Locating collections 3.3
3.5.1 Geographical patterning
A clear pattern which emerges throughout this chapter is the lack of fossil material recovered from the north-eastern towns, despite the thriving trawling industries there during the 19th and 20th Centuries. Possible reasons for this discrepancy are:
• The method of fleeting’s leading to difficult conditions and discontent among trawlermen, resulting in conditions not conducive to fossil collection.
• Company ownership associated with fleeting, meaning trawlermen were working for someone else and to someone else’s timetable; again, the possibility that there was less flexibility with collection and sale of fossil material.
• The differences in the uses of otter versus beam trawling and the associated effects on the seabed that this produces, potentially resulting in a different degree of fossil recovery.
• An absence of antiquarian community in the north-east, perhaps owing to the relative lack of fossiliferous Quaternary deposits or gravel quarries to prompt or encourage such interests.
Several of these points, however, also apply to the Great Yarmouth fleets as well as those from the north-east: Great Yarmouth had fleeting as well as company ownership. The one difference was that Great Yarmouth remained a port dominated by sail, not steam, but the social issues outlined above would still apply.
There must therefore be other factors causing these discrepancies.
The clear picture from the collectors is that they are almost entirely located in East Anglia, at least for a significant part of their lives. Is this due to the existence of renowned geology in this area, both invoking and encouraging interest in natural history? With the highly significant and well-preserved Quaternary coastal geology being on the door-step, there appears to have been a group of interested and socially-interrelated people that were involved with its study (Text Box 5).
Furthermore, there existed a well-developed Natural History Society in and around Norwich, and Norfolk generally, possibly driven by the prolific quarrying industry exploiting the flint-rich deposits in this area, something that the towns in the northeast were lacking.
The presence of the East Anglian collectors could in fact be the impetus behind the curation-for-sale of fossils by the trawlermen, in a supply-and-demand sense.
There are examples of the kinds of fates that the fossils befell otherwise, with Layton (1827, 200) recounting trawlermen finding: “…various large bones…being found in great quantities…and as thrown away into deeper water” as well as Reid (1890, 174): “…many hundred specimens of the molar teeth…were destroyed by the fishermen, who amused themselves by breaking them…”. Once these trawlermen knew that there was interest in these specimens they began to bring them to shore for collectors and museums (Layton 1827, 200), but this was only after being encouraged to do so. If there was nobody requesting this material from areas such as Hull and Grimsby, perhaps this explains why nothing is recorded. Of course, there is always the possibility that the material has yet to be located within collections, but based on conversations with museum staff who have searched the archives, this seems increasingly unlikely.
Figure 3.14 Distribution of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft grounds relative to the three major glaciations (glacial limits after Graham et al. 2011; Lee et al. 2012. Elevation data source: Smith and Sandwell 1997)
The lack of inspiring Quaternary deposits, and resulting collectors, is probably very significant for the faunal collections, but the roots of this may also highlight why these fleets may not have been bringing back large amounts of material (if any).
Cyclical glaciations which affected this part of North West Europe throughout the Middle – Late Pleistocene had a seriously detrimental effect on the preservation of Quaternary deposits. Whereas Britain, south of the Midlands, escaped direct glaciation after the extremes of the Elsterian, areas further north were subject to constant cycles of glaciation and its associated erosive effects (Figure 3.14). The southern North Sea would have been no exception, which may relate back to the negative pattern of finds from the fleets exploiting grounds to the north (Figure 3.4). This will be discussed further in Chapter Six, when the results of the species distributions will also be taken into account.
However the towns of Great Yarmouth and Lowestoft came to be the dominant areas of fossil recovery, using the territorial patterning of their trawling fleets will facilitate spatial analysis of where groups of fossils came from. If we apply what is known about the evolution of the taxonomic lineages of the species identified within these groups (Section 2.2.1), we can make an assessment of any temporal patterning.
The combination of these two elements will provide an insight into any spatio-temporal patterning with these assemblages, and this will have implications for the integrity of the seabed deposits. Are the specimens constantly being transported around the seabed in a totally derived, mixed state, or do they retain a Pleistocene context? In the latter case it would still be likely that some material will have been displaced, so presenting some background ’noise’ in the results. This is demonstrated at a very local scale by the Area 240 results. These show 70% of species which belong to the in situ deposit and 30% material that is external (Russell and Tizzard 2011). This statistic will have important implications for the results seen in Chapter Four, as it suggests that you would expect to find a small proportion of species within any trawled assemblage that are not in fact representative of the deposit being disturbed.