Emily Flanders (UCL) - 2025-26 Students
tcrnem4@ucl.ac.uk

Re-Assessing the Acheulean of "Ice Age" Britain: new perspectives on ancient human culture, perseverance and adaptability in Western Europe

Current views of the British Palaeolithic record broadly exclude early human occupation during major cold stages prior to Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 3. This includes MIS 12 (478-424ka), the prolonged cold conditions of this major ice age often being linked to tens of thousands of years of hominin absence in Britain.

Nevertheless, climatic cycles are inherently complex, with notable changes in the environment occurring over timescales much shorter than the overall glacial- interglacial cycle. For example, glacial periods will often be interrupted by brief fluctuations to warmer temperatures, known as interstadials – these offering key potential windows of habitability into the landscape. It is possible, therefore, that archaeology stemming from an MIS 12 interstadial does exist within the British archaeological record, and has been merely overlooked as a result of this prevailing paradigm of cold-stage absence.

Through re-analyses of site stratigraphy, historical records, and the use of geometric morphometric handaxe shape analysis, this project ultimately seeks to answer the question: were hominins present in Britain during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 12, and, if so, what did the cultural landscape of this “”Ice Age”” look like?

Principal Supervisor: Dr Matthew Pope