In last month’s column, I explored Palaeolithic Norfolk and Suffolk, visiting some of the most important prehistoric sites not just in Britain but in the whole of western Europe. Here I will follow up on that review by moving south into Kent and Sussex. A series of discoveries made in these counties has further enriched our knowledge of the deep past of what were to become the British Isles, and played a crucial part in the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) project of 2001-2011, which transformed our understanding of this period (see CA 190, February 2004).
Life and Death in the Marshes
The North Kent coast does not have the best reputation. Its windswept marshes are where young Pip has his first, terrifying encounter with the convict Abel Magwitch in Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations, and their popular image as badlands remains. More recently, roads and railways have dissected them, and industry blighted them. Few of the visitors to the nearby Bluewater Retail Park, however, realise they are shopping a stone’s throw from some of the oldest and most impressive prehistoric sites in Britain.
At the former Barnfield Pit quarry, on the north-west edge of the village of Swanscombe (halfway between Dartford and Gravesend), fieldwork undertaken in the 1930s, 1950s, and 1960-1970s revealed evidence of activity dating back as much as 400,000 years, including fossilised human remains, handaxes and other artefacts, and plentiful animal bones, some of which showed evidence of butchery. These finds make the site of comparable importance to Happisburgh and Pakefield, locations that we explored last month. CA 113 (February 1989) first explained Swanscombe’s significance when it published a survey of the state of knowledge of the British Palaeolithic at that time by John Wymer (1928-2006). By that point in his career, he was a distinguished academic, but Wymer had first come to prominence in the 1950s, when still an amateur archaeologist, after he discovered the third piece of the 400,000-year-old Swanscombe skull. Originally (and incorrectly) named Swanscombe Man, but later found to have belonged to a young woman, this skull was a specimen of Homo heidelbergensis, an early Neanderthal or pre-Neanderthal. CA 190 (February 2004) saw the magazine’s next visit to this location, bringing Wymer’s analyses up to date with comparison to more recent sites and finds, including at Boxgrove – more on which below. CA 196 (March 2005) revisited Swanscombe after the quarry had been transformed into a heritage park and nature reserve (see details at the end of this article), and CA 288 (March 2014) returned in another state-of-the-nation review a decade later, in light of renewed finds at Happisburgh. Most recently, in conjunction with the publication of her book Kindred: Neanderthal life, love, death, and art, Rebecca Wragg Sykes placed the human remains from Swanscombe in both a wider and more intimate context in CA 372 (March 2021), offering insights into the lives of our closest hominin relatives and the world they inhabited. It is far from the stereotyped misperception of them as being somehow less capable than us and their experiences less emotionally rich than ours. Wragg Sykes paints a deeply emotive picture of innovative and creative communities comfortable in their landscapes and confident in their abilities.
