Lower Palaeolithic Occupation at Bubbenhall

1 Over 100 Lower Paaleolithic artefacts recovered since the 1980s, most since 2004. Includes four andesite handaxes, two of the finest workmanship, the rest quartzite choppers, cores and flakes, plus one flint handaxe tip. Shows a Lower Palaeolithic occupation in this area, probably of some duration, prior to the Anglian glaciation. Poses major question of the source of the andesite which hails from the Lake District but unlikely that man carrried the stone that far, therefore suggests a hitherto undefined glacio-fluvial event carried clasts to the Midlands.
2 Artefacts of Cromerian (MIS 13) age recovered from extensions to the classic site of Waverley Wood Farm Pit, Warwickshire, give new insights into the Lower Palaeolithic and Pleistocene geological record of the English Midlands. The Baginton Formation in the area to the south and southwest of Coventry has been the major source of Lower Palaeolithic artefacts in the Midlands since the first discoveries in the 1930s. Current sand and gravel workings at Waverley Wood and Wood Farm Pits near the village of Bubbenhall, have provided artefacts of quartzite, andesite and flint together with sparse large mammal material. Some of the Lower Palaeolithic finds were in situ in the succession providing, for the first time, firm evidence of their geological provenance. The variety and number of the artefacts allows detailed evaluation of the largest group of Lower Palaeolithic tools to be found in the West Midlands. The petrology of some of the tools and associated clasts in the gravels at the base of the Baginton Formation allow speculation on the origin of the rock types from northwest and eastern England which may have been brought to the West Midlands by a pre-Anglian glaciation or just possibly by human transport.