Loading...
Hominin glacial-stage occupation 712,000 to 424,000 years ago at Fordwich Pit, Old Park (Canterbury, UK)
Key, Alastair Clark, James Lauer, Tobias Bates, Jennifer Sier, Mark-Jan Nichols, Claire Martín-Ramos, Carmen Cebeiro, Adela Williams, Eleanor Kim, Sunghui
Key, Alastair
Clark, James
Lauer, Tobias
Bates, Jennifer
Sier, Mark-Jan
Nichols, Claire
Martín-Ramos, Carmen
Cebeiro, Adela
Williams, Eleanor
Kim, Sunghui
Citations
Altmetric:
Advisors
Editors
Other Contributors
Affiliation
EPub Date
Issue Date
2025-09-01
Submitted Date
2024-07-16
Subject Terms
Archaeology
Biological anthropology
Biological anthropology
Collections
Files
Loading...
Published version
Adobe PDF, 6.38 MB
Research Projects
Organizational Units
Journal Issue
Other Titles
Abstract
Abstract
Few high-latitude archaeological contexts are older than marine isotope stage (MIS) 15 and even fewer provide evidence of early human occupation during a glacial period. New discoveries at Old Park, Canterbury (UK), provide evidence of both the oldest accessible artefact-bearing sediment in northern Europe and cold-stage adaptation. Radiometric and palaeomagnetic dating places the earliest suggested occupation of this site between 773 thousand years ago (ka) and 607 ka, with hominin presence inferred during MIS 17–16. Two additional artefact-bearing stratigraphic units, dated to around 542 ka and 437 ka, strongly align with the MIS 14 and 12 cold stages, respectively. The latter unit contains convincing evidence of glacial-stage occupation by Acheulean hominins; fresh, unabraded flakes (including biface-thinning) between clearly defined glacial-aged sediments displaying mixed grassland palaeoenvironmental evidence. An historically collected assemblage of more than 330 handaxes is argued to be derived from both the MIS 17–16 and MIS 12 sediments, providing evidence of the earliest known Acheulean bifaces in northern Europe, and re-occupation by Acheulean populations 200,000 years later. Together, Old Park provides evidence for Lower Palaeolithic hominins reoccupying a location over several mid-Pleistocene MIS cycles, early human presence above 51° latitude during a glacial stage and handaxe production in northern Europe from MIS 17 to 16.
Citation
Key, A., Clark, J., Lauer, T. et al. Hominin glacial-stage occupation 712,000 to 424,000 years ago at Fordwich Pit, Old Park (Canterbury, UK). Nat Ecol Evol 9, 1781–1790 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41559-025-02829-x
Publisher
Journal
Research Unit
PubMed ID
PubMed Central ID
Embedded videos
Type
Journal Article
Item Description
Copyright © The Author(s) 2025. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The attached file is the published version of the article.
NHM Repository
NHM Repository
Series/Report no.
ISSN
2397-334X
EISSN
2397-334X
ISBN
ISMN
GovDoc
Test Link
License
openAccess