Cuxton lies on the west bank of the River Medway, in a gap cut by the river through the Middle and Upper Chalk of the North Downs. The site sits on a small remnant of Medway terrace gravel, situated on a Chalk spur between the Medway and a tributary valley once occupied by a north-west flowing stream (Wenban-Smith 2006). Artefacts were first reported in 1889, and the site has been subject to three controlled excavations by Tester (1965), Cruse (1987) and Wenban-Smith (2006).

Cruse's excavations exposed a deep sequence of >3m of fluvial sands and gravels, lying on brecciated chalk. Trenches by Tester and Wenban-Smith revealed thinner sequences ~1m in depth, suggesting shallower more marginal locations. Cruse's excavations in a deeper-channel exposure identified two separate artefact groups: a non-handaxe assemblage from the lower gravel and a handaxe assemblage from the upper gravel (Callow, in Cruse 1987). The latter is probably the lateral equivalent of Tester's gravel, which produced a rich Acheulean assemblage including 199 handaxes. Wenban-Smith’s excavations recovered a further 20 handaxes in their trench. The different locations of these trenches in relation to the terrace formation probably explain the differences in the archaeology, the shallow sequences towards the edge of the terrace containing a conflated sequence that conceals the separation of handaxe and non-handaxe assemblages found in Cruse’s section. Six proto-Levallois cores and flakes were also reported by Tester (1965) from the Rectory Site, although the Levallois character of this material has been questioned (Callow in Cruse 1987; White et al. 2024).

The Cuxton terrace deposits have a surface height of ~18.5m above Ordnance Datum although the site lies in a part of the valley where correlation with the Upper and Lower Medway is difficult and where altitude is a poor guide. Bridgland (in Cruse 1987) originally correlated the Cuxton sediments with the Binney Gravel, the Medway equivalent of the Devensian Taplow/Kempton Park Formation of the Thames (with which it is confluent). Later modelling of the wider Medway system (Bridgland 1996; 2003) however, assigned Cuxton to Terrace No. 3, which is correlated with the Lynch Hill/Corbets Tey Formation of the Thames (MIS 10–9–8). This is supported by OSL dates of ~MIS 8 age obtained by the Medway Valley Palaeolithic Survey (Wenban-Smith 2006).

Bridgland, D. 1996. Quaternary river terrace deposits as a framework for the Lower Palaeolithic record. In: Gamble, C. & A.J. Lawson. (eds) The English Palaeolithic Reviewed. Wessex: Trust for Wessex Archaeology, p. 24–39.

Bridgland, D.R., 2003. The evolution of the River Medway, SE England, in the context of Quaternary palaeoclimate and the Palaeolithic occupation of NW Europe. Proceedings of the Geologists' Association 114: 23–48.

Cruse, J. 1987. Further investigations of the Acheulian Site at Cuxton. Archaeologia Cantiana 104: 39–81.

Tester, P.J. 1965. An Acheulian Site at Cuxton. Archaeologia Cantiana 80: 30–60.

Wenban-Smith, F. 2006 Handaxe typology and the Lower Palaeolithic cultural development: ficrons, cleavers and two giant handaxes from Cuxton. Lithics 25: 11–21.

White, M., Rawlinson, A., Foulds, F., Dale, L., Davis, R., Bridgland, D., Shipton, C. & Ashton, N. 2024. Making a U-turn on the Purfleet Interchange: stone tool technology in Marine Isotope Stage 9 Britain and the emergence of the Middle Palaeolithic in Europe. Journal of Paleolithic Archaeology 7: 1–23.