Homo Britannicus

by Chris Stringer

  Despite over a century’s worth of collection and twenty-five years of my own research, a comprehensive account of the archaeology of Gough’s Cave had not been published until the AHOB project came along. I spent about two years compiling a detailed account of the stone tools and setting them into the context of late Ice Age life at Cheddar. The paper took so long to produce partly because all the tools had to be illustrated. Nobs (Robert Symmons), then AHOB’s meticulous research assistant, has been a tremendous help. I’m not a very practical person – I don’t drive and I don’t use computers – so I relied on him enormously. He’s absolutely brilliant at computer graphics, so we’ve worked very well together. I’ve done similar work at Kent’s Cavern, near Torquay, another site that people have been picking at for years. John MacEnery initially excavated the cave in the 1820s. Many of the things that puzzled him now make sense. MacEnery didn’t have the knowledge we have today but he made a point of noting everything and the information he left has proved critical. Following MacEnery, the cave was excavated by a local geologist called William Pengelly. He produced a fantastic grid of the cave so all the objects he found could be replaced in situ. I’m intending to plot the Pengelly material into a computer plan of the cave produced by two American scientists who based their work on his records.

  In order to date human activity, wherever possible, we select cut or modified bones or tools. Until recently the most commonly available materials – bone, teeth, ivory and antler – were also the most problematic for dating. The samples need careful pre-treatment to remove recent contamination and the technology we used was not sufficiently effective. Recently the Research Laboratory for Archaeology at Oxford, who run all our samples, developed new, improved pre-treatment methods. So the radiocarbon dates we’ve been getting on AHOB are probably more reliable than ever before. Some of the shifts in age have been really dramatic.

  Our work for AHOB is really hands-on and this gives it tremendous value – if you don’t know the material first hand, you can’t properly evaluate it. It’s painstaking work. You might spend a week looking through a faunal collection and find only a single cut mark, but even that makes it worthwhile. In fact, it’s the only way to do it. Other researchers who base their work on our findings will know that we’ve sought all the traceable objects in a collection, looked at them, and dated them with the best methods available. It’s quality-controlled. AHOB is putting Britain’s Pleistocene archaeology into sharper focus. We’re lucky to be working on it right now because it’s possible to apply all sorts of new methods and thinking and ideas to the material. The project came along at the perfect time.

  SIMON PARFITT

  I got to know Simon Parfitt through our collaboration on the Boxgrove site, and we have worked together on describing the human shinbone and teeth from there. He is one of AHOB’s faunal specialists, and with his unmatched enthusiasm for fossils of tiny creatures like voles and shrews he’s been able to reveal a wealth of information about the ancient environmental and human history of Britain.

  I discovered the joys of archaeological excavations at the age of 13 when I joined a dig at a Roman temple site. I spent every subsequent school summer holiday as a volunteer helping archaeologists with their work. I had fantastic experiences and relished the freedom of living away from home, surrounded by interesting people. At the temple we found the remains of sacrificial sheep, goats and fowl in such huge quantities that we had to use wheelbarrows to cart them away. The animal bones fascinated me and so began a lifelong interest in vertebrate palaeontology. It’s a bit like detective work because you have to piece together the clues to reconstruct the scene. After school I enrolled at the Institute of Archaeology in London. We had a brilliant, inspirational lecturer called Don Brothwell who sparked my interest in environmental history. In my final year I heard about an excavation starting at Boxgrove, and managed to get a job helping with the animal bones. It was both exciting and daunting because it’s such an important site. During that summer I realized that this was what I wanted to do with my life. Starting in 1985 I spent six months of every year, for over a decade, doing fieldwork at Boxgrove. The other six months were spent at the Natural History Museum sorting, identifying, conserving and cataloguing everything we collected. In 1993 I identified a human tibia bone. The excavation was, by then, coming to an end, and we had given up all hope of finding a human fossil so it was incredibly exciting. At the time, this represented (along with a jawbone from Germany) the earliest fossil human in all of Europe.

  So although my academic background was in archaeology, my expertise is in animal remains. I find them compelling because they can provide so much information: whether the environment was warm or cold, whether there were trees or rivers, what people ate and how they captured and butchered their prey. We also use animal remains to date archaeological sites because the evolution and extinction of some species, such as voles, are well documented. Voles, along with shrews and mice, are the kind of small creatures that I particularly like working on. Most researchers ignore them in favour of the big, more obviously appealing animals like woolly mammoths, so this field is virtually unexplored and is wide open for new research. In many ways the smaller animals are more interesting, and because they can be found in abundance they provide a lot more information than their larger counterparts.

  Boxgrove is a prime example of the usefulness of animal material. The beautiful hand axes found there had led researchers to believe that the site was relatively young, comparable to Swanscombe at around 400,000 years old. But our analysis of the animal bones revealed that it is in fact about 100,000 years older and that humans lived there before, rather than after, the Anglian glaciation.

  I first got involved with the AHOB project through my association with Chris Stringer at the Natural History Museum. When we started work the Boxgrove site, dated at about 500,000 years, provided the earliest unambiguous evidence of human habitation. We embarked on a calculated search for earlier archaeology but we could never have predicted that we’d make the amazing finds we did. We headed to East Anglia. The coastline there was notoriously devoid of archaeology and this had never made sense. The animal remains and local geology indicated that this area, like the Boxgrove region, was scored by river systems and enjoyed a warm climate. So where were the people? I searched for evidence in the Natural History Museum’s extensive collection. Eventually, while examining fossils that had been found more than a hundred years ago, I discovered a bison bone with clear cut marks on it. It had been discovered in the ‘Forest Bed’ at Happisburgh in Norfolk, but the precise details of its location were not documented. Then, in 2000, an amateur archaeologist found a handaxe. Crucially, it was buried in sediments, so it could be dated. These finds provided the first conclusive evidence of human occupation of the area dating to perhaps half a million years ago.

  We then conducted numerous excavations along a large stretch of the East Anglian coast, from north Suffolk all the way round to The Wash. The big breakthrough was at Pakefield. The artefacts found there pre-dated Boxgrove by as much as a quarter of a million years, pushing the colonization of Britain back to an earlier time than anyone had anticipated. In fact, it’s the earliest known site in northern Europe. It’s incredibly exciting. We identified thirty-two flakes of flint at Pakefield but no handaxes. Opinions differ as to the significance of this, and the evidence doesn’t present a clear pattern. It’s possible that the people knew how to make only simple tools, but it could be that they were limited by the available raw materials. My feeling is that different groups, arriving in Britain from various parts of Europe, brought different tool kits with them. Excavating at Pakefield was hair-raising. We had to work kneeling at the foot of a towering sandy cliff with huge blocks of clay above our heads that threatened to fall off at any moment. We excavated with trowels and filled about fifty sacks. Robert Symmons then spent months sifting through the samples, picking out tiny chips of flint. These minute artefacts allow us to envisage someone sitting on grave
l, probably near a river bank, prospecting for workable pieces of flint. They would then bash the flint to remove flakes, leaving the scattered chips that we recovered 700,000 years later.

  As well as flint chips the samples contained hundreds of small bone fragments and it was my job to look at those. There were numerous different animals – fish, amphibians, birds, reptiles and small mammals. Amongst the most interesting specimens were a bat tooth, a squirrel tooth (indicating that the landscape was wooded in parts), and two teeth from an extremely rare water shrew known from only twelve other sites.

  One of the key aims of the AHOB project is the investigation of numerous archaeological sites such as Pakefield, High Lodge, Westbury Cave and Warren Hill, which belong to the early time period before the Anglian glaciation. The sites represent a wide range of climates and human technologies and we’re now working to fit them into a chronological sequence.

  The AHOB project is unique because it brought together a whole range of approaches to the subject. For me, it provided an amazing opportunity to both explore new sites and revisit old collections in order to unearth evidence and establish connections.

  JIM ROSE

  Jim Rose is a long-term colleague and one of AHOB’s geomorphologists (geomorphology is the study of landforms). He is a major figure in studies of the landscape of Britain over the last 3 million years and made his name with some groundbreaking ideas on how this landscape has changed. He is a Professor of Geography at the University of London, and a leading international figure in Quaternary science.

  Some of my most significant contributions to AHOB stem from my earlier achievements. Some of these are what might be called ‘startling realizations’ that have explained hitherto unresolved problems. These revelations have greatly added to our understanding of Britain’s recent geological history.

  The first of these ‘blinding flashes’ occurred in the mid 1980s when I was studying glacial deposits in eastern England. A Lincolnshire sand and gravel company had asked me to find them some new deposits. While studying the geology around their quarry, I realized I was standing on the bed of a major ancient river that had nothing to do with the glaciation of the area! Having found the company some more sand and gravel, I then used my knowledge of the Quaternary geology of midland and eastern England to trace the ancient river’s course. I discovered that it had been a very large watercourse and had drained from near Stratford upon Avon to the North Sea near Lowestoft, but that it no longer formed part of the landscape. It is a buried river system and indeed forms the ‘Great Lost River of England’. I named it the Bytham River, after the village of Castle Bytham in south Lincolnshire, which is close to where I made the discovery. The Bytham River turned out to be of tremendous importance, geologically and archaeologically. Geologically, it demonstrated that deposits considered to be evidence for the penultimate (Wolstonian) glaciation of Britain were in fact much older – something some people have still not recognized. Archaeologically, it provided a context for evidence of humans in Britain before the most extensive glaciation, the Anglian, which occurred about 450,000 years ago.

  The second ‘blinding flash’ occurred around 1990 while I was working in the field with my (then) research student, Simon Lewis (also a member of AHOB). We were studying the sediments at High Lodge in Suffolk, a famous and controversial archaeological site. Simon and I were hard at work when suddenly we stopped and looked up at one another. I said: ‘these are Bytham deposits!’ and everything fell into place. All subsequent work has confirmed this to be the case. The sediments at High Lodge are the overbank floodplain of the Bytham River where people lived around 500,000 years ago. Existing publications had recorded human artefacts here, but had not recognized the deposits as Bytham sands and gravels. While conducting research at other Bytham sites, I had found a number of possible human-struck flint flakes, but the stone tools from High Lodge provided the first unequivocal evidence of human habitation associated with this long-lost river system.

  The third ‘blinding flash’ occurred while I was doing collaborative work with members of the British Geological Survey. We were at a Bytham River site in East Anglia and I was being teased by my colleagues who had recognized big glacial erratics in the Bytham sands and gravels that I had not previously seen. Initially this was very embarrassing, but then I forgot the embarrassment because it meant that here was evidence for a glaciation long before the Anglian glaciation that had destroyed the Bytham River! This completely overturned my own theories about Britain’s glacial history. Having considered all the geological and geomorphological evidence, we proposed the term Happisburgh glaciation. The Happisburgh event occurred about 650,000 years ago. Many in Britain, including some members of the AHOB team, do not believe in the existence of this glaciation. They continue to defend my original theory, proposed in 1979, that a single glaciation – the Anglian – occurred during this time period. It is interesting that the Happisburgh glaciation did not completely destroy the Bytham River because it did not extend far enough south. By contrast the Anglian glaciation, which reached London, either eroded or buried the Bytham river valley.

  Around the same time, a beautiful handaxe was discovered at Happisburgh, in East Anglia, beneath the glacial deposits. This indicates that the humans lived here at least 650,000 years ago. This is extremely old, but the geology at Pakefield near Lowestoft provides evidence for even more ancient archaeology that may date to 750,000 years BP. Ever since I started work on AHOB, I have argued that humans first came to Britain much earlier than most people believed. Originally, many on the team disagreed with me, but now we all share this opinion.

  Over the last few years there have been some strong reactions to my ideas about a major pre-Anglian glaciation, and the presence of humans in Britain long before 500,000 BP. The alternative view is that the Happisburgh glaciation is the same age as the Anglian and that the archaelogy below the Happisburgh glacial deposits is roughly contemporary with the archaeology at Boxgrove, at around 500,000 years old. These beliefs are based largely on the biological evidence, which uses evolution and extinction as yardsticks. The assumption is that biological change (i.e. the first or last appearance of a species) takes place at the same time everywhere – if the change can be dated at one location, then it is thought safe to apply that date elsewhere. But we work within a fine resolution and this is unrealistic. There are numerous examples of species becoming locally extinct at different times, so I believe this is a flawed technique to use for dating. If it can be demonstrated that the changes took place at similar times, then I’m happy to use the biological method, but I cannot take it as an article of faith.

  I have really enjoyed working as part of the AHOB team. There is immense value in collaborating with people from a variety of disciplines, with their different philosophies and prejudices. The existence of fundamental disagreements on major issues stimulates critical thinking and has contributed in no small way to the current belief that humans lived in Britain around 700,000 years ago. It is my opinion that this scientific debate has been the project’s biggest success.

  DANIELLE SCHREVE

  Danielle is an Ice Age mammal specialist, and has uncovered a wealth of information about the environments Britain’s ancient humans lived in, as well as their eating habits. She has collaborated with various members of the group on a number of projects, including our publication of the Westbury site and sites in the Thames Valley.

  I’m the third of the unholy trio of Ice Age mammal specialists working on AHOB. Along with Simon Parfitt and Andy Currant, I’ve concentrated on British fossil mammals to provide information about past environ ments, the age of sites, and their exploitation by early humans. I couldn’t have predicted that I would follow a scientific path when I left school with three A Levels in arts subjects. I started my degree at the Institute of Archaeology expecting to focus on classical topics, but soon discovered that early Stone Age archaeology and environments were even more compelling. I subsequently did a PhD on Ice Age mammals.
Mammal remains can provide detailed information about when and how the animals lived. Every time Britain switched from an interglacial into a glacial period, the faunal slate would be wiped clean. It’s like reshuffling the pack and dealing a completely different suite of animals with every major climatic shift. Andy Currant and I came up with the term Mammal Assemblage-Zone (MAZ) as a good way to describe these discrete groupings of mammals. I ploughed through the vast collections at the Natural History Museum, and conducted several new excavations, in order to define the MAZs. This became a key element in the AHOB project design as we used the mammal evidence as the basis for our chronology. When I’m investigating a site, I start by compiling a list of the species present. This tells me whether it was a warm or cold period and what the vegetation might have been like. I then consider, in more detail, whether species absences are genuine or simply an artefact of preservation. Some species are particularly good chronological markers. The presence of hippos, for example, indicates that the site is either older than 500,000 years or around 125,000 years. Absence of certain species can also give us concrete information – for example, the spotted hyaena was completely absent from Britain during the Hoxnian interglacial around 400,000 years ago.

  I then focus on individual lineages and look at patterns of evolution. The water vole is an extremely informative animal. Over the last half a million years, water vole teeth have shown a progressive evolutionary trend. They grew in size while the thickest enamel on the biting surface moved from one side of the tooth to the other. By measuring the remains, the well-charted ‘vole clock’ allows us to place and order the sites in a chronological framework. We also see changes in size. Mammals adapt very quickly to environmental shifts, often by growing in size or dwarfing. Carnivores tend to get bigger in cold climates while herbivores sometimes shrink; during a particularly severe cold spell around 180,000 years ago horses, which started off with cart-horse dimensions, diminished until they were about the size of a Shetland pony. The first big assemblage I looked at was from Swanscombe. Other lines of evidence had suggested that Swanscombe was older than the famous Palaeolithic site at Hoxne. However, by comparing the mammals at the two sites, I worked out that they are roughly contemporary. They both pertain to the Hoxnian interglacial, during which the orbital configuration of the Earth and sun was the same as it is now. Environmental information from these sites is therefore relevant to questions about climate change today. Although concern focuses on global warming, we should also be aware that we might be due for another Ice Age. Most interglacials last about 10,000 years so we could be approaching the end of ours. The Hoxnian, however, is thought to have lasted around 20,000 years. If our interglacial proceeds in a similar fashion, we would have thousands of years of warm weather left. Our work for AHOB has revealed a clear pattern of development and human activity during the Hoxnian: the earlier part of the interglacial featured a more densely forested landscape but no handaxes; later the landscape became more open and handaxes appeared. Mark White and I believe that the evidence represents two waves of colonization of Britain. The first influx came from areas such as the north German plain, where the people did not make handaxes. The second wave came from Italy, France or Spain where handaxes were a well-established part of the local technological repertoire.