The Late Middle Palaeolithic Site at Oldbury, Kent
By Frank Beresford
Benjamin Harrison ran the village shop at Ightham in Kent. He was a prodigious field walker in his spare time, sustaining a keen eye for lithics and antiquities in general. He walked long distances from Ightham, often early in the morning, across the fields and up on the North Downs.
His collection became well known and he had many interested visitors.
In 1878, he began to concentrate on the search for Palaeolithic implements after William Davies of the British Museum came to look at his flint collection, and identified Palaeolithic implements from the ‘rock shelters’ of Oldbury amongst the many Neolithic specimens (Harrison E. 1928; 81.). Another visitor, Worthington Smith, was more doubtful because of the examples’ patina, but John Lubbock was also consulted, and he confirmed that they were Palaeolithic. On 20th April 1887, de Barri Crawshay visited Harrison him for the first time (Harrison E. 1928; 127). After a few visits and some joint expeditions.
Crawshay became a committed field walker, collector and student of lithic material himself working on the North Downs to the west of the River Darent, notably at Cudham (Beresford 2019a & b.)
On 27th September 1921, de Barri Crawshay visited Harrison at his home in Ightham to show him some material from his South Ash excavations (Crawshay 1924;
Beresford 2019b.) Together they examined and discussed the artefacts that Crawshay had
Top
Fig 1: The Ightham Oldbury Area (based on Ordnance Survey 125000, 1957.) Bottom
Fig 2: The two inscribed flakes from Oldbury brought. Just three days later, Crawshay received news of Harrison’s death. Although he was was later instrumental in planning a memorial to Harrison, at home in Sevenoaks, Crawshay’s reaction to this news was to select two flakes (Figure 2), found at what we now know to be the Late Middle Palaeolithic site at Oldbury; he inscribed them both “B.H. Died,
6.15 p.m.30.9.21.” and placed them in his display cabinet. They have remained in possession of his family ever since. The original markings are Oldbury W – presumably identifying the find site as Oldbury West. They are described in Table 1.
The site at Oldbury is on the north-east talus slopes of Oldbury Hill, Kent (Figure 1) below Mount Pleasant. On 4th August 1890, with the help of a grant from the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Harrison commenced excavations on the eastern face.
He realised that the artefacts he had been finding at Oldbury were similar to those that Édouard Laret and Henry Christy had found in 1864/5 in the many rock shelters near Les Eyzies in the valley of the Vézère, a tributary of the Dordogne in the south of France. In particular, they were similar to the artefacts found in the two rock shelters at Le Moustier in the limestone escarpment on the west bank of the Vézère (Laret & Christy, 1875.).
Christy died in 1865, and Laret in 1870 – their book Reliquiae Aquitanicae initially published as
Left
Fig 3a: The title page of Reliqulae Aquitanicae
Below, left
Fig 3b: Biface found by Laret and Christy in the rock shelters at Le Moustier in 1864. (From Laret & Christy 1875, Plate XVII, part two, 78.)
Below, right
Fig 3c: Biface found by Laret and Christy in the rock shelters at Le Moustier in 1864. (From Laret & Christy 1875, Plate XVII, part two, 78.)
Table 1: The two flakes as illustrated in Fig 2
Number | Length (mm) | Width (mm) | Thickness (mm) | Weight (grams) | Patination | Description |
2428 | 75 | 55 | 8 | 43 | Grey | Thin secondary flake with plunging end on ventral face and mainly unipolar intersecting dorsal scar pattern. Point of percussion on unprepared platform. Retouch on left and distal ends with notches. 3% cortex on the right edge of the dorsal face broken by limited denticulate knapping. Marked: Oldbury W 30.9.21 2428 B.H. DIED 6.15 PM |
2429 | 53 | 62 | 23 | 51 | Grey | Tertiary flake with unprepared cortical platform. 10% cortex on platform. Some fissures on bulb of percussion. Small notch at proximal left and larger notch at distal right. Two unipolar parallel scars on dorsal. Marked: B.H. DIED 6.15 PM Oldbury W 30.9.21 2429 |
a part work in English in London was completed by Professor Rupert Jones, with whom Harrison maintained a long correspondence from 1864 (McNabb 2012, 208; Figure 3). Christy bequeathed much of his magnificent archaeological collection to the nation, and in 1884 it found a home in the British Museum. Convenient access to the collections and the book in parts enabled British archaeologists to become familiar with the artefacts from the French caves. Harrison visited the Museum on 7th February 1889 and noted in his journal that “Mr Franks kindly gave me specimens from the caves at Le Moustier” (Harrison E, 1928, 144.). Mousterian is now used to describe material from the Later Middle Palaeolithic. However, for many years it was used as an alternative term for the whole Middle Palaeolithic.
The area immediately below the rock overhang of the hill at Oldbury produced only Mesolithic and later prehistoric finds. Harrison then moved down-slope where he found Palaeolithic artefacts, including bifaces and some later pieces in secondary deposits. After this, he moved an area below a rock outcrop with overhangs called Mount Pleasant and, digging over an area of 7 to 8 square metres. He found Palaeolithic artefacts as well as fresh retouched pieces and evidence of in-situ knapping.
He wrote “The slope of the bold projecting spur below Mount Pleasant lying about fifty yards south-east of the former digging, was next tried, and here success crowned our efforts, for very soon immense numbers of flakes were met with, and in such profusion that
I was prompted to carry on the work thoroughly. Some of these were so minute that it seemed as if the place of the actual workshop had been lighted on. The greater portion of these flakes were found at depths varying from 2 ½ to 3 feet: and as a rule, lay at the base and immediately under a gravelly wash.”
In total, for all of these excavations, he listed his finds as “49 well-finished implements or portions of them and 648 waste flakes.” (Harrison B. 1892, 354; Harrison E. 1933, 149.). The stratigraphy is the result of natural colluvial, hill-wash processes. Consequently, the artefacts are not likely to have been in their primary context but still close to their original position somewhere on the hillside.
Harrison’s complete collection from these excavations, and some additional pieces that he had previously found in the same area, were donated by the sponsors, the British Association, to the British Museum in 1893. The excavated collection included few handaxes or flake tools of the ‘rock shelter’ type, so Harrison felt it necessary to supplement the collection with ‘rock shelter’ types from his own earlier collecting on the hillslope. The British Museum’s accession numbers for the Oldbury collection are 93 3-23 numbers 1 to
34. In addition, there are over 500 associated but unregistered pieces. The Museum described Harrison’s finds as Mousterian (Smith 1911, 68; 1926, 77.).
In 1998, Jill Cook and Roger Jacobi re-sorted the Harrison collection at the British Museum based on techno-typological analysis and the condition
Top
Fig 4: Benjamin Harrison by the rock overhang below Mount Pleasant at Oldbury in 1893
Middle, left
Fig 5a: Fig 5a - One of four Mousterian Bifaces from Oldbury, now in the British Museum; 93 3-23 2. (Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum)
Middle, right
Fig 5b: One of four Mousterian Bifaces from Oldbury, now in the British Museum; 93 3-23 5. (Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum)
Bottom, left
Fig 5c: One of four Mousterian Bifaces from Oldbury, now in the British Museum; 93 3-23 11. (Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum)
Bottom, right
Fig 5d: Fig 5d - One of four Mousterian Bifaces from Oldbury, now in the British Museum; 93 3-23 16. (Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum)
They identified two of the groups, numbered 6 and 8, as the most likely Mousterian artefacts. Group 6 included 68 objects, several of which have come to characterise the Middle Palaeolithic from Oldbury. However, their abraded condition and markings implied that these artefacts were the ‘rock shelter’ specimens that Harrison had collected from the hillslope before the excavations. The group includes 12 bifaces (four are illustrated in Figure 5) and 22 retouched tools and debitage. Group 8 contained the ‘fresh’ excavated finds from his final site below Mount Pleasant. This group includes 22 retouched tools and 302 pieces of debitage. There were three small biface fragments, 25 biface thinning flakes as well as five scrapers, three of which were broken fragments. The rest of the tools were minimally retouched flakes.
However, the careful analysis revealed that the remainder of the debitage was indicative of discoidal core technology. Discoidal core technology is a deliberate and patterned method of allowing the removal of many flakes of varied but predetermined form from cores with a circular contour or a disc shape.
Two types of flakes are recognised as the outcome of this technology – centripetal flakes with the axis of removal passing through the centre of the convex face and chordal flakes where the axis is offset.
36 chordal flakes and 136 debitage flakes, including centripetal flakes were recognised in Harrison’s material excavated from his site below Mount Pleasant. Two almost exhausted discoid cores were also identified; this was the first time this technology had been recognised at a British site. It had only just been recognised in France (Boëda 1993, 392; Lochy et al. 1994, 20.).
Cook and Jacobi (1998, 131) concluded that the material in group eight indicates some biface manufacture and the presence of discoidal technology. They also noted the reliability of Harrison’s accounts of his finds both in the published report (Harrison
Above, left
Fig 6a: Oldbury ‘Group 8’ debitage flakes. (Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum.)
Above, right
Fig 6b: Oldbury ‘Group 8’ debitage flakes. (Courtesy of the trustees of the British Museum.)
Below
Fig 7a: Plan-view and cross-sections of a discoidal core
Bottom
Fig 7b: The method of flake removal X is the plane of detachment and Y is the axis of removal
B. 1892) and his unpublished notes. Overall they concluded that typologically the group six and group eight material, none of which came from the rock shelter, was Mousterian, especially the bifaces. The discoidal technology is not chronologically specific as it also appears earlier than MIS 3. However, the group eight assemblage includes 25 biface thinning flakes, so it can be suggested that their manufacture and use of discoidal core technology was contemporary at Oldbury. There are currently no other means of dating the Oldbury site.
Both of the flakes marked Oldbury W. Figure 2 displays characteristics of discoidal technology. 2428 (left) has cortex along one edge, indicating that it is a possible chordal flake. It also has an intersecting dorsal scar pattern and an unprepared platform showing only a point of percussion. 2429 (right) is wider than it is long. 57 per cent of the measurable Group 8 debitage has similar characteristics of centripetal flakes. This form is caused by the core surface’s convexity, which limits the extension of force from the knapper’s blow. The form also exhibits an unprepared thickly cortical platform and scaring on the bulb on the ventral face, which is frequently produced by the direct hard hammer percussion used for discoidal core technology. So the two flakes could be added to the evidence for discoidal core technology at Oldbury. However, the location of Oldbury W. is unknown, though Harrison did write in the 1892 report of his excavations:
“Similar conditions to this appear on the North West side of Oldbury Hill near to an outcrop of rock; and at various times implements have been found nearby.”
A picture of this rock overhang was included by Sir Edward Harrison, Benjamin’s son, in Archaeologia Cantiana 45.
Joseph Prestwich (1812–1896) was a near neighbour of Harrison who lived in Shoreham, Kent. Initially a wine-merchant, after retiring to Shoreham Prestwick, became a Professor of Geology at Oxford University, based on his reputation as the greatest early expert on Pleistocene gravels, particularly in London and the Thames Valley. It was during a visit by Prestwich with John Evans to Boucher de Perthes in the Somme valley in 1859 that the antiquity of Palaeolithic material had been established. Harrison met Prestwich in August 1879 at Prestwick’s home ‘Darent Hulme’ in Shoreham (Prestwich, 1899.) During this meeting, Prestwich used the Darent valley to indicate the equivalent height of the high-level Somme gravels.
Top
Fig 8: Flake removal from Discoidal Cores showing direction producing chordal flakes (black) and centripetal flakes (white); based on Boëda 1993, 392, fig 1.
Middle
Fig 9a: Four chordal flakes from Oldbury Group 8 (based on Cook & Jacobi 1998, 131 figure 18.5.)
Bottom
Fig 9b: Fig 9b - Four chordal flakes from Oldbury Group 8 (based on Cook & Jacobi 1998, 131 figure 18.5.)
Harrison then realized that some of his finds were from still higher levels and consequently suggested even greater antiquity (Harrison E, 1928, p. 84).
The oldest generally accepted Palaeolithic implements came from the highest terraces of the Somme and the Thames. Harrison now hunted out his high-level implements across the surface of the Downs, from within temporary exposures and upon roadside heaps of flint, resulting in the publication of three important papers by Prestwich in 1889, 1891 and 1892. The first two papers focused on the geological associations of Harrison’s ancient Palaeolithic tools, suggesting that the geological position in which they had been found supported greater antiquity for the Palaeolithic period.
The implements from the 1899 paper, worn Palaeolithic handaxes from the North Downs surface, were the first properly contextualised evidence of glacial and pre- glacial occupation to be accepted in Britain. In terms of best practice, Harrison was ahead of many other collectors of his day. Harrison recorded the altitudes and geological contexts of his finds, their typology and condition. He marked every discovery with its location (Wymer, 1993.) He also marked their find spots on copies of the Ordnance Survey 6-inch maps. Maidstone Museum now curates Harrison’s notebooks and maps. Consequently, the known concentration of surface palaeoliths from the west side of the Darent to the east of the Bourne, roughly Chelsfield to Borough Green, justified the inclusion of two distribution maps in the Wessex survey (Wymer 1999, 167.) Much of the earliest evidence for humans in Kent may be represented by these stray handaxes initially found by Benjamin Harrison on the surface of the Clay-with-flints deposits, which cap the North Downs along the likely route of early migration (McNabb 2009,114; Blundell 2019, 241.).
However, as well as worn handaxes, Harrison had also discovered rich dark brown heavily worn flints – later known as eoliths – from deposits that seemed to have no connection with the river drifts below.
These were suggested as the earlier precursor of Palaeolithic handaxes. In 1888 Prestwich accepted the validity of eoliths, so they were also included in his papers (Harrison E, 1928,133.) His third paper (Prestwich, 1892) opened a long-running controversy on the supposed human workmanship of the eoliths. They are now considered to be the product of natural geological forces. Still, they continued to preoccupy Harrison until his death in 1921 and his name remains closely associated with them. (O’Connor 2003, 256; 2007, 131; Ellen & Muthana 2010, 346;
McNabb 2012, 205; Muthana & Ellen, 2020, 1.).
An interesting homemade calendar from the year 1924 was recently found among the papers of Raymond Crawshay, the son of de Barri Crawshay. The inscription on the back shows that Raymond and his second wife Lilian gave it to de Barri for Christmas 1923. The photo on the front shows the finds from Crawshay’s 1921 excavation at South Ash – Eoliths
(Figure 12) Crawshay’s paper on these excavations was published in 1924, but it was also the year he died.
Top
Fig 10: The Rock Overhang on the west side of Oldbury in the 1930s. The two Crawshay discoidal flakes from Oldbury may have been found in this area (From Archaeologia Cantiana 45 19) Middle
Fig 11a: 1924 calendar
Bottom
Fig 11b: The inscription on the back of the 1924 calendar
The calendar photo shows the most important finds that Crawshay took to show Harrison when he visited him for the last time in 1921. Crawshay wrote about this visit in his report (Crawshay 1924, 162):
“One of the most interesting features connected with this Pit is the fact that Harrison lived to see Eoliths found ‘in situ’ under the surface position where he first discovered them. His delight was great, he examined all the finds with as keen an eye as ever, but his age and health prevented him going to the pit to extract an Eolith from his classic ground.”
There is no doubt that both men regarded the eoliths as their crowning achievement and that this discovery “in situ” was the final confirmation that they required. Did Crawshay leave some eoliths with Harrison and receive the two Oldbury flakes from him in return?
In 1926 a memorial to Benjamin Harrison in two parts was set in the north wall of St Peter’s Church in Ightham. In a stone frame above the memorial tablet was placed one of the two flints with chipped edges found by Harrison in a spread of ocherous gravel near South Ash in 1865. They were kept in a box with some fossils for many years, but he rediscovered them in 1901 and put them in a place of honour in his Museum as the first two eoliths he had brought home from the chalk plateau.
In 1922, a friend and fellow lithic collector and researcher William Cook, a butcher in Snodland, captured Harrison’s broader qualities when he wrote:
“Those whose good fortune it was to have the personal acquaintance of Mr. Harrison will ever remember the delightful walks in his company around the familiar sites of his discoveries; his knowledge of ‘his world,’ freely imparted to others; the charm of conversation, full of wit and reminiscential of past days. Their memory will recall the pleasant hours spent in the little room over the shop, so far removed from common life, with its library and its scores of labelled boxes containing the treasures of the search. The intense enthusiasm of its author and the friendly discussions of the problems surrounding the science he loved and laboured for.” (Cook, 1922).
More recently, his wider achievements have also been increasingly recognised. It is now acknowledged that Benjamin Harrison made a crucial contribution to the archaeological record of the Chalk uplands and the debate about human antiquity in Britain.
His work excavating the Late Middle Palaeolithic site of Oldbury now contributes essential data to modern views on later Neanderthal occupation in Britain. While his name will always be linked to the Eolith debate, this year’s centenary of his death is appropriately marked by an appreciation of the significance of the full range of his work.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The author would like to thank Christopher and Margaret Jones for the loan of the two flakes and for sending the three photographs of the calendar. He would also like to thank Nicholas Ashton and the Sturge Room team at the British Museum (Franks House) for their help. Finally, he would like to thank Ruiha Smalley, the KAS Librarian, for copying and sending material.
Top, left
Fig 12: The 1924 calendar photo of the 1921 eolith finds from South Ash. Crawshay took these eoliths to show Harrison on 27th September 1921.
Top, right
Fig 13: The two-part memorial to Benjamin Harrison with one of the first eoliths that he found set above.
References
Beresford F.R., 2019a. A Re-examination of the Late Nineteenth-Century Palaeolithic Finds in the Upper Cray Area, Bromley, Kent. Archaeologia Cantiana 140, 269 - 284.
Beresford F.R., 2019b. Experimental Archaeology using three Palaeolithic flints from Cudham, Kent? - A mystery. KAS Newsletter 112, Winter 2019.
Blundell L. 2019. A Critical Evaluation of the Lower-Middle Palaeolithic Archaeological Record of the Chalk Uplands of Northwest Europe. UCL. PhD. Thesis.
Boëda, E. 1993. Le débitage discoïde et le débitage Levallois récurrent centripède. Bulletin de la Société préhistorique française.
Cook, J. & Jacobi, R. 1998. Discoidal Core Technology in the Palaeolithic at Oldbury, Kent. In N. Ashton, F. Healy &
P. Pettitt (eds.) Stone Age Archaeology: Essays in Honour of John Wymer: 124–
136. Lithics Studies Society Occasional Paper No. 6. Oxbow Books, Oxford.
Cook, W. H. 1922. Benjamin Harrison of Ightham. The Rochester Naturalist 129 IV, 26.
Crawshay de B., 1924, Eoliths Found’ in situ’ At South Ash, Kent. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia 4, Issue 02, 155 – 162.
Ellen, R, and Muthana, A. 2010. Classifying ‘Eoliths’: How Cultural Cognition Featured in Arguments Surrounding Claims for the Earliest Human Artefacts as these Developed Between 1880 and 1900. Journal of
Cognition and Culture 10 341–375.
Harrison. B. 1892. Report of the committee appointed to carry on excavation, at Oldbury Hill near Ightham. In Report of the Sixty-First Meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Cardiff 1891. 353-4.
Harrison, E. 1928. Harrison of Ightham. Oxford University Press, London.
Harrison, E. 1933. Oldbury Hill, Ightham. Archaeologia Cantiana 45, 142-161.
Laret E. and Christy H., 1865 to 1875 (in parts.) Reliquiae Aquitanicae. Being Contributions to the Archaeology and Palaeontology of Perigord and the Adjoining Provinces of Southern
France. London. Williams and Norgate
Locht, J-C. & Swinnen, C. 1994. Le débitagc discoide du gisement de Beauvais (Oise): aspects de la chaîne opératoire au travers de quelques remontages. Paleo 6, 89-104.
McNabb, J. 2009. The Knight, The Grocer, and the Chocolate Brownies; Joseph Prestwich, Benjamin Harrison and the second Antiquity of Man debate. In R. Hosfield, F. Wenban- Smith & M. Pope (eds.) Great Prehistorians: 150 Years of Palaeolithic Research, 1859–2009 (Special Volume 30 of Lithics: The Journal of the Lithic Studies Society): 97–115.
McNabb, J. 2012. Dissent with Modification: Human Origins, Palaeolithic Archaeology and Evolutionary Anthropology in Britain 1859-1901. Archaeopress, Oxford.
Muthana, A and Ellen, R. 2020.
The Great Eolith Debate and the Anthropological Institute. Bulletin of the History of Archaeology, 30(1): 4, pp. 1–11. DOI: https://doi.org/10.5334/bha-623
O’Connor, A. 2003. Geology, archaeology, and ‘the raging vortex of the “eolith” controversy’. Proceedings of the Geologists’ Association, 114, 255–262.
O’Connor, A. 2007. Finding time for the Old Stone Age. Oxford University Press, Oxford.
Prestwich, J. 1889. On the occurrence of Palaeolithic Flint Implements in
Prestwich, J. 1891. On the Age, Formation, and Successive Drift Stages of the Valley of the Darent; with Remarks on the Palaeolithic Implements of the District, and on the Origin of its Chalk Escarpment. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London, 47, 126–163.
Prestwich, J. 1892. On the Primitive Characters of the Flint Implements of the Chalk Plateau of Kent, with reference to the Question of their Glacial or
Pre-Glacial Age. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 21(3), 246–262.
Smith, R. A. 1911. A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age, Second Edition, British Museum.
Smith, R. A. 1926. A Guide to the Antiquities of the Stone Age, Third Edition, British Museum.
Wymer, J. 1993. The Southern Rivers Palaeolithic Project report 2, region 4 (south of the Thames) and region
1 (southwest England). Salisbury: Trust for Wessex Archaeology.
Wymer, J. 1999. The Lower Palaeolithic Occupation of Britain. Wessex Archaeology and English Heritage. (free download at https://www. wessexarch.co.uk/our-work/lower- palaeolithic-occupation-britain)