USING MAMMALIAN ASSEMBLAGES TO RECONSTRUCT PAST CLIMATE: A STUDY OF FOUR LATE PLEISTOCENE SITES

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Suffolk Natural History, Vol. 50

USING MAMMALIAN ASSEMBLAGES TO RECONSTRUCT PAST CLIMATE: A STUDY OF FOUR LATE PLEISTOCENE SITES IN SUFFOLK ALEXANDER JACKSON This paper summarises an undergraduate dissertation undertaken in 2014 as part of a degree in Physical Geography at Royal Holloway, University of London. Large vertebrate remains are extremely useful in Quaternary studies. They can be found in many depositional environments, with fluvial deposits being some of the most common sites as they usually have excellent preservation. Due to the expansion of the northern ice fields towards the end of the Ipswichian interglacial (ca. 115,000 BP), the level of the sea receded causing rejuvenated rivers to cut down into their valleys. This river regime deposited gravels rich in mammalian remains, which now lie buried below the current floodplains in the valley bottoms. If it had not been for the commercial extraction of these gravels these faunas may have remained undiscovered (Spencer, 1970). The Ipswich Museum houses various collections of these Late Pleistocene remains, on which little recent research has been carried out. For this study, four sites were selected. Three originated within the present day Gipping valley: Bramford Road and Sproughton just west of Ipswich and Barham to the north. At Bramford Road, gravel was pumped up from a depth of 10–12 metres and appears to have being an infilling within a former meander of the River Gipping. A number of flint handaxes were also recovered from this site (Spencer, 1970). There had also been some prior work on the Late glacial assemblage at Sproughton (Wymer et al., 1975). Eastall’s Pit in Barham is a source of the largest collection of remains. The site is composed of gravels along with erratics derived from Gipping glacial outwash. The lower levels of the site were flooded, which made it difficult to determine if deposits originated from the same period (Spencer, 1970). In addition, the mammalian fauna of a fourth site from Weybread in the Waveney valley to the north of the county was also studied, for which there was no published information. The composition of each mammal assemblage was assessed and compared between each site. Table 1 shows a summary of the species at each site. In the Bramford Road assemblage, although bison and horse make up the highest percentages (19% and 21% respectively), the majority of these elements are teeth. Postcranial elements are relatively limited and the largest range of these come from woolly rhino. The only elements representing reindeer were antler fragments, but one was from a large individual and another was from a juvenile. There were nine woolly mammoth molars as well as a small sample of postcranial bones. In addition, two leg bone fragments from the genus Homo were found, but there was doubt as to whether they were part of the rest of the faunal assemblage. Although the flint handaxes also found here imply that Neanderthals were present in the landscape at the time, due to the unstratified nature of the excavation at this site there is uncertainty that the fragments of femur and tibia found alongside them derive from Homo neanderthalensis, as there is always the possibility that they are Homo sapiens from more recent deposits. Trans. Suffolk Nat. Soc. 50 (2014)


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