Boxgrove Palaeolithic site
| Site of Special Scientific Interest | |
Location of Boxgrove, with the South Downs shown in relief in Lidar map (top right) in yellow, with excavation trenches bottom right | |
Location within West Sussex | |
| Location | West Sussex |
|---|---|
| Grid reference | SU 923 086 |
| Coordinates | 50°52′12″N 0°41′24″W / 50.870°N 0.690°W |
| Interest | Geological, Archaeological |
| Area | 9.8 hectares (24 acres) |
| Notification | 1997 |
The Boxgrove Palaeolithic site is a complex of internationally important archaeological sites in the former Eartham Quarry, north-east of Boxgrove in West Sussex with findings that date to the Lower Palaeolithic, around 480,000 years ago, at the end of Marine Isotope Stage 13, during the Middle Pleistocene. The oldest human remains in Britain, designated "Boxgrove Man", have been recovered from the site, possibly attributable to Homo heidelbergensis. Boxgrove is also one of the oldest sites in Europe with direct evidence of hunting and butchering by early humans. Only part of the site is protected through designation, one area being a 9.8-hectare (24-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest, as well as a Geological Conservation Review site.
Other key Lower Paleolithic sites in the UK include the Happisburgh footprints (the oldest evidence of humans in Britain), Kents Cavern, and Swanscombe.
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. 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 (1 km) south to the sea.