Eartham Pit

Eartham Pit is part of the Boxgrove Palaeolithic site, a group of Lower Palaeolithic archaeological sites in what was once Eartham Quarry. It lies north-east of Boxgrove village in West Sussex, about 10 kilometres inland from the modern coast. The oldest human remains in Britain, known as ‘Boxgrove Man’, were found here, possibly belonging to Homo heidelbergensis. The site also provides the earliest direct evidence in Europe of early humans hunting and butchering animals. Only part of the complex is protected, including a 9.8-hectare geological Site of Special Scientific Interest. The deposits at Boxgrove date to around 480,000 years ago, during a warm interglacial period. They were laid down on a former chalk cliff that once overlooked a flat beach with a waterhole. The site was discovered in 1974 by Andrew Woodcock and Roy Shephard-Thorn, who recorded artefacts and fossils in place. Later excavations between 1982 and 1996, led by Mark Roberts, uncovered well-preserved animal bones and flint tools. The landscape then was a coastal plain with mudflats, grassland and woodland, home to rhinoceroses, elephants and large carnivores. Visitors walk over a buried chalk cliff that once formed a shoreline half a mile long. Beneath their feet lie layers of silt and sand that record the rise and fall of ancient seas. Fossil snails, fish and fifty kinds of mammal have been recovered, including steppe mammoth and straight-tusked elephant. The finest Acheulean handaxes ever found in Europe come from here, finely worked for butchery. The site offers a clear view of how early humans lived beside a changing coastline long before Britain became an island.