The site of Boxgrove is situated within a complex of sand and gravel quarries at the foot of South Downs, 7 km east of Chichester, West Sussex. Archaeological excavations over the past four decades have investigated extensive early middle Pleistocene landsurfaces, preserved at the foot of a buried sea cliff. Evidence of human activity occurs throughout the geological sequence, but Acheulian handaxes, flint-knapping waste, and butchered bones are particularly concentrated at discrete horizons within a lagoonal silt unit and the overlying palaeosol and associated freshwater deposits.
In 1993 a largely complete hominin left tibial diaphysis was recovered from colluvial sediments overlying the freshwater deposits in Quarry 1 (locality Q1/B). The freshwater beds have been dated to the latter part of an early middle Pleistocene interglacial using mammalian biostratigraphy. The colluvial sediments containing the tibia were probably deposited at the transition to the succeeding cold stage. The Boxgrove temperate sediments have been assigned to the final interglacial of the ‘Cromerian Complex,’ probably Marine Isotope Stage 13 (MIS 13, c. 500 ka), and the overlying periglacial sediments to the Anglian Cold Stage (MIS 12, 478-424 ka). The Boxgrove 1 tibia is therefore approximately the same age as the Mauer 1 mandible, and it probably represents one of the earliest handaxe-associated populations to enter trans-Alpine Europe.
Morphological and biomechanical analyses of the Boxgrove 1 tibia indicate that it is similar to other Pleistocene archaic Homo tibiae in its external morphology and overall robusticity, and that it probably derived from an individual with relatively stocky, cool-adapted ecogeographic body proportions. During subsequent excavations in 1995 and 1996, two hominin incisors were recovered (Boxgrove 2 and Boxgrove 3), probably representing a second individual.
The archaeological evidence from Boxgrove provides detailed insights into the life and palaeoecology of the earliest handaxe makers in northern Europe. Evidence of tool making is often preserved with remarkable clarity. For example, refitting groups of waste flakes show how handaxes were knapped using flint acquired from the chalk cliffs and scree slopes. The transport and reuse of tools stone can be tracked across a landscape where the tools were used and discarded. Boxgrove has also yielded many hammerstones, as well as rare antler and bone percussors and retouchers. Butchery traces are present on many of the large mammal bones, primarily those of rhinoceros, large cervids and horse. They indicate skinning, dismemberment and filleting, as well as marrow, supporting microwear evidence suggesting that the handaxes were used primarily as butchery tools.
