Traveller's Rest Pit

Also within

Cambridgeshire County

Condition (Natural England)

Habitats

Fast flowing river and stream

Geology & landscape

Mining / Industrial: Quarry · Geological Period: Quaternary

Landscape processes: Glacial, Periglacial

Description

Area,2.25 haDescription This site provides a unique exposure in fossiliferous cold stage gravels, sands and silts of a high level terrace Observatory Gravels. The composition of non marine molluscan assemblages from the silt bands implies deposition under cold climatic conditions. Ice wedge casts formed by the prising apart of sediments by ice as they were being deposited and the subsequent infill and preservation of wedges by overlying sediments, indicate continuous permafrost. Traveller’s Rest Pit is an important site preserving sediments that, on the currently available evidence, are most appropriately assigned to the Anglian Stage of the Pleistocene Period. General description Traveller’s Rest Pit lies just south of Huntingdon Road on the western outskirts of Cambridge. Its boundary comprises not only the grassed over remains of the old quarry floor and face but also an unexcavated finite reserve of Observatory Gravels. This site preserves a unique sedimentary sequence of fossiliferous cold stage gravels, sands and silts known as the Observatory Gravels. At the base of this sequence, the richest Palaeolithic assemblage in Cambridgeshire has been found. These deposits were initially associated with an early terrace of the River Cam, but recent re evaluation of the evidence suggests that a more satisfactory attribution would be outwash from the Anglian Marine Isotope Stage 12 ice sheet. By implication therefore, the archaeology most likely records apre Anglian human presence Marine Isotope Stage 13 or earlier. Within the Observatory Gravels, thin seams of non marine molluscs imply deposition under cold climate conditions. Occasional finds of large vertebrates have also been noted and whilst climatic non diagnostic, they broadly indicate an open landscape. The Observatory Gravels also record the occurrence of continuous permafrost as inferred from the presence of ice wedge casts structures recognised for the first time at this site. Beneath the Observatory Gravels, recent investigations have identified the presence of an earlier, infilled ‘tunnel valley’ channel feature that requires further investigation and may also have age implications for the dating of the Observatory Gravels.

Plant communities