Neolithic track sites from Formby Point, England: New data and insights

Abstract

Formby Point, England is a well-documented exposure site in which marine erosion has regularly exposed Neolithic human trackways along the coastline since the 1980s. We report here the discovery of an additional 17 trackways and 61 isolated tracks (181 human footprints in total) discovered during four field seasons of natural site exposure at four localities in the Formby Point region, recorded in 2016-2018. This adds substantially to the existing ichnological and palaeoecological body of data available for this site. The footprints belong to adults and children, in association with a large collection of other animal prints (>700), and are typically preserved in sandy-silts. The human trackways show a bimodal direction, with most of the trackmakers travelling in a south-west direction, towards the palaeo-coastline, with fewer trackmakers travelling in a north east direction, inland. Some trackmakers were either walking side by side or were following one another hours/days later as indicated by parallel trackways, whilst one trackway shows an individual running, eventually coming to a stop with both feet together on the ground. The trackmakers made repeated visits to the site, whereby some trackways were made hours/days earlier than others, evidenced by the impressions’ depth. We present the data here to: (1) add to literature of prehistoric footprints discovered around the world; and (2) make all three dimensional models and associated metadata publicly and freely available for use by other researchers. Most importantly, Formby is an exposure site in which we exclusively rely upon erosion to expose the footprints. Therefore, researchers can only understand the true dynamics of the site via the reporting of each successive exposure. We encourage local researchers to work with the public to aid in future documentation of the site to add to the continuously-growing database of Formby discoveries.