Baker's Hole
Encyclopedia
Baker's Hole is an archaeological site in a former quarry at Northfleet
Northfleet
Northfleet is a town in the Borough of Gravesham in Kent, England. Its name is derived from North creek , and the settlement on the shore of the River Thames adjacent to Gravesend was known as Norfluet in the Domesday Book, and Northflet in 1201...

, Gravesham
Gravesham
Gravesham is a local government district and borough in North West Kent, England. It has borders with the River Thames to the north; the City of Rochester and Medway to the east; the borough of Tonbridge and Malling ; and the boroughs of Sevenoaks and Dartford to the west.Its council is based at...

, Kent
Kent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...

, England, which has been described as "the best known British Early Middle Paleolithic (MIS
Marine isotope stage
Marine isotope stages , marine oxygen-isotope stages, or oxygen isotope stages , are alternating warm and cool periods in the Earth's paleoclimate, deduced from oxygen isotope data reflecting changes in temperature derived from data from deep sea core samples...

 9-7) site". It produced "mostly large Levallois
Levallois technique
The Levallois technique is a name given by archaeologists to a distinctive type of stone knapping developed by precursors to modern humans during the Palaeolithic period....

 cores
Lithic core
In archaeology, a lithic core is a distinctive artifact that results from the practice of lithic reduction. In this sense, a core is the scarred nucleus resulting from the detachment of one or more flakes from a lump of source material or tool stone, usually by using a hard hammer percussor such...

 and flakes
Lithic flake
In archaeology, a lithic flake is a "portion of rock removed from an objective piece by percussion or pressure," and may also be referred to as a chip or spall, or collectively as debitage. The objective piece, or the rock being reduced by the removal of flakes, is known as a core. Once the proper...

", representing the discarded remains of production on a considerable scale of stone hand axe
Hand axe
A hand axe is a bifacial Stone tool typical of the lower and middle Palaeolithic , and is the longest-used tool of human history.-Distribution:...

 tools by a population probably consisting of Neanderthal
Neanderthal
The Neanderthal is an extinct member of the Homo genus known from Pleistocene specimens found in Europe and parts of western and central Asia...

s. It is described by the Kent county council archaeological service as a "Mousterian factory", with a sequence through the Clactonian
Clactonian
The Clactonian is the name given by archaeologists to an industry of European flint tool manufacture that dates to the early part of the interglacial period known as the Hoxnian, the Mindel-Riss or the Holstein stages . Clactonian tools were made by Homo erectus rather than modern humans...

, Acheulian and Mousterian
Mousterian
Mousterian is a name given by archaeologists to a style of predominantly flint tools associated primarily with Homo neanderthalensis and dating to the Middle Paleolithic, the middle part of the Old Stone Age.-Naming:...

 archaeological industries. Many of the finds are now in the British Museum
British Museum
The British Museum is a museum of human history and culture in London. Its collections, which number more than seven million objects, are amongst the largest and most comprehensive in the world and originate from all continents, illustrating and documenting the story of human culture from its...

, which in the past distributed small sets of artefacts to several other museums.

Location

Baker's Hole is in the Ebbsfleet
Ebbsfleet
Ebbsfleet may refer to:* Ebbsfleet Valley, a redevelopment zone of the Thames Gateway in north west Kent, England**Ebbsfleet River**Ebbsfleet International railway station**Ebbsfleet United F.C., formerly Gravesend & Northfleet F.C....

 valley south of the river Thames
River Thames
The River Thames flows through southern England. It is the longest river entirely in England and the second longest in the United Kingdom. While it is best known because its lower reaches flow through central London, the river flows alongside several other towns and cities, including Oxford,...

 in Kent, an area rich in significant Paleolithic sites, including Swanscombe Heritage Park
Swanscombe Heritage Park
Swanscombe Heritage Park is a National Nature Reserve and a Site of Special Scientific Interest near the village of Swanscombe in north-west Kent, England, at the Thames east of London...

 just to the west, and Swanscombe Thameside Community School ("Swan Valley School" in some sources) across Southfleet Road. Baker's Hole is traditionally described as in Northfleet, but is now described as in the parish of "Swanscombe
Swanscombe
Swanscombe is a small town, part of the Borough of Dartford on the north Kent coast in England. It is part of the civil parish of Swanscombe and Greenhithe.-Prehistory:...

 and Greenhithe
Greenhithe
Greenhithe is a town in Dartford District of Kent, England. It forms part of the civil parish of Swanscombe and Greenhithe.Greenhithe, as it is spelled today, is located where it was possible to build wharves for transshipping corn, wood and other commodities; its largest cargoes were of chalk and...

" by Kent County Council
Kent County Council
Kent County Council is the county council that governs the majority of the county of Kent in England. It provides the upper tier of local government, below which are 12 district councils, and around 300 town and parish councils. The county council has 84 elected councillors...

. For the main periods of archaeological finds, the site was quarried by the Associated Portland Cement Manufacturers Ltd
Blue Circle Industries
Blue Circle Industries was a British public company manufacturing cement. It was founded in 1900, and was bought out by the French company Lafarge in 2001.-History:...

 – the Swanscombe/Northfleet area was where William Aspdin
William Aspdin
William Aspdin was an English cement manufacturer, and a pioneer of the Portland cement industry.He was born in Leeds, second son of Joseph Aspdin. His father obtained a patent for "Portland cement" in 1824 and William joined his father's cement manufacturing firm in 1829. His father's product...

 had pioneered Portland cement
Portland cement
Portland cement is the most common type of cement in general use around the world because it is a basic ingredient of concrete, mortar, stucco and most non-specialty grout...

 in the 1840s. Quarrying is now finished and most of the site has been back-filled. Locating the precise findspots for the material described as coming from Baker's Hole is somewhat complicated, and the area from which they came is more precisely described as "Southfleet Pit" within the larger quarry; "Baker's Hole" proper is to the north, and has produced no finds.

Archaeological investigations

The first finds from the Ebbsfleet valley were made in 1881 in a tramway
Tramway
Tramway may refer to:* Tramway , a lightly laid railway for uses such as logging or mining * A system of trams * Aerial tramway...

 cutting, and a local amateur archaeologist, James Cross, began collecting finds from Southfleet Pit from soon after quarrying began in 1909. Finds were published by R.A. Smith, an archaeologist from the British Museum, in 1911, although it appears that he never excavated at the site himself, but inspected, borrowed, and later published finds produced for him by the company, which they had paid the quarry workers to hand in as they came across them in their work. These were finally transferred to the British Museum in 1914 and then numbered some 750 pieces. The British Museum subsequently distributed small collections of "duplicate" material to any local museum that asked for one, and now holds 299 pieces from the "Smith Collection".

The implications of this history are that, according to Rebecca Scott of the British Museum, it cannot safely be assumed that the many hand axe
Hand axe
A hand axe is a bifacial Stone tool typical of the lower and middle Palaeolithic , and is the longest-used tool of human history.-Distribution:...

s found on the site are from the same levels as the cores and flakes, as has often been claimed in the past.

Further reading

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