ABSTRACT
The sequence of stages in the British Pleistocene may seem complicated enough to the uninitiated even in Table 1: how much more so when discussed in the specialist books. As set out in the present chapter, however, it is likely eventually to prove much too simplified, and there may well be serious errors or omissions which only future work can reveal and correct. Fortunately, since our principal concern is with the archaeological rather than the geological record, we need not get too deeply involved with all the difficulties and possible pitfalls. The Palaeolithic period in Britain, unlike that in certain other parts of the world, is much shorter than the length of the Pleistocene, and a nodding acquaintance with the local earlier Pleistocene stages will suffice. Our main interest in the British Pleistocene sequence is in the first instance unashamedly concerned with relative and absolute chronology, since it is the assigning of archaeological occurrences to particular stadials, interstadials or interglacials, or better still to specific parts of them, which enables such occurrences to be placed in their true order and which may sometimes offer at least a hint regarding their absolute age. Thus an industry of Hoxnian age is demonstrably older than one belonging to some part of the Ipswichian, whatever a mere technotypological approach to the artefacts might have encouraged one to think. But it would be narrowminded indeed to seek no more information than this from the Pleistocene deposits in which imple-
ments are found, because they may be capable of yielding much valuable data concerning the contemporary environment and landscape, and hence the food supplies and the resources of all kinds available at that time to Palaeolithic man.
