The contributions of the earth sciences, particularly geomorphology and sedimentary petrography, to the interpretation and environmental reconstruction of archaeological contexts is called "geoarchaeology." The physical context provides a palaeo-environmental legacy liable to patterning and interpretation just as artifacts imply prehistoric cultural activity. Through field study and laboratory analyses, the geoarchaeologist elaborates the micro-, meso-, and macro-environments of a site, and provides input for erecting prehistoric human activity patterns in time and space. The categories of information that must be examined in the field, the range of interpretive problems that confront the field worker, and the laboratory techniques which corroborate field interpretations can be illustrated by examining archaeology in an alluvial site. These considerations emphasize the need to involve the geomorphologist in all aspects of the design and execution of an archaeological excavation.
Clacton-on-Sea is a coastal town in the County of Essex, England. It is 75 km northeast of London, 18 km southeast of Colchester (fig. 1). The archaeological site which is the subject of this report comes within Clacton Urban District (civil parish of Great Clacton) although associated earlier discoveries extend to Jaywick Sands, and in the opposite direction, northward, to Holland-on-Sea, both in the same Urban District. The National Grid Reference for the site is TM 157134.The Pleistocene deposits at Clacton have attracted attention since the first half of the nineteenth century when John Brown of Stanway collected mammalian remains from the foreshore (Brown 1838, 1840). Flint artifacts first appear to have been recognized at the end of the century (Kenworthy 1898). Hazzledine Warren watched exposures between Clacton Pier and Lion Point from about 1910 to 1950, and collected the large quantity of artifacts and faunal remains now in the British Museum. His many papers give much of the history and details of the site and surrounding area (especially Warren 1922, 1923, 1924, 1951, 1955). The only previous controlled archaeological examination in the Clacton area was conducted by Dr K. Oakley and Mrs M. Leakey in 1934 on behalf of the British Association, and their report was published in volume 3 of these Proceedings (Oakley and Leakey 1937). More recently, pollen data relating to these excavated deposits have been obtained from boreholes behind the cliff on West Marine Parade and the foreshore (Pike and Godwin 1953; Turner and Kerney 1971).
L'exploration, en 1982, du bassin du Haut Feiran, a révélé la présence de plusieurs « techno-complexes » archéologiques connus jusqu'alors au Levant Sud. Des sites appartenant au Paléolithique Moyen, au Paléolithique Supérieur, à l'Epipaléolithique et au Néolithique ont été découverts dans les reliefs situés entre l'Oasis de Tarfat el Quidrein et la Plaine de Rah'a dans le bassin supérieur du Wadi el Sheikh. Les sites du Paléolithique Supérieur et de l'Epipaléolithique étaient associés aux zones marécageuses ou aux bassins souvent présents dans la région au Pléistocène final.
A protracted phase of aggradation without evidence for episodes of cutting and filling occurred in the drainage of Wadi el Sheikh between about 65,000 and 12,000 B.P. Marl sediments in the deposits at the oasis of Tarfat el Quidrein denote freshwater ponds or marshes that attracted Upper Paleolithic, Ahmarian hunter-gatherers. Wetter conditions favoring the formation of the marls are explained by local, geomorphic factors including the orographic influence of nearby mountains. A major phase of down-cutting initiated at the end of the Pleistocene and beginning of the Holocene is the only climatically forced gradational change seen in the geomorphic record.
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