8,000-year-old footprints in the silt

Hidden in the silt
Hidden in the laminated silts of the Severn estuary foreshore at Goldcliff are amazing finds: 8,000-year-old human footprints. Specialist Rachel Scales has been painstakingly excavating these silts to uncover the fleeting snapshots of past human activity.

'There are a large number of human footprint-tracks at Goldcliff,' says Rachel. 'They represent a range of individuals, from children as young as three years old to teenagers and adults. Several "trails" have been recorded, including one that revealed footprints of four children walking towards Goldcliff island.'

Limited access
Because she only has limited access to the site at low tide, Rachel has developed a number of methods that enable her to record the evidence quickly before it is lost to the tide and erosion. The first of these involves tracing the footprints on clear plastic to capture details and record their alignment. Another method used to rescue decaying prints is to lift them in a block so they can be taken away and excavated off-site. A third method involves taking casts of the impressions so that they can be studied back in the laboratory.

'Goldcliff is an exceptional site in terms of footprint tracks,' concludes Rachel. 'It offers great promise for research into man-animal relationships during the Mesolithic, and their study can contribute to a number of archaeological topics, such as population composition, husbandry practices, coastal exploitation and the dynamics of past landscapes.'

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