Prehistoric Norfolk

The size of the habitable land would have varied through the different glacial and interglacial periods up until the end of the Anglian Stage, as would have the climate, flora and fauna, and the general landscape of Norfolk.

The majority of the evidence for Lower and Middle Palaeolithic occupation in East Anglia survives as redeposited flakes and tools recovered from river gravel deposits.

The hand axe is an ovate handaxe made from black flint with pale grey coarse-grained inclusions, one face carries two small areas of pebble cortex, and is in near perfect condition.

[2] The environmental conditions of Happisburgh, shown through pollen analysis, suggests a picture of a temperate woodland with areas of fen carr and aquatic plants growing in a maritime environment of tidal sediments.

[10] Other Lower Palaeolithic sites in Norfolk include: There is little evidence of human occupation during the subsequent Ipswichian Stage between around 180,000 and 70,000 years ago, lead.

Well-preserved in-situ Middle Palaeolithic open-air sites are exceedingly rare in Europe and very unusual within a British context.

In total, some 2,079 bones, tusks, antlers, and teeth of Mammuthus primigenius (mammoth), Coelodonta antiquitatis (woolly rhinoceros), Rangifer tarandus (reindeer), Equus ferus (wild horse), Bison priscus (bison), Canis lupus (wolf), Vulpes vulpes or Alopex lagopus (red or Arctic fox), and Ursus arctos (brown bear) were individually recorded and a further 25,000 bone, tooth, and tusk fragments recovered.

[11] The presence of sub-Arctic plants, insects and snails at this site indicates that the Neanderthals of this time lived in a climate like that of modern Scandinavia.

11: The Wissey Embayment: evidence for pre-Iron Age occupation accumulated prior to the Fenland Project, E. Anglian Archaeol.

By 8,500 years ago, the rising sea levels caused by the melting glaciers cut Britain off from continental Europe for the last time.

The warmer climate changed the Arctic environment to one of pine, birch and alder forest; this less open landscape was less conducive to the large herds of reindeer and horse that had previously sustained humans.

Woodworking tools such as adzes appear in the archaeological record, although some flint blade types remained similar to their Palaeolithic predecessors.

The dog was domesticated because of its benefits during hunting (see Star Carr) and the wetland environments created by the warmer weather would have been a rich source of fish and game.

Two recent excavations in different parts of Thetford are: Microliths have frequently been found in the Brecks, including along the Little Ouse Valley, and around the edges of the meres (small lakes).

The heavier boulder clay of the Norfolk till plain has a site that has produced more flint tranchet axes than any other in East Anglia Wymer, J.J. & Robins, P.A.. 1995.

By the time of the Neolithic Norfolk, like the rest of Britain, was cut off from mainland Europe by the North Sea and the English Channel.

Neolithic communities seem to have preferred Norfolk's light soils and well-drained river valley tracts, rather than the heavily wooded central claylands, although these were probably occupied to some extent and also exploited for hunting and foraging.

The fertile Rich Loam region of north and east Norfolk, with its loess-rich soils, may have been especially congenial, and the number of possible monuments here is striking.

The three possible Norfolk examples are relatively small and have a marked circularity in comparison to many other causewayed enclosure sites in England The way in which they were used is not fully understood, but they may have been a meeting point for small, dispersed groups of people living in the surrounding area, a place where the exchange of goods, ritual feasting and other ceremonial activities might have taken place.

It has been suggested that they may have more in common with hengiform monuments of the later Neolithic and early Bronze Age than with 'normal' causewayed enclosures of the fourth millennium BC.

The smaller dimensions of the Norfolk sites may be a reflection of the size and dispersal of the communities creating, maintaining and using them and it may not be necessary to assume that they occurred later than elsewhere in Britain.