Neanderthals in Wales - Stephen Aldhouse-Green

The final publication of results of the excavations at
Pontnewydd cave in north-east Wales has been eagerly awaited. The
site was investigated as part of the Palaeolithic Settlement of
Wales Research Programme, which has been responsible for
transforming understanding of the nature of human settlement on
the very margins of Eurasia by early Neanderthals. The caves of
the Elwy valley in north-east Wales contain evidence of the
earliest human occupation of Wales. This monograph documents the
results of 20 years of field research. It describes the traces of
occupation left around 225,000 years ago by people who were
ancestors of the Neanderthals. These include stone tools, animal
bones and the remains of the people themselves. The key cave
site, Pontnewydd, is full of international significance,
producing artefacts and fauna associated with early Neanderthal
skeletal material, related to repeated occupations of the cave
around a quarter of a million years ago. Key issues relating to
gender and diet will be explored. Within the faunal assemblage at Pontnewydd, as also within the
potentially contemporary assemblage from the nearby cave of Cefn,
it is possible to see interglacial elements which may date to MIS
7 or, even, to the preceding interglacial cycle (MIS 9), fully 50
to 100,000 years earlier.
The pointers here are the rhinoceros
Stephanorhinus kirchbergensis , a large horse
Equus ferus , and the leopard,
Panthera pardus . None of these can be later than MIS 7 and may even be of MIS 9 age. Moreover, the species of bear
represented at both Pontnewydd and Cefn is the cave bear ( Ursus spelaeus ) and these seem to be replaced by brown bears ( Ursus arctos ) during MIS 11 or 9. This inference of an early date for elements of the Pontnewydd and Cefn faunas is borne out by the
presence of macaque at Cefn, a species not known in Britain after
MIS 9. This multi-authored monograph will place the Elwy valley
caves within a geological and archaeological context; allow a
detailed publication of research on the artefacts, fauna and
hominid remains; and provide a synthesis of how this work feeds
back into understandings of the Palaeolithic settlement on the
edge of the then known world.