A really enjoyable journey through the Boxgrove excavations through the eyes of the archaeologists as they grew in experience through the 80s and 90s. One of the great excitements in recent years, along with feathered dinosaur finds, has been our growing understanding of early hominids and their sophistication. Journeying with Mark Roberts and the team as they unearth the Boxgrove community and discuss life going on just south of the approaching ice sheet is fascinating - one to re-read, as it's stacked with detail (and a great index!). ( )

A pretty well done popular archaeology book, covering several years excavating at the Pleistocene Boxgrove site in Sussex. The authors adopt an interesting approach, alternating technical details – reconstructions of the site, description of the paleoclimate, faunal lists, etc. – with more personal information about the lives of the archaeologists and the politics involved in funding and publicizing the dig. This doesn’t quite work – frankly, archaeologist’s lives aren’t all that interesting and there’s too many names to keep track of – but the site descriptions more than make up for it.


The people involved were Homo heidelbergensis; (at least, that’s what they were called in 1998 when the book was published; hominid taxonomy changes remarkably fast) and the site is about 500K years old. Although there are lots of stone tools and animal fossils, the extent of human fossils from the site is one humerus with the ends chewed off and two teeth. It’s fascinating what can be determined from just this; the leg bone belonged to a robust male, probably about 6 feet tall, and both teeth came from the same individual and were originally side by side in the jaw. (The teeth had a continuous cut mark, similar to those found on modern humans that hold things in their teeth, stretch them out with one hand, and cut with the other).


Other findings are equally intriguing, and show that archaeology is not just a matter of digging stuff up and putting it in museum trays, but a full-fledged science with experiments and hypothesis testing. One example illustrates hand axe manufacture; modern flintknappers making hand axe replicas use either a hard tool (sit cross-legged and whack one flint chunk with another) or soft tool (sit with the work piece braced against an extended leg and use a piece of bone or antler for flaking) flaking. The two methods produce different shaped flakes and different flaking patterns; hard tool flaking produces a fan shaped pattern of chipped flint, while soft tool flaking produces, essentially, half a fan – the extended leg blocks chips in that direction. Boxgrove shows soft tool flake patterns.


Every good science project should raise more questions than it answers, and Boxgrove meets this criterion. The main stone tool found at the site – in fact, essentially the only stone tool – is the hand axe, that ubiquitous emblem of the Paleolithic. Archaeologists professional and amateur have debated for years over just what hand axes were used for. The name implies a chopping tool – but hand axes are sharp all the way around and there’s no evidence that they were ever hafted. Since it’s virtually the only tool found in the Paleolithic, it’s been claimed as an “all purpose” tool, but once again the circumferential razor-sharp edge militates against that. There’s been a serious suggestion that it was a projectile; thrown like a killer Frisbee. This does explain why so many isolated and apparently unused hand axes have been discovered – they were lost on throwing – but it doesn’t explain how you Frisbee something with an all-around edge. Finally comes the ideas that the hand axe was not a tool all, but what was left over after the knapper made a bunch of flake tools; or that it was simply a demonstration of the knappers skill and was never intended to be used for anything.


The combination of micro-wear analysis and an invitation to a professional butcher to try one out leads the authors to conclude that the hand axe was a butchering tool. The butcher was presented with a roe deer carcass and a wide selection of hand axes and flint flakes to try; although initially surprised at how sharp everything was, he quickly settled on using a hand axe with a swinging, relatively gentle cutting motion, rotating the axe slightly between cuts, and skillfully took the deer apart. This, of course, only proves that a hand axe could be used this way, not that it was, but it’s fairly convincing to me at least.


The authors also address the issue of hand axe typology (although the evidence does not come directly from Boxgrove). For years, archaeologists have tried to associate hand axe styles with cultural variants, or to use them for sequence stratigraphy (like later stone tools or pottery). The best evidence now suggests hand axe shape is explained best by the source material; high quality stone produces hand axes that are almost circular; poor quality makes deltoid hand axes.


Mysteries always remain; there were hundreds of hand axes at Boxgrove and only a few showed even slight wear. Why? The authors suggest that since the Boxgrove people had no pockets, or any other carrying equipment, they had to make new hand axes every time they needed one (rather than carrying around razor-sharp chunks of flint). Although not unreasonable, that still doesn’t explain why there are so many apparently unused ones. Did they make them in preparation for a butchering task that didn’t happen, and then discard them because they couldn’t carry them? Was there perhaps some sort of ritual involved? 500kya is pretty early for any sort of religious belief. At this point, nobody knows.


I don’t want to give the impression Fairweather Eden is only about hand axes; there’s lots of other details of chronology, paleoclimate, topography, and fauna. The intermittent accounts of archaeological politics don’t detract that much. Recommended. ( )

I found this rather disappointing. The narrative, divided into many very short chapters, jumps about all over the place and there is no clear focus on the main subject. Some interesting vignettes and concepts, but not much more for me. ( )