Indeed and it’s the regional variations that make the period so fascinating (and put quibbles about the start date of the Roman period in perspective!).
I presume this need to accommodate regional variation is why the period date ranges and names are not formalised. The interesting challenge from an information management point of
view is how to accommodate them while giving researchers the best chance of getting consistent data out of HERs and other databases. The main challenge may in fact be one of terminology – ‘cultures’ rather than numerical dates.
I’m not sure how EH intend to progress after the current set of Palaeolithic / Mesolithic projects has finished. I assume they would like to identify areas where the participating
projects have identified improvements to thesauri and definitions that can be made and progress them. Perhaps Sarah can advise on that?
ALGAO will also need to be involved to guide recording practice for those aspects that aren’t about terms (eg how we record palaeo-environmental evidence etc) possibly through IFP2?
Paul
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Paul Cuming | Historic Environment Record Manager |
Environment, Planning and Enforcement | Heritage Conservation Group
Kent County Council | Maidstone, ME14 1XX | Tel: 01622 696918 |
www.kent.gov.uk/HER
From: Issues related to Historic Environment Records [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
On Behalf Of Helen Wells (Archaeology)
Sent: 11 July 2014 09:55
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: Palaeolithic dates!!
Hi all,
I’m not rushing into this but I thought it would be good to have a bit more discussion about it, so it stays on people’s agendas. In many ways it doesn’t exactly matter what the labels are,
since the thing that actually matters is the dates. The labels just reflect the dates entered. Or am I wrong about that?
In Leicestershire we have currently have some interesting Lower Palaeolithic stuff from Brooksby, and some interesting Late Upper Palaeolithic stuff (Creswellian) from Bradgate Park – but we
have very different Palaeolithic archaeology to Kent.
The Brooksby stuff is Cromerian, which I guess makes it 950,000-450,000 BC or so in date (currently indexed as ‘Lower Palaeolithic’ with a date of 500,000-150,001 BC), and the Bradgate stuff
is Late Upper Palaeolithic (Creswellian), in the period 13,000-9,500 BC (currently indexed as ‘Upper Palaeolithic’ with a date range of 40,000-10,001 BC). The more I look at that the more it bothers me!
I thought it was worth chatting about it further just to make sure it does stay on people’s agendas… I’m certainly not changing anything yet! Though I may at least alter the date ranges I know
are wrong.
Out of interest (and I should have looked at this before!) the East Midlands Research Framework (2012) gives the following dates:
Cromerian and Intra-Anglian 950-450 kya (thousand years ago)
Pre-Levallois 450-250 kya
Levallois 250-150 kya
Mousterian 60-40 kya
Early Upper Palaeolithic 40-27 kya
Late Upper Palaeolithic 13,000-9,500 BC
Mesolithic 9,500-4,000 BC
So I suppose it would make sense for the East Midlands to be using something based around those dates…
Sorry, I just find this quite interesting, the Palaeolithic is just such a vast and intriguing time!
Helen Wells
Historic Environment Record Officer
Leicestershire County Council
Planning, Historic & Natural Environment, Leicestershire County Council, County Hall, Glenfield, Leics, LE3 8RA
Telephone: 0116 3058323 / E-mail:
[log in to unmask]
Hang on, isn’t half the point of yesterday that we need to have a proper discussion about periods and date ranges (as well as monument types and recording policies) based on consultation
with a range of HERs and Palaeolithic specialists, thereby trying to avoid ad-hoc local arrangements? I know the period ranges are individually variable but we ought to reach some sort of consensus before recasting our data to suit local circumstances.
Paul
-------------------------------------------------------------
Paul Cuming | Historic Environment Record Manager |
Environment, Planning and Enforcement | Heritage Conservation Group
Agreed, very interesting. Before HBSMR folk rush to update your PeriodLUT though, there's one more step involved, to bring existing data along too. This is simple but may
not be obvious, so give us a bell. Maybe we'll put some tips on the forums too.
Atb
Crispin
Sent from my Windows Phone
Following yesterday’s interesting HER Forum, I had a bit of a chat with a Palaeolithic expert here in Leicestershire and he suggests the Upper Palaeolithic would be better split up as well, with the divide
being the Dimlington Stadial. He also said there’s some debate over whether the Palaeolithic starts 1,000,000 years ago but agrees that 500,000 is clearly wrong. So I went with 800,000 as a compromise.
J
I don’t really know my Palaeolithic dates, but this would leave us with something like this:
Lower/Middle Palaeolithic 800,000 - 125,001
British Mousterian 125,000 - 42,501
Early Upper Palaeolithic 42,500 – 13,001
Late Upper Palaeolithic 13,000 – 10,001
(I think the Dimlington Stadial is something like 22,000 – 13,000 BC?)
From the point of view of what we have in Leicestershire, the Early/Upper Palaeolithic does seem sensible as a divide. We don’t have much that’s earlier Palaeolithic apart from what’s turning up at Brooksby
Quarry (alongside the River Bytham).
Anyway, the date thing certainly is worth thinking about…
Helen Wells
Historic Environment Record Officer
Leicestershire County Council
Planning, Historic & Natural Environment, Leicestershire County Council, County Hall, Glenfield, Leics, LE3 8RA
Telephone: 0116 3058323 / E-mail:
[log in to unmask]
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