The Pleistocene Context of Faunal Remains and Artefacts Discovered at Welton-Le-Wold, Lincolnshire

Abstract

SUMMARY Quarry sections at Welton-le-Wold, Lincolnshire, reveal up to 13 m of glacial tills overlying some 8 m of silts, sands and flint gravels. The gravels are the source of a sparse fauna of straight-tusked elephant, deer and horse, and of four Acheulean handaxes. The sub-till deposits, here designated the Welton Gravels, display two divisions. The upper was deposited by periglacial aeolian and niveo-fluvial processes, whilst the lower contains more water-bedded sands. Derived Lower Cretaceous materials are common. The youngest of the overlying tills is of Devensian age, while the Galcethorpe Till and the Welton Till (newly designated) are probably Wolstonian and form part of the Older Drift of the Lincolnshire Wolds. The faunal and artefact assemblages of the Welton Gravels have a Hoxnian affinity, and therefore the gravels were emplaced as valley-floor sediments during early Wolstonian or late Hoxnian times. They confirm the pre-Wolstonian existence of a valley draining eastwards through the Welton-le-Wold area from a head located in the eastern Wolds and possibly on Lower Cretaceous rocks.

Sedimentation during Marine Isotope Stage 3 at the eastern margins of the Glacial Lake Humber basin, England

“…Subaerial sedimentation on alluvial fans in a periglacial climate is an interpretation favoured for several sites around the major scarp slopes and mouths of dry valleys of the chalk in Britain, where gelifluction, debris flow, slopewash, fluvial and aeolian processes combined to aggrade significant thicknesses of stratified sands and gravels (e.g. Jukes‐Brown, ; Straw, , ; Alabaster and Straw, ; Bateman et al ., ; Evans et al ., ), which were subject to ice wedge development and cryoturbation. The deposits in such settings are often classified as fluvioperiglacial, because they are derived from geliflucted and slopewash materials reworked during nival floods (Tomlinson, ; Rowlands and Shotton, ; Williams, ; McCann et al ., ; Woo, , , ; West and Williams, ; West, ).…”

The geology of Lincolnshire, from the Humber to the Wash

“…This in turn rests on sands and pebbly gravels which exhibit clearer bedding. Recent studies (Alabaster & Straw, 1976) have clarified the sequence of deposits and confirm that at some points, brown clay rests on the bevelled margin of a greyish or purplish brown chalky clay, and that the gravels are essentially sediments accum¬ ulated within an old valley during a severely cold climate. They contain some derived fossils of animals such as elephant, deer and horse, and even some humanly-fashioned handaxes (Fig.…”

The distribution, variation and origins of pre-Devensian tills in eastern England

“…Shotton (1976) and Shotton et al (1977) have discussed the status of the M idland Chalky Boulder Clays and consider them to be Wolstonian. Alabaster & Straw (1976) have proposed the same age for Calcethorpe T ill at Welton-le-Wold (TF 282884). However, in none of these cases is there sufficient biostratigraphy to be fully conclusive.…”

“…Because H arm er used the term 'Chalky Boulder C lay' for the whole spread of till in eastern England as well as this particular facies, the name Calcethorpe Till is adopted as being less ambiguous. Alabaster & Straw (1976) considered it to be Wolstonian. (Wood 1880;H arm er 1902) Usually clay-rich, more or less chalky tills ranging from dark grey to pale brown, often with mottling in the weathering zone; east and southeast Midlands and East Anglia (figure 1).…”