Exploring Kent's Past

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Monument details

Summary

Two Middle Palaeolithic handaxes (bout coupé) from Clubb's Ballast Pit, Ham Hill, Snodland, as well as another Palaeolithic handaxe, and Pleistocene mammal remains, found while dredging gravels below the Medway floodplain

Monument Types

• FINDSPOT (Lower Palaeolithic to Middle Palaeolithic - 500000 BC to 40001 BC)

Associated Finds

• HANDAXE (Middle Palaeolithic - 150000 BC to 40001 BC)

Full description

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The handaxe finds made in 1969 by workmen at the pit's screening plant, who gave them to JN Carreck, who then showed them to Roe (1), and they were also documented by Tyldesley. Two of the handaxes are described as of "classic bout coupé form", and the third is of similar shape. Although their present whereabouts is unknown, they were reported as in fresh condition and unpatinated. They originated from the lower 5 feet of the buried Devensian gravel channel, estimated as occurring between c. -5 and -7m OD. Finds of Ice Age fossils such as woolly rhinoceros and mammoth were reported from the same deposits, as well as horse and red deer.

<1> Roe, D.A., 1981, The Lower and Middle Palaeolithic Periods in Britain., p261 (Monograph). SKE29687.

<2> Tyldesley JA, 1987, The Bout Coupé Handaxe: a Typological Problem. British Series 170. BAR, Oxford., p62 (Bibliographic reference). SKE29688.

Sources and further reading