12
THE ESSEX NATURALIST
The elephants lay at about 26 ft (7.9 m) OD in sediments
which probably accumulated under marsh conditions. It is pos-
sible (Sutcliffe, personal communication) that this site may have
been a trap where wallowing elephants could become stuck in the
mud and perish. A series of samples above and below the ele-
phants was collected for pollen and molluscan analyses. The
molluscan samples were presented to the British Museum
(Natural History), the task of reporting on them finally falling
to the writer, who was not present during the excavations but
has visited the pit since then.
The mollusc samples (A1-L) were collected at the close of the
excavations, samples Al (top), A2, Bl, B2, C and D coming from
the eastern side of the cut made by the dragline and samples H,
I, J, K and L from the steeper west side. In Table 1 the impor-
tant B2/C sample is actually from the block containing the
elephants and was removed during the preparation of the bones
at the Museum. Samples D, E, F and G are grey/brown silt,
H1 and H2 are very fossiliferous grey silts, I, J, K, L and M are
silt layers. Sample E appears on Ward's section to be strati-
graphically between H and I. The positions of F and G are not
marked on the section. Samples H, E, I, J, K and L all contain
material from more than one layer in the sequence. Two
samples were apparently labelled as I in the field. One of these
appears to be H on its lithology and molluscan content and is
here listed as H2.
The samples were processed in the following manner: the
wet material was electric oven-dried, an average sample of
material sufficient to produce a 2 kg dry weight sample taking
about1 24 hours at 150 degrees C. A 2 kg dry weight sample of
each was processed by soaking in water, with the addition of
either sodium hexametaphosphate or hydrogen peroxide solu-
tion where necessary. The mixture was sometimes boiled for
several hours to break down the lumps of mud. The resulting
slurries were sieved to 30 mesh (500 micron aperture) to re-
trieve the molluscs. Extra samples of 2 kg each of D and E
were processed to obtain a better picture of their impoverished
molluscan fauna. The results, with numbers of specimens, are
set out in Table 1. The Misc. (Miscellaneous) column shows a
few molluscs hand-picked in the field.
The mollusc faunas above have been compared with those
from other Last Interglacial sites. It will be seen that the
Aveley molluscs compare well with those listed by Sparks (1964)
from Ilford, Trafalgar Square and Bobbitshole, Ipswich, except
in the sparsity of land species from Aveley. Blezard (1966, 274)
quotes R. G. West's original opinion that the pollen assemblage
of Aveley is indicative of Zone f [now Zone II] of the Ipswichian
(Last Interglacial), and has a very similar pollen diagram to that
of the Ilford site. Later, West (1969) revised his dating of the
Aveley pollen assemblage and regards the levels of P. antiquus