Hanborough Online Geology 2

Britain's earliest inhabitants arrived here perhaps as long as 700,000 years ago, but evidence for human occupation at this time so far comes only from the coastal cliffs of East Anglia. Recently however, ancient stone tools were discovered lying on the Northern Drift in a ploughed field in Freeland, and since then more have been found in Combe and Hanborough. They comprise handaxes, choppers, flakes and cores that have been fashioned from the quartzite cobbles of the Drift.

Evidently early man found these deposits, made stone tools from them and dropped them more or less in the same place. As this Drift material has lain on the surface for more than half a million years, it is possible that the tools are some of the earliest in Britain, but because they lie on the surface, there is no way of dating them accurately. We can only say that the tool forms belong to the earliest period, in archaeological terms the 'Lower Palaeolithic', which terminated around 200,000 years ago.

There is another Lower Palaeolithic find also in Hanborough, a flint handaxe. It was dug out of Duke's Pit on the north side of Witney Road, close where Millwood Vale now stands, by Jack Whitley in 1938. This implement was retrieved from near the base of the Hanborough Terrace in the course of gravel extraction. Its position indicates that it had been transported in the gravels, rather than dropped on the land surface before the gravels were deposited. But as it is in very sharp condition, it probably had not been transported far from its place of manufacture. It may be seen in the University Museum.

The hominid who made this implement probably roamed the vicinity some 300,000 to 400,000 years ago (once again the exact date is unresolved). He was not fully human, but belonged to an earlier species of mankind, probably Homo Erectus, one of the first hominid species to spread from the original African homeland. His brain size was only three quarters the size of ours, and he would probably have walked upright but with some ape-like characteristics, such as a very strong brow ridge and receding forehead. Despite his smaller brain, he had the intelligence to acquire flint resources (the nearest flint rock is some 20km from here) and to shape a nodule into a tolerably good, near symetric tool, something which most modern residents of Hanborough would be unable to do!

Our distant ancestor shared the barren landscape with some big game, the bones and teeth of which were recovered from the same gravels. These included straight-tusked mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, wild horse and giant deer.

Man was certainly present in the area at the time when the next relic of the past, the Summertown-Radley Terrace, was deposited near City Farm. We can be sure of this because man-made implements have been found in remnants of this same terrace material at sites beyond the parish, e.g. at Stanton Harcourt. But when these gravels were quarried at City Farm in the 1960s, no implements were reported from them.

Once again, we take a long leap forward before there is more evidence of human activity. The Neanderthal people made occasional visits to Oxfordshire during the period 60-40,000 years ago but the nearest evidence of their presence comes from a handful of stone tools around Abingdon. This was generally a cold period, and Britain was gripped by another ice-age of great length, culminating in an almost complete freezeup from c.25,000 to 13,000 years ago. During this period it is unlikely that there would have been any human presence, but as the warmer weather gradually returned to southern Britain from about 12,000 years ago, so vegetation, then animals, and finally humans ventured back. By now they were fully modern in appearance. These Mesolithic peoples are known to have lived in the area from finds of their flint tools in other parts of Oxfordshire, although finds have not specifically been made in the parish.

The late Mesolithic period merges imperceptibly into the Neolithic, the first age of sedentary farming and pottery, from about 4,000 BC. Here, we have more evidence of occupation on our doorstep. A local farmer, Mr Hubert Busby, has retrieved a number of flint artifacts and debris from two different sites in the village. Perhaps the most interesting is a collection of everyday tools found near the top of Swan Hill in the soil of the ploughed field. Pride of place in the collection goes to a beautifully made leaf-shaped arrowhead, so thin it is transluscent. Among the other finds are scrapers, blades, waste flakes and cores (a core is the remaining piece of flint when no more flakes can be struck from it). The style of these pieces suggest that there may have been a settlement or a temporary camp of early Neolithic people at this point.

Occasional finds of Neolithic flint material may be made anywhere in the Oxfordshire country side, but a study conducted recently in the Evenlode valley between Stonesfield and Long Hanborough has revealed a series of village settlements located in successive arcs of the meanders of the river. The arrowheads, blades, awls, scrapers and cores from these sites indicate prolonged occupation from before 3,000 BC to after 2,000BC. The presence of hammer-stones and "potboilers" (pieces of flint with crazed surfaces indicating they have been heated on a fire and plunged into cold water) helped to identify the sites as domestic. The crude pottery of these people was not fire proof and it is suggested that this is the way they heated their water. One of the most interesting finds was a fragment of a polished axe, perhaps used for felling small trees. We can picture a rural scene with clusters of small thatched huts, surrounded by plots of wheat, with a stockade to keep cattle. Away from the clearing, much of the landscape is still forested, and here, in what is now Hanborough village, the settlers hunt their prey; deer, wild ox, and boar.
Superficially we might have felt quite at home with these village folk. We might even recognise a few of the words they spoke. But probe deeper and you would find a culture very remote from ours, for these people were of the same generation who began the building of Stonehenge and devoted substantial time to elaborate religious and burial rituals.

Evidence of such rituals practiced by their successors, the people of the Bronze Age, has been found in two places within the parish. By this time, in the second millennium BC, a network of routeways was becoming established in the south of Britain, and it is possible that the series of six Bronze Age ring ditches excavated near City Farm was located along side one such route. One of the ring ditches was a double circle and has been interpreted as a henge monument or ceremonial site. These features are no longer visible today, but a Bronze Age ring ditch of impressive size may still be seen between the Evenlode and the railway embankment not far from Swan Bridge.

The Bronze Age site at City Farm continued to be occupied into the Iron Age, for remains of an iron smelting workshop of a third or second century BC have been found there.

By the time of the Roman conquest of Britain in the mid-first century AD, there was certainly a settlement on the site of the present village of Long Hanborough. This is indicated from the discovery, during gravel extraction in 1959, of two kilns for firing pottery, at Tuckwells Pit, on the west side of Church Road. The kilns were constructed using the latest Roman technique which enabled a much more precise control of the temperature, and are similar to ones of first century date found in the Nene valley and in Essex.

We know nothing more of the Roman village, or what happened to it after the Romans left. However, the remains of a substantial Roman villa at North Leigh only a mile west of the parish means that Hanborough might have been part of a large country estate, perhaps owned by a retired army general. Recently, remains of a Roman building have also been discovered in the neighbouring village of Combe.

There is one more stop in time before the Norman conquest. On Lower Road, close to the Bronze Age ring ditches and Iron Age smelting plant, the 1964 excavations found a small group of early Anglo-Saxon burials. The sacred nature of this site may thus have stretched over some 2,500 years.

Of course, we can only report on what has been found so far. Undoubtedly more remains to be discovered, but it is remarkable that within this small parish we already have evidence of the presence of man in most of the ages over the last 500,000 years.

Terry Hardaker