Palaeo-London. Thinking About The Ice Age Archaeology and Environments of the Capital

The landscape now covered by Greater London is one which preserves a rich record of our Ice Age past. Spanning in excess of 500,000 years, this record includes large area of Ice Age geology, environmental records of now lost landscapes as well as stone artefacts and the bones of now extinct mammalian fauna. In this lecture we will explore this record through key sites ad the history of their discovery. From the first recorded discovery of a Palaeolithic tool through to the professional commercial excavations taking place in the city in recent years, we’ll consider how the London landscape was shaped by ice and water, and the early human populations who adapted, or not, to the dramatic cycles of climate change evidenced in the gravels and clays of the city’s deep past.