Boxgrove in Sussex, England, is an iconic site for ancient stone age. This is where the oldest human remains in Britain have been discovered – fossils of Homo heidelbergensis. Part of an exceptionally preserved 26 km wide ancient landscape of stone, it provides a virtually unchanged record of early humans about half a million years ago.
The most perfectly preserved area of the site is known as the “Horse Butchery Site”, a place where a large horse was slaughtered and processed some 480,000 years ago. Since 1994, we have been working on artifacts of bones and stones from here – some of which are the first in Europe – as part of a multidisciplinary team led by the UCL Institute of Archeology. This has given us important insight into the life of the mysterious Homo heidelbergensis, which we just released in a book.
My own research focused on the stone artifacts – more than 1,750 pieces of cut flint. The tools, along with bones of a single large female horse, were discovered more than a quarter of a century ago, and the location from which each artifact was placed to the nearest millimeter.
This level of recording was achieved without laser research equipment and digital photography – the two chapters of modern archeological site recording today. Instead, the excavation team used overhead photography, a dark room furnished in the local pub and pen and ink to carefully record the position of each stone tool and fragment of bone.
Before we could interpret what the early humans did on the site, we had to understand the deposits that saved the remains. These studies revealed that the sediments themselves were interracial swamps, which formed at the edge of a lagoon in a warm climate stage. When the early men slaughtered the horse, a high tide came in, and kept the site just as it was when the hominins departed.
Preservation as this is very rare in any archaeological period, even recent. The fine sails buried the terrain over one or more high times without moving the artifacts or bones a significant distance. This meant that we were able to reconstruct early human behavior at a manifestly high resolution.
Stone age puzzle
My task was to bring the stone artifacts of the site back together – a process called ‘redesign’. Any stone surface removed by an ancient human will only, uniquely, fit on other surfaces that were removed before and after the removal of the same flint block.
UCL Institute of Archeology, Author provided
Reproducing can give you a snapshot of how an individual created, customized, and problem-solving a tool, sometimes shifting positions because they spent maybe ten or 15 minutes creating each tool.
From the start, we were able to document the manufacture of eight large cutting tools (known as hand axes or bifaces), the modification of other pre-existing tools, and the preparation of flint blocks brought to the site.
A social place
When combined with bone reshaping, our detailed study revealed a remarkably intimate insight into a day in the life of these debilitating people. While all the activity centered around making tools and slaughtering horses, we were able to follow a detailed movement throughout the day.
We saw that flakes were moved from stacks of waste material to the edge of the site to be used in removing meat from the animal. Parts of the horse were also used as bone tools (see lead image) to create new tools, as revealed by accidental impressions of horse knees and legs left as shadows in the waste flakes. This suggests that humans understood the properties of organic materials.
UCL Institute of Archeology, Author provided
The movement of flakes, the production of large cutting tools and the bringing of older, hot artifacts and blocks as raw material to the site suggested that a relatively large number of people were involved in the slaughter. Given the extensive processing of the horse carcass, we believe it could include an extended family of perhaps 30 or more people.
This is incredibly valuable information because we know so little about other aspects of the lives of the Boxgrove people. For example, we do not know where they slept, how they looked after their dead, or what they ate next to horses. The archaeological record is mainly focused on where its activities collect durable materials such as stone and bones, which severely affect our view of the early man.
As a result, our narratives sometimes focus on compartmentalized areas of early human life, such as ecology or technology. But a locale like the Boxgrove Horse Butchery Site reminds us, as we see in detail, that all aspects of human adaptation are mediated by our most powerful evolutionary adaptations: social life and culture.
The people of Boxgrove, like all other human species, were able to share time, care and knowledge in all parts of their lives. These connections, even in the most routine of daily tasks, have always contributed to our success and resilience.
