Monday 21st October 2024 - Rob Davis
'Where did hominins sleep at night? Examining the Palaeolithic record from East Anglia 400,000 years ago. '
'Abstract: Where did hominins sleep at night? Examining the Palaeolithic record from East Anglia 400,000 years ago.
In Britain there is a rich Lower Palaeolithic record that provides a wealth of information about early humans, through which certain aspects of their technology, society and behaviour come in to focus. We see a structured use of landscape by hunter-gatherers, with many of our sites associated with the exploitation of resources, from sources of flint raw material and the manufacture of stone tools, to butchery sites. However, domestic settings have been difficult to identify. A group of sites in East Anglia dated to 400,000 years ago occupied sheltered positions in the landscape, which could have offered early humans safe havens away from the major river valleys. But does the archaeology at these sites indicate their use as campsites? This talk will address this question through the new evidence emerging from recent excavations at Barnham, Beeches Pit and Devereux’s Pit, Suffolk.
Bio:
Dr. Rob Davis is a Palaeolithic archaeologist based at the British Museum. He spends his summers excavating Lower Palaeolithic sites in the east of England, and much of the rest of the year trying to make sense of the stone tool assemblages and their geological contexts.
'Where did hominins sleep at night? Examining the Palaeolithic record from East Anglia 400,000 years ago. '
'Abstract: Where did hominins sleep at night? Examining the Palaeolithic record from East Anglia 400,000 years ago.
In Britain there is a rich Lower Palaeolithic record that provides a wealth of information about early humans, through which certain aspects of their technology, society and behaviour come in to focus. We see a structured use of landscape by hunter-gatherers, with many of our sites associated with the exploitation of resources, from sources of flint raw material and the manufacture of stone tools, to butchery sites. However, domestic settings have been difficult to identify. A group of sites in East Anglia dated to 400,000 years ago occupied sheltered positions in the landscape, which could have offered early humans safe havens away from the major river valleys. But does the archaeology at these sites indicate their use as campsites? This talk will address this question through the new evidence emerging from recent excavations at Barnham, Beeches Pit and Devereux’s Pit, Suffolk.
Bio:
Dr. Rob Davis is a Palaeolithic archaeologist based at the British Museum. He spends his summers excavating Lower Palaeolithic sites in the east of England, and much of the rest of the year trying to make sense of the stone tool assemblages and their geological contexts.