Wilson, Callum; Pope, Matt; Shipton, Ceri; (2024) Revisiting the handaxes of Kent's Cavern. Quaternary International 10.1016/j.quaint.2024.01.007. (In press).

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Abstract

The Acheulean in Britain is represented by a substantial corpus of sites in southern England informing our understanding of human occupation in northwest Europe during the Middle Pleistocene. Improvements to the resolution of the terrestrial chronology of this period have led to a revival of interest in the question of the shape of the iconic Acheulean handaxe. The recognition of morphological patterns among and across handaxe assemblages stems from well-dated fluvial deposits. In the meantime, sites excluded from the past decade's reappraisals are at risk of neglect, not least the historically significant site of Kent's Cavern, Devon. Metrical and statistical analyses were complemented by geometric morphometric analyses of a sample of handaxes from the site and compared against samples from several securely dated sites. The results indicate that the Acheulean of Kent's Cavern may substantially pre-date the well-known occupations at High Lodge and Boxgrove and is likely to be coeval with the suggested presence of hominins along the former Bytham River during MIS 15.

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