1 



EARLY MAN 



part of the history of man which is antecedent to the 

 era of written records, and which therefore may be called in 

 the broadest sense prehistoric, is well represented in Berkshire 

 both by objects which have been found on or in superficial 

 deposits, and by certain other remains which will be fully described 

 hereafter. 



The prehistoric period falls into certain well-recognized divisions, 

 characterized either by the material out of which Early Man's cutting 

 tools and weapons were fabricated, or by his mode of shaping such 

 tools, these differences indicating progressive stages of culture. Pursuing 

 the general plan adopted in this series, an account will be given of the 

 various discoveries, arranged under the respective periods to which they 

 belong, followed by a topographical list showing in concise form the 

 precise locality and nature of each discovery. 



THE PALEOLITHIC AGE 



The earliest clear and unequivocal traces of man in Berkshire 

 consist chiefly of stone implements or weapons which are found in the 

 old gravel-deposits of Pleistocene age which lie on the slopes of the 

 valleys at some considerable elevation roughly 50 to 120 feet above 

 the present level of the rivers. The absolute ignorance of metals which 

 these remains indicate accords well with the geological age of the 

 deposits in which they are found. At the same time the extraordinary 

 skill shown in working these tools, and the persistence of well-recognized 

 types over wide areas, indicate that man had made considerable progress 

 even in these early times. 



Attention was first drawn to the existence of palaeolithic imple- 

 ments in Berkshire by Dr. Joseph Stevens, 1 who described certain 

 specimens found by him in a gravel-pit in Tilehurst Road, Reading, 

 near Grovelands Farm, and referred to as the Grovelands pit. He also 

 found implements at Caversham on the other side of the Thames, some 

 fine specimens of which are in the Reading Museum. At an earlier 

 date the writer had found an implement in gravel from a pit 

 on the Redlands estate, Reading. 2 Since then a very considerable 

 number of implements of various kinds, as well as flakes or chips struck 

 off in the process of manufacture, have been found at various places 

 in the valley-systems of Berkshire, but especially in the main valley 



1 Journ. Brit. Arch, Asm. 1881, xxxvii. Journ. Anthrop. Inst., 1884, riv. 192. 



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