DISCOVERY 



117 



The Antiquity of Man in 

 East Anglia 



By E. N. Fallaize, B.A. 



Within the last few years investigation of the deposits 

 of gravel and clay of Glacial and Pre-Glacial Age in the 

 neighbourhood of Ipswich has furnished a considerable 

 ! " )dy of evidence which throws fresh hght on the early 

 History of man in Britain, although, owing to a variety 

 of causes, it has not perhaps received the attention that 

 it deser^'es. One of the most interesting of these dis- 

 coveries was recently described at a meeting of the 

 Royal Anthropological Institute, when Mr. J. Reid 

 Moir, by whom the greater part of these investigations 

 has been carried out, exhibited a number of flint imple- 

 ments obtained from the Chalky Boulder Clay in the 

 neighbourhood of Ipswich. The implements were 

 found, during a period extending over some twelve 

 years, in pits excavated for the purpose of brick-making. 

 They do not occur in any great quantity, but Mr. Reid 

 Moir has secured a number sufficient to furnish a 

 definite idea of the type, and with some probabLLity 

 of the stage of culture to which they belong. So far 

 as the form and technique of these implements go 

 they are to be assigned to the Mousterian type, so-called 

 from the site of Le Moustier in France where imple- 

 ments of this type were first discovered. 



It will perhaps be necessary at this point to explain 

 that in the classification of the French archaeologists, 

 which is generally accepted, the Palaeolithic Age is 

 divided into si.x periods or phases of culture, each 

 named after a characteristic site in France. The im- 

 plements belonging to two of these periods or phases— 

 — the Chellean and the Acheulean — are of the " Drift " 

 or " River-drift " type, so called because they are found 

 in the drift of gravels carried down and deposited on 

 terraces on the sides of valleys when the river-beds 

 were in process of formation. The implements of the 

 remaining periods — Mousterian, Aurignacian, Solutrian, 

 and Magdalenian — belong to the "Cave" type or 

 series, as they have, in France at least, usually been 

 discovered in caves which have served as the dweUing- 

 places of Palaeohthic peoples. In technique the dis- 

 tinction between the " Drift " and the " Cave " series 

 of implements lies in the fact that, while the " Drift " 

 implement has been shaped by striking flakes from a 

 block of flint, the " Cave " type — e.g. the implements 

 from Le Moustier with which the implements from 

 the Suffolk Chalky Boulder Clay are comparable — are 

 fashioned from the flakes themselves which have been 

 struck from a block of flint or " core." 



The great interest of Mr. Moir's' discovery hes in the 

 fact that implements of Mousterian type should be 



found in the Boulder Clay. Geologists have, as a rule, 

 taken it as axiomatic that the earUest implement-bearing 

 stratum is the Boulder Clay, and it will be remembered 

 that the investigations made by the Committee of the 

 British Association at Ho.xne in Suffolk, of which such 

 distinguished authorities as the late Sir John Evans 

 and the late Mr. Clement Reid were members, showed 

 that on that site, at least, flint implements of the 

 " Drift " type were later than the Boulder Clay, while 

 the borings carried out by the Committee furnish 

 evidence of two warm periods intervening between the 

 gravels in which the implements were found and the 

 Boulder Clay, which is a deposit of Glacial Age. On the 

 evidence from Hoxne, implements of the " Drift " 

 type would therefore appear to be of Post-Glacial Age. 



In France the relative age of the different classes of 

 PaliEolithic implements has been established with some 

 precision. Implements of Le Moustier type come third 

 in point of time, following the two series belonging to 

 the "Drift" type from Chelles and St. Acheul. In 

 England the relation of the " Drift " and the Le 

 Moustier types is not so clear ; but on the basis of 

 analogy, it might be presumed that " Drift " imple- 

 ments precede the other types. It may be noted in 

 parenthesis that Mr. Reid Moir, in his recent pubhca- 

 tion " Pre-PalffioUthic Man," after a careful analysis of 

 the technique of Palaeolithic implements, arrives at the 

 conclusion that the " Drift " implement made from a 

 core precedes the Mousterian implement, which was 

 made from a flake. Archseologists are therefore faced 

 with this difficulty — that implements apparently belong- 

 ing to a later stage of culture have been found in a 

 deposit which, in another locality, precedes implements 

 of an earHer type by a very considerable period of time. 



If, therefore, Mr. Moir's implements belong to the 

 Mousterian phase of culture — they are certainly of 

 Mousterian type, and some exhibit a form of patination 

 usually considered to be characteristic of the Le 

 Moustier period — and no doubt can be raised as to their 

 occurrence in Boulder Clay, the question resolves 

 itself almost entirely into one of the geological evidence. 

 Prof. J. E. Marr, F.R.S., who has examined the pits, 

 states that the Boulder Clay is in situ. It would 

 appear, therefore, that the question before the geologist 

 is whether the Chalky Boulder Clay is everywhere of 

 the same age, as is generally stated. If it is, is it possible 

 that the evidence obtained by the Committee at Hoxne 

 was untrustworthy, and that it was misled as to the 

 true character of the deposit identified as Boulder 

 Clay ? Some geologists would maintain that the 

 finding of Mousterian implements in Chalky Boulder 

 Clay is evidence of late date, and that this view is 

 supported by the palaeontologists, who hold that an 

 examination of a continuous series of the fauna of 

 this period shows no signs of an alternation of warm 



