IGCP 449 (2000–2004), seeking to correlate fluvial records globally, has compiled a dataset of archaeological records from Pleistocene fluvial sequences. Many terrace sequences can now be reliably dated and correlated with marine oxygen isotope stages (MIS), allowing potentially useful patterns in artefact distribution to be recognised. This review, based on evidence from northwest European and German sequences (Thames, Somme, Ilm, Neckar and Wipper), makes wider comparisons with rivers further east, particularly the Vltava, and with southern Europe, especially Iberia. The northwest and southern areas have early assemblages dominated by handaxes, in contrast with flake‐core industries in Germany and further east. Fluvial sequences can provide frameworks for correlation, based on markers within the Palaeolithic record. In northwest Europe the first appearance of artefacts in terrace staircases, the earliest such marker, dates from the mid–late Cromerian Complex. Flake‐core industries may have significantly preceded handaxe industries in southern Europe. An important technological innovation—Levallois technique—occurs at the Lower‐Middle Palaeolithic boundary, correlated with MIS 9–8. Humans deserted northern Europe during MIS 6, apparently returning to central Germany and northern France (Somme valley) by MIS 5e but not reaching southern England until the appearance of Mousterian culture during MIS 4–3. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

In this paper interglacial mammalian assemblages from key Middle Pleistocene fluvial sites in Germany are compared to Mammal Assemblage-Zones (MAZs) recently established in the post-Anglian/Elsterian sequence of the Lower Thames, U.K. It is believed that four separate interglacials are represented by the Lower Thames MAZs, correlated with oxygen isotope stages (OIS) 11, 9, 7 and substage 5e (although the last of these is Late Pleistocene). Nowhere in Germany can a full sequence of these interglacials be identified from mammalian evidence in a single terrace staircase, as is the case in the Lower Thames, although further research on the Wipper terraces at Bilzingsleben may identify such a sequence. It is also possible that the sequence of overlapping fluvial channels in the lignite mine at Schöningen will eventually produce a comparable mammalian story. Excellent correspondence has been recognized between the mammalian assemblages at Steinheim an der Murr and Bilzingsleben II and the Swanscombe MAZ from the Thames. These three sites are attributed to the Hoxnian/Holsteinian interglacial and are thought to correlate with OIS 11. Close comparison can also be made between the mammalian sequence from the celebrated travertine locality at Weimar-Ehringsdorf and two separate MAZs from Aveley, in the Thames, attributed to separate substages of OIS 7. An equivalent to the Purfleet MAZ of the Thames, which is believed to correlate with OIS 9, has yet to be identified in Germany.