Westbury Cave: the Natural History Museum excavations 1976-1984

editors

Peter Andrews, Jill Cook, Andrew Currant and Christopher Stringer.

Archaeological headlines were made world-wide in 1975 when an ancient cave was exposed by quarrying above the village of Westbury-sub-Mendip, Somerset, UK. Stone tools were found with bones of extinct bears and other animals in the 500,000 year old deposits, making it the oldest site with evidence of human activity in Britain and one of the oldest in Europe. The Natural History Museum excavations began in 1976, a multidisciplinary project conducted by a well-known and respected team from one of Britain's premier research institutions. This is the full report on the excavation of an exceptional mid-Pleistocene site.
The Westbury Cave excavations produced an unprecedented sample of Middle Pleistocene fauna as well as more flints and chert. Detailed taphonomic research underpins the palaeoecological reconstructions, revealing an unexpectedly complex sequence of climate changes with important implications for the European Pleistocene record. A painstaking and controversial analysis of the flints concludes they are the product of natural processes, not human action, but a single cut-marked bone betrays a human presence.
Early human occupation of Britain has since been confirmed by the discoveries of Boxgrove, but Westbury remains unique for its detailed palaeoecological record. The analysis of the flints should provoke lively debate.

contributors include:

A Gentry, B Ghaleb, P Goldberg, R Grün, R MacPhail, D Schreve, W Stanton and A Turner.

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