An account of the discovery and characters of a human skeleton found beneath a stratum of chalky boulder clay near Ipswich / by J. Reid Moir and Arthur Keith.

  • Moir, J. Reid (James Reid), 1879-1944.
Date:
1912
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: An account of the discovery and characters of a human skeleton found beneath a stratum of chalky boulder clay near Ipswich / by J. Reid Moir and Arthur Keith. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    the west of where the remains were found, the middle glacial sands come up to the surface, and that, as this is so, it is difficult to imagine that any Neolithic or other people would take the trouble to dig a grave through hard clay when soft, easily dug sand occurred close at hand. Therefore, I think, we can quite put aside any idea of a late interment. The occurrence of such easily destroyed things as human bones under a stratum, which was deposited by an ice sheet, is at first sight rather remarkable, but my opinion is that the body of this man was covered by some depth of sand before the boulder clay was deposited. Even if the sand were only a few feet in thickness it would be sufficient to protect completely the bones fi'om any pressure which might be brought to bear upon them. It must be remembered, too, that the erosive power of ice is very variable, as sometimes it passes over a surface of incoherent sand without disturbing it at all. Our contention is that there was in inter-glacial times a sandy land surface to the north of Ipswich where these remains were found, and that this man died on that land surface and was covered up by the sand. This surface was afterwaids buried by the chalky boulder clay. If our contention is correct then the material composing the cranial cast should be the same as that found beneath boulder clay elsewhere. Eealizing this. Professor Keith has made an analysis of some of the material of the cast, and some which I sent him from below fifteen feet of chalky boulder clay at a pit about half-a-mile distant from where the bones were found. This analysis shows that the cranial cast is composed of 70 per cent, of very fine sand, blackish, a few fine grains of chalk, and some black specks and 30 per cent, fine chalky grey sediment. The sand from beneath the boulder clay showed 45 per cent, fine grains of sand, many small black specks, a few fine grains of chalk, 55 per cent, fine chalky grey sediment. It will be noticed that the difference is one of degree only, and there appears no doubt that both are one and the same formation. These black specks in the sand under the boulder clay are peculiar and may have been formed by the roots of plants when the top of the sand was a land surface. Mr. Hugh Candy has examined this black material and finds that it is composed of 37 per cent, of organic material and moisture with 63 per cent, of ferruginous sand. The black substance is evidently a vegetable derivative. There also seems no doubt that when the boulder clay was first deposited there was a very much greater thickness of it at this spot than is seen now. The melting of the ice-sheet which laid it dowm would cause a lot of denudation, and during the ages which have passed since the ice finally disappeared the same process has been continually going on. It may be asked whether we have found other bones on the same horizon as the skeleton, and we must confess that up to the present we have not done so. But at Leiston—in a deposit which underlies chalky boulder clay, and which I look