Harnham Relief Road, Salisbury

Archaeological work at Harnham is being carried out in advance of road construction by Gifford and Partners and Pre-Construct Archaeology, on behalf of the Highways Agency, under the guidance of RPS Consultants, with Martin Bates (Department of Archaeology, University of Wales, Lampeter) and myself acting as specialist advisors on the Pleistocene and Palaeolithic archaeological aspects. The site contains a sequence of Pleistocene sediments representing the formation, silting up and subsequent burial by Chalk solifluction deposits of a small tributary of the River Avon. The deposits date to approximately 275,000 years ago, and represent a short-lived warmer phase within a predominantly cold stage of the Middle Pleistocene.

Fig. 1. On-site at Harnham, Autumn 2002

The sediments contain abundant Palaeolithic flint artefacts at all levels. In the small scale investigations so far over 40 handaxes, approximately 2,500 waste flakes from their manufacture, and 8 percussors used for flint knapping have been recovered. There are three separate horizons where undisturbed or minimally disturbed artefacts are present, and several refitting flaking sequences have been identified in the preliminary analysis carried out to date.

Fig. 2a to f. Refitting material

Fig. 3. Plan of refitting material in test pit onto main landsurface

Two of these horizons, and probably also the third, of which only a small part was investigated, also contain large mammalian faunal remains. Some of these retain evidence of human modification, probably relating to their use for food. The sediments also contain a range of biological evidence that can be used to reconstruct the prevailing climate and local palaeo-environmental conditions, and that can also contribute to dating the site.