High Lodge is located 3km from Mildenhall, Suffolk, on the western side of a degraded Chalk escarpment. Handaxes and well-made scrapers have been known from the site since the 1860s (Evans 1872), and several excavations have been conducted (Marr 1921; Ashton et al. 1992) aimed at resolving longstanding controversies regarding the geological and archaeological sequence.

The Quaternary geology of the site is complex and in places highly deformed. The British Museum excavations (Ashton et al. 1992) divided the sequence into two main series: 1) pre-Anglian floodplain clayey-silts and sands (Beds B and C) deposited by the extinct Bytham River, containing the famous scraper assemblage and a sparse pre-Anglian fauna (High Lodge Series); and 2) sands and gravels from proglacial fluvial activity (Beds D and E), containing the handaxe assemblage (Mildenhall Series). These are sandwiched between two tills both equated lithologically with the Anglian (MIS 12) Lowestoft Till.

Lewis (in Ashton et al. 1992) explained the sequence of events that created this situation thus: pre-Anglian implementiferous silts of the Bytham system were entrained by Anglian Ice, shunted en masse and redeposited on top of the Lower Diamicton, inverting the sequence and deforming the fluvial sediments. Following this, the retreat of the ice resulted in the deposition of the Mildenhall series over the High Lodge clayey-silts, with the handaxes in Bed E derived from older deposits that did not survive intact. Periglacial debris flow then caused upslope exposures of the Lower diamicton to flow downhill and cover the glacio-fluvial deposits. The two tills are therefore the product of a single glaciation, with the artefacts all belonging to MIS 13.

A more recent revision (Davis et al. 2021) has noted that Beds D and E are also deformed, and are likely to have been glacio-tectonised and transported like Beds B and C. This would suggest that Beds D and E are interglacial and fluvial in origin, meaning that the handaxe assemblage, although slightly abraded, would be in primary MIS 13 context. An MIS 13 age for the High Lodge deposits is further supported by a suite of ESR dates that date to greater than 500ka from nearby sites on the Tamworth Terrace of the Bytham (Davis et al. 2021).

Ashton, N.M., Cook, J., Lewis, S.G. & Rose, J. 1992. High Lodge: Excavations by G. de G. Sieveking, 1962–68 and J. Cook, 1988. London: British Museum Press.

Davis, R., Ashton, N., Hatch, M., Hoare, P.G. and Lewis, S.G., 2021. Palaeolithic archaeology of the Bytham River: human occupation of Britain during the early Middle Pleistocene and its European context. Journal of Quaternary Science 36: 526–546.

Evans, J. 1872. Ancient Stone Implements, Weapons and Ornaments of Great Britain. First Edition. London: Longmans & Co.

Marr, J.E. 1921. Excavations at High Lodge, Mildenhall in 1920 A.D. Report of the geology. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society of East Anglia 3: 353–373.