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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

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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.

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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. the mid-1980s firmly established the pres­ the most important pre-glacial archaeolog­ Conversely, in parts of southeast England ence of humans in Britain approximately ical sites have been found in fl oodplain where flint of good quality is rare, such as 500,000 years ago, before the Anglian deposits of the Bytham river. Victorian the Weald, much of the Thames basin and glaciation.11 Boxgrove has gained interna­ antiquarians discovered several of them the coastal hinterland of East Anglia, arte­ tional renown because of the discovery (e.g. High Lodge and Warren Hill), but oth­ facts are scarce. This suggests that, in areas there of hominid fossils and spectacular ers have come to light within the past few where there was a ready supply of this raw assemblages of flint artefacts and butch­ years as a result of the extraction of gravel material, evidence for human activity is ered animal bones/2 but there are several for construction. These sites were origi­ abundant, because tools were made and other less well known British Lower Pal­ nally believed to be relatively recent (per­ discarded there. In contrast, in areas where aeolithic sites that have also been shown to haps no older than 200,000 years), but flint was scarce, people conserved the pre-date the Anglian glaciation.13 detailed geological mapping in the late stone tools that they had transported, and Immediately prior to the Anglian glaci­ 1 980s by geomorphologist Jim Rose and discarded them only rarely. ation, the palaeogeography of Britain dif­ colleagues showed that the sites in the What implications does this have for our fered greatly from that of the present day west Midlands and East Anglia were asso­ reconstruction of how humans exploited (Fig. 5). Britain was then a northwestern ciated with quartz and quartzite-rich river the landscapes of the Forest-bed river sys­ peninsula of Europe, and across what is deposits beneath Anglian till (rocky debris tems? It seems likely that the availability of now the English Channel a chalk ridge left by the ice sheet), which could be traced raw materials may explain why it has taken formed a land bridge that connected south­ to the East Anglian coast. This geological so long to find evidence of human occupa­ eastern England to the mainland. The land detective work demonstrated conclusively tion in these deposits. In the lower reaches bridge was the point of entry into Britain that the sites were pre-glacial in age.14 and estuaries of the Forest-bed rivers, sedi­ for migrating animals, including humans. ments are generally of fine grain. Gravel To its south and west, raised-beach depos­ Raw-material availability and deposits are scarce in these stretches of the its along the foot of the South Downs in mapping humans on the landscape rivers, and most of the flints in the deposits Sussex and estuarine deposits south ofthe The distribution of British pre-glacial sites have been reworked frombeach gravels by Solent on the Isle ofWight record the posi­ demonstrates that the availability of raw water action, or transported down stream tion of the pre-glacial coast, which formed material strongly controls the visibility of from the chalk region of central East a large embayment fe d by the proto­ past human activity in the palaeo-land­ Anglia. These river gravels constitute a Somme and -Seine and the former Solent scape. During the period of the Forest-bed, scarce secondary source of flint, but the river. To the east and north of the land the sites with the most artefacts are those flint nodules are generally small, of poor bridge a vast marine embayment formed associated with the most abundant and quality and often frost-shattered or bat­ the southern part of the North Sea basin, high-quality flint, exposed for example in tered and rolled by water. The cut-marked which was mostly infilled by deltaic sed­ chalk seacliffs , as at Boxgrove, or where bone from Happisburgh, together with the iments deposited by rivers flowing across rivers have eroded or cut through chalk apparent absence of any discarded stone the north European plain (the proto-Rhine bedrock, as at Warren Hill. These examples tools in the Forest-bed sediments, suggests and -Meuse), and east across Britain (the reflect a broader pattern, whereby, when that people brought flintimplements with proto-Thames and the former Bytham the Lower and Middle Palaeolithic sites them to butcher large mammal carcasses, river) (Fig. 5). are plotted on a map of the distribution of and that these tools were carefully curated and seldom discarded.

Conclusion After nearly two centuries of investigation ' of the Forest-bed, the cut marks on the bone Happisburgh• from Happisburgh, and its stratigraphical \ / position, constitute the first conclusive ' southern limit f evidence that humans were present in this Byt ham , the Anglian � ' 1ce - --, part of East Anglia before the first major l, - ' glaciation of lowland England. This find ' fi lls a significant gap in the geographical distribution of pre-glacial archaeological

I sites in Britain and reinforces the view that � humans at this time were living, under varied climatic regimes, in a wide range of environments that extended from the coastal fringe along river valleys and into upland areas. Many of the sites have yielded prolific quantities of stone tools. We may therefore ask why has it been so difficult to find evidence for human occu­ pation along the lower reaches and estuar­ ies of the former Forest-bed rivers? There may be several reasons for this, but the Figure 5 Main features of the pre-glacial palaeogeography of southernBri tain during main one is likely to be the paucity of flint the Anglian glaciation, showing the major rivers, the land bridge, and the location of the of good quality as a raw material, and a archaeological sites of Happisburgh and Boxgrove. consequent lack of knapping debris fr om

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stone-tool manufacture, which has fre­ 4. An enthralling discussion of the eolith Human Evolution 34, 509-547, 1998; and quently provided evidence elsewhere of controversy can be found in F. Spencer, M. B. Roberts & S. A. Parfitt, "Boxgrove. A Palaeolithic occupation. Piltdown: a scientific forgery (London, Middle Pleistocene hominid site at The East Anglian coast is now a key area Oxford and New York: Natural History Earth am Quarry,Boxgro ve, West Sussex, Museum Publications and Oxford Univer­ (London: English Heritage, Archaeologi­ in the search for evidence of the earliest sity Press, 1990); see also A. O'Connor, cal Report 17, 1999). human occupation of Britain. Extensive "Geology, archaeology, and the 'raging 13. See J. Wymer, The Lower Palaeolithic stretches of it are currently undergoing vortex of the eolith controversy' ", Pro­ occupation ofBritain (Salisbury: Wessex accelerated erosion by the sea, which is ceedings of the Geologists' Association Archaeology and English Heritage, 1 999). exposing geological sections that were pre­ 114, 255-62, 2003. 14. J. Rose, "Major river systems of central and viously hidden by sea defences and sand 5. For a popular account ofthe discoveries at southern Britain during the Early and Boxgrove see M. Pitts & M. Roberts, Fair­ early Middle Pleistocene", Terra Nova dunes. These exposures offer a unique 6, window into the Pliocene-Pleistocene weather Eden: life in Britain half a million 435-4 3, 1994. history of northwest Europe and they have years ago as revealed by the excavations at 15. The research described here was under­ Boxgrove (Century: London, 1997). The taken as part of the project. I have the potential to contribute significantly to AHOB work at Boxgrove undertaken over many benefited from discussion with col­ AHOB our knowledge of the timing and nature of years by staff and students from the Insti­ leagues and associates, especially Andy the first human colonization of northern tute of Archaeology has also been Currant, Adrian Lister, Richard Preece, Eurasia.15 described in two articles in Archaeology Chris Stringer and Jim Rose. In particular In ternational,the first by Mark Roberts in I would like to thank John Stewart, who Notes the 1997/1998 issue and the second by he! ped me see the wood for the trees. I also 1. The project is a five-year interdisci­ Matthew Pope in the 2003/2004 issue. thank Rob Symmons and the Photo­ AHOB plinary research programme, funded by 6. For a report on one such site, see S. A. Par­ graphic Unit, Natural History Museum, the Leverhulme Trust, which began in fitt, "A Middle Pleistocene butchery site who helped prepare figures. I am indebted October 2001. It is led by Chris Stringer at Great Y eldham, Essex", Quatern�ry to Nigel Larkin, who provided a list of (Natural History Museum) and brings Newsletter, in press. Happisburgh material in the Norwich Cas­ together a range ofspecialists fromseveral 7. The specimen is a navicular-cuboid, a foot tle Museum, and to Tony Stuart for access British universities and museums to bone of the hind limb that articulates with to the collection. investigate when people first arrived in two other bones of the foot, the astragalus Britain and what factors led to their sur­ and calcaneus. vival or local extinction. The project 8. Small patches of grey silt overlie the cut spans the period from thefirst signs of marks, demonstrating that the marks are human occupation during the early Mid­ ancient. A sample of this sediment was dle Pleistocene, more than 500,000 years processed to see if it contained ancient ago, to the beginning of the Holocene pollen grains that might provide informa­ about 10,000 (c. 11,500 calibrated radio­ tion about the depositional context ofthe carbon) years ago. Much of this work is bone, but no pollen was recovered (Phi! being undertaken by members and Gibbard, pers. comm.). AHOB associates, including Jim Rose and col­ 9. R. G. West, Th e pre-glacial Pleistocene of leagues (Royal Holloway, University of the Norfolk and Suffolk coasts (Cam­ London) in collaboration with the British bridge: Cambridge University Press, Geological Survey (J onathan Lee, Richard 1980). Hamblin, Brian Moorlock). Previously 10. A. M. Lister, "The stratigraphical signifi­ known sites in the East Anglian Breck­ cance of deer species in the Cromer Forest­ lands are being re-investigated by Nick bed Formation", Journal of Quaternary Science 95-108, 1993, and "The strati­ Ashton (British Museum], Simon Lewis 8, (Queen Mary, University of London], Jim graphical interpretation of large mammal Rose and myself(Institute of Archaeology, remains from the Cromer Forest-bed For­ UCL). Further details, including a list of mation", in Th e early Middle Pleistocene members and associates, can be found at in Europe, C. Turner (ed.), 25-44 (Rotter­ http://ww w.nhrn.ac.uk/h osted_s ites/ ahob dam: Balkema, 1996). and see N. Ash ton, "Hunting for the first 11. The cold period of the Anglian glaciation humans in Britain", British Archaeology is believed to equate in the deep-sea 8-13, 2003. record with Marine Isotope Stage 12 70, (MIS 2. The Forest-bed has a long history of inves­ 12) c. 485,000-425,000 years ago (see Fig. tigation, and its dating and stratigraphy 4). The sequence of marine isotope stages continue to be revised. There is a volumi­ represents a succession of climatic nous literature on it; for a recent summary changes inferred from variations in oxy­ see R. C, Preece & S. A. Parfitt, "The gen isotopes in the shells of foraminifera Cromer Forest-bed Formation: new (marine microfossils) in cores of deep-sea thoughts on an old problem", in Th e Qua­ sediments, which demonstrates a consist­ ternary ofNor folk and Suffolk. Field ent pattern of oscillating cooler and Guide, S. G. Lewis, C. A. Whiteman, R. C. warmer periods of sea temperature. Sim­ Preece (eds], 1-27 (London: Quaternary ilar techniques applied more recently to Research Association, 2000). For ice cores from Antarctica and Greenland accounts of the spectacular vertebrate have yielded comparable results. The oxy­ fossils of the Forest-bed see A. J. Stuart, gen-isotope variations fromboth the ice­ "Vertebrate faunas from the early Middle and the deep-sea cores are considered to Pleistocene of East Anglia", in Th e early reflect the complex sequence of glacial Middle Pleistocene in Europe, C. Turner advances and recessions that is especially (ed.], 9-24 (Rotterdam: A. A. Balkema, evident in the northern hemisphere dur­ 1 996], and A. J. Stuart, "The West Runton ing the past 700,000 years. elephant", CurrentArch aeology149, 164- 12. See M. B. Roberts, C. B. Stringer, S. A. 8, 1996. Parfitt, "A hominid tibia from Middle 3. See p. 228 in C. Lyell, Th e geological Pleistocene sediments at Boxgrove, UK", Nature 3 9, 311-13, 1994; C. B. Stringer, evidence of the antiquity of man, with 6 remarks on theories ofthe origin ofspecies E. Trinkaus, M. B. Roberts, S. A. Parfitt, by variation (London: John Murray, 1863 ). R. Macphail, "The Middle Pleistocene human tibia from Boxgrove", Journalof

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