to draw on the archaeological material for a solution of the geological problem.