EARLY MAN 



Hill, somewhat resemble the latter and are wholly different from those from 

 Maid's Cross Hill. Of implements from Portway Hill a sufficient number 

 has not been examined to learn their leading characteristics. 



This marked difference in the appearance of implements found in gravels 

 relatively near to one another points to the gravels having been formed at 

 quite different periods, the man whose implements are found in the later 

 gravels having appeared and occupied the country after his predecessors' 

 handiwork had all been swept down and buried in the earlier gravels. Which 

 then of the two gravels, the Warren Hill or the Maid's Cross Hill, is the 

 earlier ? This question will be discussed when the gravels and their contained 

 implements have been examined in rather more detail. 



As has been seen, the Warren Hill gravels cap the southern end of the 

 ridge where the little escarpment slopes rapidly down to the Lark Valley. 

 Their upper surface lies at an average of about 70 ft. above the Ordnance 

 datum and between 30 ft. and 40 ft. above the River Lark. They are certainly 

 between 30 ft. and 40 ft. thick, and the base has never apparently been 

 reached. They are soft in structure, with much sand. As before said, the 

 river that gave rise to them ran at a right angle to the course of the present 

 River Lark, which has washed away a considerable, probably the larger, 

 portion of the original gravel. On the opposite side of the Lark Valley 

 — here 2 miles wide — are gravels lying at about the same height as those of 

 Warren Hill and containing flint implements of very similar types, which 

 were probably continuous with the Warren Hill gravels. 



It has been pointed out that the predominant type of implement at 

 Warren Hill is the ovate with sharp edges all round ; the Warren Hill ovate 

 is indeed familiar to all collectors of flint implements. An interesting and 

 rather surprising fact is that this sharp ovate is rarely found in the Thames 

 Valley. This valley from above Oxford to the Nore teems with implemen- 

 tiferous gravels, and many thousands of implements have come out of them. 

 In the writer's collection there are some three thousand specimens from the 

 Thames Valley ; yet amongst this large number there is only one sharp ovate 

 at all comparable to those which occur in such large numbers at Warren 

 Hill. A few ovate implements occur, but they are of wholly different type 

 from the bulk of those in the Suffolk gravel. What does this mean ? It can 

 hardly be a question of local distribution ; for, on the one hand, gravels 

 within a very few miles of Warren Hill contain no larger proportion of sharp 

 ovates than do those of the Thames Valley ; whilst, on the other hand, sharp 

 thin ovates, strictly like those from Warren Hill, are found in various other 

 parts of England, as well as in France and in other more distant parts of the 

 world. It would seem therefore that in the Thames Valley gravels and in 

 the Warren Hill gravel we are dealing with two very distinct periods. The 

 Thames Valley Period is, it is true, represented, though only in a meagre degree, 

 at Warren Hill ; whilst the Warren Hill Period is scarcely represented in the 

 Thames Valley. French archaeologists divide their ' drift ' period into two 

 main divisions ; one named from Chelles in the department of Seine et Marne, 

 thence called Chelleen ; the other from St. Acheul near Amiens, whence 

 called Acheuleen. The classification is a rough one only, but has been almost 

 universally accepted. The Thames Valley implements belong in the main to 

 the Chelleen ; the Warren Hill implements to the Acheuleen. There seems 



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