page_title: Eartham Pit, Boxgrove
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Eartham Pit, Boxgrove / History
caption_attribution_description: English: Photo taken at Franks House during the Wikimedia behind the scenes workshop.
context_page_description: Eartham Pit is an internationally important archaeological site north-east of Boxgrove in West Sussex with findings that date to the Lower Palaeolithic. The oldest human remains in Britain have been discovered on the site, fossils of Homo heidelbergensis dating to 500,000 years ago. Boxgrove is also one of the oldest sites with direct evidence of hunting and butchering by humans. The site is a 9.8-hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest, as well as a Geological Conservation Review site.
  Other key Palaeolithic sites in the UK include Swanscombe, Pontnewydd, Kents Cavern, Paviland, and Gough's Cave.
  The site is close to a fossil shoreline that has interglacial mammal fauna in intertidal sediments. Parts of the site complex were excavated between 1982 and 1996 by a team led by Mark Roberts of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. The site is situated in an area that features a buried chalk cliff that overlooked a flat beach stretching approximately half a mile south to the sea.
context_section_description: The site is important for many reasons, including the degree of preservation of ancient land surfaces, the impressive total extent of the palaeo-landscape beyond the quarries (over 26 km wide), its huge quantity of well-preserved animal bones, its numerous flint artifacts, and its hominin fossils that are among some of the most ancient found yet in Europe. Several of the animal bones are the oldest found specimens of their species, such as the wing bone of the great auk found at the site in 1989.  The combination of bones, stone artifacts, and the geology of the landscape gives a very complete picture of the coastal plain as it existed half a million years ago.
  Numerous Acheulean flint tools and remains of animals dating to approximately 500,000 years ago were found at the site. Some of the bones were found to display cut marks, and some of the tools bear use wear traces indicative of cutting meat, indicating that the site was used for butchery by some of the earliest occupants of the British Isles.  They shared the area with a wide variety of animals whose bones have been found there, including lion, bear, rhinoceros, and giant deer, as well as numerous smaller animals such as frog, vole, and birds. Comparison with ethnographic and experimental examples of stone-tool-assisted butchery has shown that game animals at Boxgrove were butchered expertly, and it is likely that the variety of animal life in the area attracted human hunters.
  Evidence for hunting is, however, tentative, consisting primarily of a horse shoulder blade with a semicircular hole that has been interpreted as the mark of a projectile impact. Given that wooden spears decay very quickly, it is no surprise that no hunting equipment has been found on the site. As well, it is a fact that wooden spears do not generally cause great damage to the bony areas of impact such as the pelvis. Thus, the horse shoulder blade mark is a rare piece of evidence of hunting activity.
  Remains of Homo heidelbergensis were first found on the site in 1993, comprising the partial tibia of a human who probably stood 1.8m high and weighed approximately 80 kg. Significantly, this is the only postcranial element of Homo Heidelbergensis to have been found in northern Europe (postcranial indicates bones coming from anywhere other than the skull, considered the top or leading bone of the body). The tibia is extremely robust for its size and may be an indication of high running activity, presumably in tracking an animal after it has been speared. Cold adaptation is another possible reason for the robust quality. Both ends of the bone show signs of gnawing, possibly by a wolf, suggesting that perhaps the Boxgrove hominids were sometimes prey to other animals. In 1995 two incisor teeth from another individual hominid were found. These show evidence of severe periodontal disease and they also show tool cut marks, which are thought to have been caused by use of flint tools near the mouth rather than indicating cannibalism.
  In 2003 English Heritage announced it would buy the western quarry (known as Quarry 1) to ensure the preservation of the site complex.
  In August 2020 archaeologists said they had discovered the earliest bone tools ever found in Europe at the site. They said that it provides further evidence that early human populations at Boxgrove were cognitively, socially, and culturally sophisticated.
caption: Tray of Boxgrove flints (not on display) at the British Museum
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