The Early Settlers of the Somer Valley

This handaxe, covered with a thick layer of dark brown patina acquired over many thousands of years of weathering, is one of hundreds of Lower/Middle Palaeolithic implements discovered in the Midsomer Norton/Radstock area.

This handaxe and other implements described here were discovered in the valley of the Somer river, a tributary of the Lower Avon. Two big questions surround these finds: How did they get here and who were the makers of these tools?

The handaxe was found in a funnel-shaped part of the valley, there where the Somer joins the Wellow Brook, at a short distance from Radstock. Close to where the two rivers join, large concentrations of rounded and sub-angular pebbles can be found, consisting of heavily patinated dark flints and greenish-grey cherts with a honey-coloured patina. These surface scatters are rich in artifacts, and although many are coated in a thick patina, most are found in 'unrolled' condition, which indicates that they haven't moved much since they were discarded.

The thick-butted handaxe shown above is made from good quality black flint (dimensions: L=8cm; W=5cm; T=3cm) and is probably of Lower Palaeolithic origin. It is the only one of its kind recovered from this area as most of the worked material found here is comprised of scrapers, points, notched and denticulated flakes and large choppers.

A selection of the large number of points found in the Somer valley is shown above. They include Tayac-like denticulated points and several triangular points with Quinson-like features, bearing retouch on only one of the faces. The largest point shown here is 5cm long and the smallest 3cm.

Scrapers from this site come in a range of sizes and shapes and several display scalar retouch. The example on the right is made on a heavily weathered chert flake with a lot of cortex, providing a non-slip grip for the user when scraping flesh and fat from the inside of animal hides. The worked surface is coated in a light glossy patina.

The material from the site contains several large pebble tools and choppers, two of which are shown on the left. Both were made from large chert nodules and were probably used to crush bones to extract the nutritious marrow. They are covered with a honey-coloured patina and the trihedral chopper/pick on the right side of the image shows evidence of recent re-working at the tip.

Artifacts from later periods

The presence of artifacts from later periods indicates that this site has been used over a very long period. A few of these later artifacts are described below.

Shown on the right is a biface made from greenish chert with a glossy honey-coloured patina (dimensions: L=6.5cm; W=4cm; T=1.3cm; courtesy of Bridget Wishart, Midsomer Norton). The artifact has a sharp cutting edge all around and a pointed tip. Because of the lack of contextual information of the surface scatter in which it was found it is very difficult to date this object. Some characteristics hint that it could be of Middle Palaeolithic origin but it could have been made later. It also bears some resemblance with the Keilmesser implements found in the region west of the Rhine.

The dihedral burin shown on the right (L=5.5cm) is made from the same chert as the previously described biface and could be Upper-Palaeolithic or from a later period. Burins were used as grooving tools to produce antler or bone points or needles. The artifact is covered with a honey-coloured and a glossy patina. The burin blows have exposed the underlying grey chert and could therefore be the result of a more recent re-working.

Another interesting find is a small (L=5cm), partially polished flint with a groove that may have been used for the manufacture and straightening of bone needles.

Origin of the flint

Flints are not exposed in any significant outcrops in this area and the nearest high quality raw material would only have been available from the chalk scarp running closest at Westbury, some 20 miles away. The pebbles of flint and chert that are found in many streambeds in this part of Somerset have been weathered out of long vanished Cretaceous deposits, which likely covered the Triassic and Jurassic sediments in this area, in a very distant past. Evidence of hominids living in the Avon area comes from Lower Palaeolithic implements that were found in the gravels of the Lower (Bristol) Avon at Chapel Pill Farm, Stidham Farm near Keynsham and in a gravel pit near Twerton in Bath. Few reports, however, describe flint tools found in streambeds of the Avon tributaries. Unlike the Avon gravels, where some of these Lower Palaeolithic tools are found in plateau gravel contexts that can be correlated to known Pleistocene deposits, the Midsomer Norton flint concentrations lack any context and may have been deposited via glacial mudslides when the Anglian ice sheet blocked the flow of the Avon.

To make things worse, because of its topography the Somer valley was ideal for the construction of a canal (around 1800) and later a railway to transport coal from the local mines close to the find spot (Welton Hollow colliery and Norton Hill). The construction of the railway would have involved the removal of sediments for cutting and subsequent use of this material to form nearby embankments. During the construction of the line in 1873-74, the track was packed on gravel. It is very unlikely that flint would have been used as ballast material as it breaks with a curved (conchoidal) fracture and will not pack down properly. In later years (1876 and onwards) the track was ballasted with good clean-broken Carboniferous limestone and white Lias from the Mendip quarries and this material is often found mixed with the flints artifacts.

We can now conclude with some level of confidence that the flint and chert artifacts are of local origin, probably glacial detritus, perhaps exposed by the construction of the coal canal and later moved by cutting and embankment construction activities for the railway. One question still remains: Who were the toolmakers? Although it is very difficult to reliably diagnose these artifacts, some of the tool characteristics indicate that they belong to assemblages related to the Lower or the early Middle Palaeolithic. The site has so far not yielded any clear Levallois flakes or cores. No faunal remains have survived and finding some means of dating and/or correlation with other Pleistocene deposits might proof to be very difficult. A more detailed analysis of the implements and comparison with similar implements of known age could help to understand their history. Any expert advise or help from readers familiar with these assemblages will be greatly appreciated.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Tim Deacon and Julian Jefferson from The Somerset & Dorset Railway Heritage Trust; Nigel Carter, curator of the Radstock Museum, and Alan Bentley, the Radstock Museum's Geological advisor, for sharing their knowledge of the Norton-Radstock area. Thanks to Bridget Wishart for sharing her find for this blog post. Special thanks go to Kaïn van den Elsen, co-discoverer of the site.