The Lower Paleolithic site of Boxgrove, West Sussex, UK, is located 12 km north of the present day coastline of the English Channel, in a buried early Middle Pleistocene landscape that extends 26 km from east to west (Roberts and Pope, 2013). The area has had a long history of geological and archaeological investigation dating back to the nineteenth century. The main excavations were carried out in two gravel quarries that covered a 1 km stretch of paleocoastline (Roberts and Parfitt, 1999). A tibia and two teeth, probably from Homo heidelbergensis (Stringer et al., 1998), were recovered from a depositional sequence of marine followed by terrestrial sediments that were rich in artifacts and faunal remains.
The sediments record a change from interglacial/temperate (MIS 13) to glacial/cool conditions (MIS 12). Three marine cycles were found, with the highest point of marine transgression recorded at 43.5 m above sea level. However, this height is attributable to post-depositional...
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Bibliography
Macphail, R. I., Allen, M. J., Crowther, J., Cruise, G. M., and Whittaker, J. E., 2010. Marine inundation: effects on archaeological features, materials, sediments and soils. Quaternary International, 214(1–2), 44–55.
Roberts, M. B., and Parfitt, S. A., 1999. Boxgrove. A Middle Pleistocene Hominid Site at Eartham Quarry, Boxgrove, West Sussex. London: English Heritage.
Roberts, M. B., and Pope, M. I., 2013. Mapping the Early Middle Pleistocene Deposits of the Slindon Formation across the Coastal Plain of West Sussex and Eastern Hampshire. London: English Heritage.
Roberts, M. B., Pope, M. I., and Parfitt, S. A., 2015. Boxgrove: An Early Middle Pleistocene Hominid Site at Eartham Quarry, Boxgrove, West Sussex. Excavations 1990–1996. London: English Heritage.
Stringer, C. B., Trinkhaus, E., Roberts, M. B., Parfitt, S. A., and Macphail, R. I., 1998. The Middle Pleistocene human tibia from Boxgrove. Journal of Human Evolution, 34(5), 509–547.
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Mark Roberts is thanked for his contribution to this summary.
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Macphail, R.I. (2017). Boxgrove. In: Gilbert, A.S. (eds) Encyclopedia of Geoarchaeology. Encyclopedia of Earth Sciences Series. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_71
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-4409-0_71
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