A preliminary report on the Stanton Harcourt Channel Deposits (Oxfordshire, England): geological context, vertebrate remains and palaeolithic stone artefacts

A summary is given of the geological, faunal and archaeological information obtained during excavations in the Stanton Harcourt Channel Deposits from 1990 to 1995. The channel deposits underlie the ‘cold‐climate’ Stanton Harcourt Gravel Member of the Summertown– Radley Terrace Formation. The Channel sediments are attributed to Oxygen Isotope Stage 7, when the Thames was undergoing down‐dip migration and eroding the Weymouth Member of the Oxford Clay (Upper Jurassic), the contemporary Jurassic (Corallian) escarpment being near to Stanton Harcourt at that time. Abundant large vertebrate remains have been recovered, mainly from the base of the Channel deposits, where a cobble and boulder bed rests on thin silt or sand horizons or in scour hollows in the clay bedrock. Smaller bones occur throughout the deposits, which are mainly poorly sorted gravels, but especially at erosive horizons. Several palaeolithic artefacts have been found in the same contexts; many of the bones and some of the artefacts appear not to have been transported far. Although the artefacts cannot be linked directly with the bones, a study of them adds to our knowledge of the Middle Pleistocene human settlement of the Upper Thames Valley. It is of interest that mammoth is abundant as part of the interglacial faunal assemblage, and the significance of this is discussed. The environment clearly included substantial areas of open grassland, although there was also some forest in the vicinity. Evidence appears to be accumulating for important faunal and floral differences between particular interglacial events during the British Middle and Late Pleistocene.