Mammoths and Neanderthals in the Thames Valley

Katharine Scott is internationally recognised for her work on Middle and Upper Pleistocene vertebrate fossils. Her fieldwork at various Upper Thames Quaternary sites concentrated especially on the 10-year excavation of 200,000-year-old fossiliferous deposits at Stanton Harcourt near Oxford. This now comprises the largest collection of excavated mammoths in Britain. She is an Emeritus Fellow of St Cross College Oxford and an Honorary Associate of the Oxford University Museum. ; Christine Buckingham was born and educated in Oxford. Between 1989 and 1999, Christine was co-director of the excavations at Stanton Harcourt with overall responsibility for recording the geology and stratigraphy and also carried out fieldwork at several other Upper Thames sites. Christine graduated with a DPhil from Oxford Brookes University (in collaboration with the Donald Baden-Powell Quaternary Research Centre, Oxford University) in 2004. She is an Honorary Associate of the Oxford University Museum.

List of Figures ;


List of Tables ;


Preface ;



Introduction ;


The excavations ;


Geological context of the Stanton Harcourt Channel ;



Evidence for the Contemporaneity of Bones, Wood, Molluscs and Artefacts ;


Stratigraphy and sedimentology ;


Bones assemblages at their death sites ;


The context of wood, fresh-water molluscs and other environmental material at the excavation site ;


The presence of hominins ;



Dating The Stanton Harcourt Channel Deposits ;


Absolute dating ;


Biostratigraphy ;



The Mammoths ;


The compostion of the mammoth assemblage ;


The sex of the Stanton Harcourt mammoths ;


Interpreting the mammoth remains: death, carcass dispersal and the effect of the river ;


Population structure of the Stanton Harcourt mammoth assemblage ;



Large Vertebrates other than Mammoths at Stanton Harcourt ;


The carnivores ;


The herbivores ;


Small vertebrates ;



The Climatic and Environmental Evidence ;


Wood and other vegetation as climatic indicators ;


Climatic interpretation of the molluscs ;


Large vertebrates as climatic indicators ;


The local environment - wood and other vegetation ;


Insects and the environment ;


Molluscs and the local environment ;


Vertebrates and the environment ;



The Artefacts ;


Descriptions of the artefacts ;


Artefacts from the wider context near Stanton Harcourt ;


The Stanton Harcourt artefacts and other British assemblages ;



Neanderthals in the Thames Valley ;



References