This project aims to identify locations in Essex where potential Palaeolithic archaeological remains are likely to have been deposited and survived and that may be impacted upon by future development.
These remains are some of our earliest evidence for human occupation and their survival over the last c1million years provide important glimpses of how they lived. The sediments in which they are found can also contain remains of the animals they hunted and lived among and reveal important information about the environment in which they lived. These remains are rare, difficult to locate and often deeply buried.
The project has created and employed a new methodology utilising existing data and creating new data in digital format and viewed within Geographical Information System software to try to predict where these remains are more likely to survive.
The approach is based on previous characterisation projects carried out within the County which have been successfully employed for historic environment and geodiversity management and mitigation.
A seminar is planned later in the year to disseminate the results of the project to colleagues within the historic environment sector in the east and south east of England.