A Butchered Bone from Norfolk: Evidence for Very Early Human

ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL undertake small-scale field investigations A butchered bone from Norfolk: evidence fo r with the aim of establishing their age, geo logical context and environmental setting. very early human presence in Britain One unexpected result of this work has Simon Parfitt been the discovery of sites where bones show that large animal carcasses were Before the Anglian glaciation some 450,000 years ago, much of butchered with stone tools, but at which no England was drained by large rivers that deposited sediments - such tools have been recovered.6 The most known as the Cromer Forest-bed Formation - now exposed along remarkable outcome so far is the discovery, the coast of East Anglia. The Forest-bed has yielded a great in a nineteenth-century collection of ani mal bones from the Forest-bed, of a butch variety of fo ssils but until now no definite evidence of human ered bone with cut marks on it. This is the activity. The recent discovery of cut marks on a bison bone first unequivocal evidence for human collected fr om it in the nineteenth century demonstrates conclu presence contemporary with the Forest sively that humans were present in this part of East Anglia over bed. It is an exciting discovery, but it is half a million years ago. even more intriguing that such evidence has been so difficult to find. Possible rea sons for the lack of evidence of humans in esearch on the bison bone from sediments would have provided an attrac the Forest-bed sediments are discussed Norfolk is part of an inter tive environment for hunter-gatherers, later in this article. disciplinary programme - the with a wide range of animals and plants to RAncient Human Occupation of exploit. The cut-marked bison bone Britain (AHOB) project1 - that is As early as the 1860s, the eminent Vic The cut-marked bison bone is part of a large investigating glacial and pre-glacial depos torian geologist Sir Charles Lyell predicted collection of specimens of Forest-bed ver its along the East Anglian coast, focusing that human artefacts would one day be tebrates sold to the Natural History particularly on the stratigraphy, palaeoen found in the Forest-bed,3 but after nearly Museum in 1897 by A. C. Savin. He was a vironments and age of the Cromer Forest 200 years of intensive searching, including local fossil collector who amassed the sin bed Formation and associated deposits. the discovery of so-called eoliths, which gle largest collection of Forest-bed verte Today the Forest-bed (so named because are now thought to have been flaked by nat brate fossils. When I recently examined tree stumps are preserved in the sedi ural processes! no convincing artefacts this collection, I identified multiple cut ments) is exposed discontinuously on the have been found in its sediments. Why this marks on a complete foot bone fromone of foreshore and in cliffs for over 80 km from should be so has become increasingly per the hind limbs of a bison/ and thus pro Sheringham in north Norfolk, south to Kes plexing, because Lower Palaeolithic sites, vided the first unambiguous evidence of singland near Lowestoft in Suffolk.2 Exca such as Boxgrove in Sussex,5 show that human activity from the Forest-bed so far vating and recording these deposits is humans were present in other parts of described. Savin's catalogue indicates that often challenging and sometimes danger southern England at this time. Spurred on the specimen was collected from Forest ous work, as they outcrop at the foot of pre by abundant finds of stone tools and bones bed sediments at Happisburgh on the Nor cipitous and unstable cliffs (Fig. 1). What at Boxgrove, archaeologists and geologists folk coast (Fig. 2). Its surface morphology is makes the Forest-bed very interesting are again actively examining the Forest exquisitely preserved,8 and shows classic archaeologically is that it was deposited at bed for evidence of human presence. signs of butchering, consisting of two dis a time when humans first moved out of One of the many objectives of the AHOB tinct sets of parallel incisions on the lateral Africa and dispersed into Asia and Europe. project is to document and research exist (Fig. 3) and medial faces. The incisions on Throughout this period the floodplains of ing museum collections of finds from the the medial face are deeply incised, are the rivers that deposited the Forest-bed Forest-bed, including animal bones, and to V-shape in cross section and are sharply angled, showing that the marks were inflicted by a stone tool such as a sharp flake used with slicing strokes. Foot bones are commonly discarded at primary butch ery sites and the anatomical placement of the cuts suggests dismemberment rather than defleshing or skinning. When studying old collections, one first has to establish the provenance of the finds. Savin's catalogue indicates that the cut-marked bone was collected from a fore shore exposure of the Forest-bed north of Cart Gap at Happisburgh. Unfortunately, he did not record a detailed description of the geological context of the find, and because the cliff at Happisburgh has eroded greatly since the late nineteenth century, it is now impossible to locate the spot where he found the bone. However, contemporary geological accounts show that the cliff right along the Happisburgh coast consisted of glacial deposits resting on top offossil-rich Forest-bed sediments. More recently, Richard West (a palaeo botanist at the University of Cambridge), View of the cliffat Pakefield south of Lowestoft on the Suffolk coast, showing studied the geological succession at Hap Figure 1 dark Forest-bed sediments at the foot of the cliff, overlain by glacial deposits, April2000. pisburgh.9 He demonstrated that below the 14 ARCHAEOLOGY INTERNATIONAL Deep-sea oxygen-isotope variation Holocene (marine-isotope stages) Age cooler o.o -,""F::..::..::_=---==,....--_;_:----,;:::----'r---] Figure Ch ronology of the past two mil 4 lion years, showing the positions of the Cromer Forest-bed Formation and the Anglian glaciation in relation to those of the pre-Anglian Lower Palaeolithic sites of Happisburgh and Boxgrove, and changes in global climate inferred fr om variations Figure 2 Th e bison fo ot bone fr om Happisburgh, with A. C. Savin 's catalogue of his in oxygen isotopes in the shells of marine collection of vertebrate fo ssils from the Forest-bed. micro-organisms (foraminifera) preserved in deep-sea sediments. Th e deep-sea glacial sediments there is a deep sequence sequently, mammalian specimens from oxygen-isotope stages are numbered of mainly estuarine and marine deposits Happisburgh (many found loose on the sequentially back in time fr om the present (resting on chalk bedrock), which he cor beach) were studied by Adrian Lister of the interglacial period(= Marine Isotope Stage related with the early part of the Forest-bed UCL Department of Biology.10 He found 1). Ch anges in Earth 's magnetic field(mag c. 1.8-1.6 million years ago (Fig. 4). Sub- that they consisted of a mixture of Late netic reversals) provide a means of corre lating the marine oxygen-isotope curve with terrestrial deposits; grey areas in the column indicate norm al polarity (when the Earth 's magnetic polarity was north fa cing, as today) and unshaded areas show periods of reversed polarity. Pliocene to Early Pleistocene and early Middle Pleistocene species and thus dem onstrated that there were younger Forest bed sediments at Happisburgh than those sampled by West. A comparison of meas urements of the Happisburgh bison bone with the same type of bone from other bovid specimens from Late Pliocene and Pleistocene sites in Europe confirms that it is most likely to belong to the more recent group of fossils and hence to come from what is termed the Cromerian Complex, sometime between approximately 800,000 and 500,000 years ago. These more recent Figure 3 Detail of the left hind fo ot bone (navicular-cuboid) of a bison fr om the Forest bones from Happisburgh probably derive bed at Happisburgh, collected by A. C. Savin and now in the Na tural History Museum, from a channel incised into the earlier London (accession number M6583). It shows parallel cut marks on the lateral fa ce just deposits, and this is the probable context of below the articular surface, the position and orientation of wh ich suggest th at the foot Savin's cut-marked bone. was disarticulated fr om the hind limb. Before the specimen was photographed, it was dusted with ammonium chloride to overcome the effe cts of both the dark colour of the bone, caused by humic staining while itlay in the sediment, and of shine, caused by later use of a consolidant to conserve it. 15 ARCHAEOLO GY INTERNATIONAL Pre-glacial geography and the Palaeolithic stone tools have been found the chalk, it can be seen that the sites with earliest occupation of Britain in abundance in the terraces of the proto the largest assemblages of artefacts are Until recently, it was thought that the ear Thames, Solent and Bytham rivers and invariably located near chalk escarpments liest occupation of Britain had followed their tributaries. This reflects occupation or cliffs or in river deposits immediately the most extensive (Anglian) glaciation along their banks and suggests that their down stream of them, as in the middle that affected the British Isles some 485,000 flood plains presented easy routes of access Thames Valley, where high-quality flint for years ago, but excavations at Boxgrove in for humans migrating into Britain. Some of tool manufacture could be procured easily.

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