The site is close to a fossil shoreline and has a interglacial, temperate climate fauna in deposited in sediments representing initially coastal marine, transitioning upwards into coastal mudflat and later grassland and woodland environments.[6] The site was discovered by Andrew Woodcock and Roy Shephard-Thorn in 1974. They recorded the geological sequence, in-situ artefacts and fossil mammal remains. Parts of the site complex were later 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 (which contained a waterhole) stretching approximately half a mile (1km) south to the sea.
Geological context
Stratigraphy of the Boxgrove site (above), and photograph of the layers as exhibited at the Q1/B "watering hole" site (below)
The site is located in the West Sussex coastal plain, immediately to the south of the South Downs, a chalk ridge that extends across much of Southeast England.[7]xix The Boxgrove site was deposited on top of a wave-cut platform of chalk,[8] when the site was located on the coast;[7]xix it is now part of a raised beach.[9] At the time, Boxgrove was on the north shore of an enclosed bay with a narrow entrance to the English Channel to the south,[10] and Britain was a peninsula of mainland Europe, with southeast England being connected to northern France and the Netherlands by a land bridge, which separated the English Channel and North Sea.[11] The Boxgrove deposits make up part of the Slindon Formation, and were just south of a (now completely buried) chalk cliff face, estimated to have reached a height of 60 metres (200ft) formed by marine erosion of the chalk. The site is now some 10 kilometres (6.2mi) inland and 35–43.5 metres (115–143ft) above present sea level, because of later tectonic uplift of the area after the deposition of the Boxgrove site. The earliest member of the Slindon Formation, the Slindon Sand member, comprising layers of gravel and sand, records near-shore marine conditions at the Boxgrove site. Above the Slindon Sand Member is the Slindon Silt Member, the main unit of archaeological and paleontological interest at site, which records the transition of the site from being underwater to emergent land, and consists of silt and an upper thin paleosol (preserved soil) layer, deposited in a temperate climate, which records a transition from mudflats (unit 4b) in the lower part of the member, up to a terrestrial grassland along with woodland and water pools (units 4c, 4d and 4u), subsequently transitioning upwards into a horizon of mineralized organics representing fen or carr (unit 5a). Above this lies clay and gravel deposits of the Eartham Lower Gravel Member, comprising cliff scree. This is covered by periglacial gravel deposits of the Eartham Upper Gravel Member (with both members being part of the Eartham Formation) deposited under cold arctic conditions.[7]21-149[9]
The Slindon Formation is thought to have been deposited during an episode of relatively high sea level.[10] The Slindon Silt Member is dated to the interglacial period at the end of Marine Isotope Stage 13, around 480,000 years ago, based on biostratigraphic analysis of the species of mammal found at the site, with the Eartham Formation representing deposits of the subsequent Anglian glaciation during Marine Isotope Stage (MIS) 12.[9] The fossiliferous terrestrial paleosol horizon of the Slindon Silt Member present at Boxgrove, though only relatively narrow at 30–250 metres (98–820ft) wide, extends some distance from the site following an east-west axis along the base of the buried chalk cliff face, spanning 16 kilometres (9.9mi) between Slindon Park and Adsdean Farm. Another site containing this horizon, Valdoe Quarry, 4.8 kilometres (3.0mi) to the west of Boxgrove, has also yielded animal fossils and stone tools.[9]
Contents
The site is important for many reasons, including the degree of preservation of ancient land surfaces, the impressive total extent of the palaeolandscape beyond the quarries (over 26km 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. 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.[12]
Fauna
Numerous species of animals, including snails, fish, lizards, amphibians including frogs and salamanders, and 50 species of mammals have been found at the site, many of which are still extant and a large subset of which still live in Britain today. Others, such as the European pine vole (Microtus subterraneus), which is one of the most common animals at the site, no longer inhabit Britain but are present in the European continental mainland. The site may contain the earliest record of the recently extinct Great auk (Pinguinus impennis).[7]157-274 Remains of large animals have been found at the site, including rhinoceroses and indeterminate elephants.[7]226,229 These include large carnivores, such as the grey wolf ancestor Canis mosbachensis,[13] the large lion Panthera fossilis[14] and hyenas, originally attributed to the living spotted hyena (Crocuta spelaea),[7]224 though other authors have argued that European Crocuta hyena remains from this time period should be attributed to the cave hyena (Crocuta spelaea).[15] Several species of mammals found at the site became extinct during the Anglian glacial period that followed the deposition of the Boxgrove site, and are not present in the following Hoxnian interglacial (MIS 11) or later interglacials. These include Ursus deningeri (an early member of the cave bear lineage), members of the giant deer genus Praemegaceros, including the smaller British endemic P. dawkinsi and probably the larger P. verticornis, possibly the reindeer sized deer species Megaloceros/Praedama savini, the rhinoceros Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis, the extinct vole Pliomys episcopalis and the extinct long-tailed shrewSorex savini. These taxa, in combination with archaic forms of the water vole (Arvicola) and narrow-headed vole (Stenocranius gregalis, which no longer occurs in Britain), constrain the age of the site to the end of Marine Isotope Stage 13.[16][17]
Evidence of human activity extends throughout the site, even into the marine layers of the Slindon Sand Member, where human modified animal bones have been found.[7]397 Numerous Acheuleanflint tools, including handaxes, were found at the site.[18] A number of animal remains at the site show evidence of butchery, likely for both meat and skin, including bison, wild horse, deer, including giant deer (Praemegaceroscf. verticornis) and red deer (Cervus elaphus), the bear Ursus deningeri, and the rhinoceros Stephanorhinus hundsheimensis.[7]396 Evidence has also been found for deer antlers at Boxgrove being used as "soft hammers" to work stone, likely at least for the fine shaping of the handaxes.[7]394-5
At site Q1/B, also known as the "waterhole", a spring fed a small freshwater lake within a grassland environment, the depositional layers of which contains numerous animal bones and large concentrations of stone tools, including flakes and handaxes, which experienced subsequent limited disturbance by water flow, with the artifacts still exhibiting high levels of sharpness comparable to that when they were originally knapped.[16]
One of the most important sub-localities within Boxgrove is GTP17, where a large adult female wild horse (assigned to the extinct horse species Equus mosbachensis) around 4-5 years of age and probably around 600 kilograms (1,300lb) in body mass, was extensively butchered by humans very shortly after death, on what was then a tidal mudflat close to the shoreline, around 40–60 metres (130–200ft) away from chalk cliffs, from which the humans selected flintnodules to turn into tools to butcher the horse. The butchery included extensive cracking of the bones probably to extract marrow and bone grease. An unusual curved fracture on one of the horse's shoulder blades has often been suggested to represent a spear wound, which if correct would represent the oldest evidence of spear hunting in the archaeological record, beating the Clacton spear by several tens of thousands of years. However, a study in 2025 which used experimental testing of thrusting wooden spears into horse carcasses found that it was more likely that the fracture was created during the butchery process using a hammerstone, perhaps to extract grease from the scapula. Regardless it is thought likely that the horse was probably hunted. Following human butchery, the carcass was subsequently scavenged by hyenas.[2]
Remains of an archaic human provisionally thought to be a member of the Homo heidelbergensis subspecies were first found on the site in 1993, consisting of the partial midsegment (diaphysis) of a tibia of belonging to an individual probably stood 1.8m high and weighed approximately 80kg.[19][20][21] The tibia is relatively stocky like those of other archaic humans. In 1994, two incisor teeth from the lower jaw, probably belonging the same individual (though probably not the same person as the tibia) were also reported from the site. The teeth display scratch marks that may have been made when using stone tools near the mouth.[22]
Excavation and research history
The Boxgrove site was first discovered by the archaeologist Andrew Woodcock and the geologist Roy Shephard-Thorn in 1974. During the first stages of gravel extraction, their investigations showed a series of marine deposits, overlain by gravels, were preserved within the quarry. Woodcock recorded exceptionally well preserved Acheulean artefacts and mammalian fauna at the intersection between these sediments and determined the potential importance of the site.[23]
"Boxgrove is simply one of the great Early Palaeolithic/Middle Pleistocene sites in the world, this statement has nothing to do with ego or anything else personal to myself - it just is. The quality of preservation, the range and depth of its myriad lines of multidisciplinary evidence are beyond nearly all other sites."
Between 1982 and 1996 a series of excavations were undertaken at the site by the UCL Institute of Archaeology with funding from Historic England. The excavations were directed by Mark Roberts of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, with successive co-direction by Martin Bates and Simon Parfitt.[25]
In 2003 English Heritage announced it would buy the western quarry (known as Quarry 1) to ensure the preservation of the site complex.[26]
In August 2020 archaeologists said they had discovered the earliest bone tools ever found in Europe at the site.[27] They said that it "provides further evidence that early human populations at Boxgrove were cognitively, socially, and culturally sophisticated".[28][29]
The Horse Butchery Site: A High Resolution Record of Lower Palaeolithic Hominin Behaviour at Boxgrove, UK. Edited by Matthew Pope, Simon Parfitt and Mark Roberts.[30]
In 1998, Roberts co-wrote a book about the site with prehistoric archaeologist Mike Pitts titled Fairweather Eden: Life in Britain half a million years ago as revealed by the excavations at Boxgrove. Published by Arrow Books, Fairweather Eden was designed for a popular audience.
↑Pitts, Michael W. (1997). Fairweather Eden: life in Britain half a million years ago as revealed by the excavations at Boxgrove. London: Century Books. ISBN9780712676861.
↑M Pope, S Parfitt, M Roberts, The Horse Butchery Site, Spoilheap Publications, ISBN978-1912331154
↑Pope, Matthew (2020). The Horse Butchery Site: A high-resolution record of Lower Palaeolithic hominin behaviour at Boxgrove, UK. Portslade: Spoilheap. ISBN9781912331154.
Bibliography
Pitts, Michael; Roberts, Mark (1998). Fairweather Eden: Life in Britain half a million years ago as revealed by the excavations at Boxgrove. London: Arrow. ISBN978-0-09-964491-0.
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