Boxgrove Palaeolithic Site – Eartham Pit
Boxgrove hominin site · Eartham Pit GTP17 · Boxgrove Horse Butchery Site
Lower Palaeolithic, MIS 13 interglacial (Boxgrove interglacial = Cromerian-ish)·Homo heidelbergensis hunter-scavengers·🇬🇧 West Sussex, England, United Kingdom
About
About Boxgrove Palaeolithic Site – Eartham Pit
Britain's richest and earliest firmly dated Homo heidelbergensis land surface where 500,000-year-old (MIS 13) foreshore silts at Eartham Pit preserved 400 Acheulean bifaces in mint condition, butchered horse, rhino, deer and bison bone beds with cut-marks, and the world's second-oldest hominin tibia (Boxgrove 1, H. heidelbergensis) with gnawed? Actually robust tibia. Land surface GTP17 holds waterlogged plant bedding and fluvial hiatus preserving intact knapping scatters where refitting proves on-site butchery; pollen indicates warm interglacial chalk cliff littoral contemporaneous with Happisburgh's earlier footprints by 400 millennia—forming Britain's Lower Palaeolithic duopoly.
Why it mattersBest-preserved early British hominin site; combines human fossil with behaviorally intact butchery surface—key to Lower Palaeolithic land-use and Acheulean cognitive studies.
Open questions
Mysteries & theories
Mysteries
- 01Whether quarry foreshore was hunting kill vs scavenged horse fall
- 02Why only one hominin bone despite intensive 20-year excavation
Theories
- 01Boxgrove as structured seasonal interception of horse herds at waterhole
- 02Taphonomy as hominin-competition-hyaena sequence
Theories are interpretations, not findings. The seal above tells you how much scholarly weight the place carries.
History
How it came to be
- Built
- c.500,000 BCE (MIS 13, 480,000–500,000 BP)
- Period
- Lower Palaeolithic, MIS 13 interglacial (Boxgrove interglacial = Cromerian-ish)
- Culture
- Homo heidelbergensis hunter-scavengers
- Builders
- Homo heidelbergensis groups
- Purpose
- Ephemeral horse butchery and Acheulean tool-knapping camp on chalk cliff foreshore littoral
- Rediscovered
- 1974 Andrew Woodcock discovery; 1982–1996 Mark Roberts UCL excavations
- Excavation
- Partially excavated
500000 BCE
Horse carcass butchered and handaxes knapped on foreshore silts
1982
Woodcock finds flint scatter at Slindon quarry edge
1993
Human tibia (Boxgrove 1) excavated from GTP17 waterhole
1996
Nature dating 500k and horse taphonomy published
On the ground
Structures & features
50.8610° N · 0.7140° W · 40 m · 3 mapped features
GTP17 Butchery Floor
occupation surfaceIntact 75×40 m scatter with 400 bifaces around horse carcass
50.8610° N · 0.7140° WWaterhole Bone Stack
bone bedTibia findspot with stratified rhino and horse bones
50.8620° N · 0.7130° WSlindon Raised Beach Cliff
landformChalk cliff littoral backing foreshore occupation
50.8600° N · 0.7150° W
Gallery