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Swanscombe (Barnfield Pit)
Kent

 

 

Site Number 46 (This is an AHOB Key Site)
Nearest Town: Swanscombe
National Grid Reference: TQ 59787 74506
Lat: 51.447 Lon: 0.298

Background

Barnfield Pit is the best known of a number of pits in the Swanscombe area that were quarried for gravel and underlying Chalk. The sequence and associated archaeology have been known since the early 20th century (Smith & Dewey, 1913; Ovey 1964; Bridgland 1994; Conway et al. 1996). There have been two major excavations at the site, those by the Wymers in the 1950s and by Waechter from 1968-72. The Thames terrace deposits, which rest on Chalk and London Clay, consist of the Lower Gravel, Lower Loam (Stage I), Lower Middle Gravel and Upper Middle Gravel (Stage II), and a series of overlying sands, loams and gravels (Stage III). The fluvial sediments (Stages I and II) are attributed to MIS 11 on the basis of stratigraphy (Bridgland, 1994), amino acid ratios (Penkman et al. 2011) and biostratigraphy (Schreve 2001; Ashton et al. 2008). Changes in the molluscan assemblages enable correlation with other sites and with the Hoxnian pollen record. This suggests that t... [read more]


Horizons recorded at Swanscombe (Barnfield Pit)

Unit Name Epoch Biozone MIS
Upper Middle Gravel (Horz Num: 257) Middle Pleistocene Swanscombe MAZ 11
Lower Middle Gravel (Horz Num: 46) Middle Pleistocene Swanscombe MAZ 11
Lower Loam (Horz Num: 297) Middle Pleistocene Swanscombe MAZ 11
Lower Gravel (Horz Num: 256) Middle Pleistocene Swanscombe MAZ 11
Basal Gravel (Horz Num: 648) Middle Pleistocene Swanscombe MAZ 11

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