Description : Eartham Pit is an internationally important Lower Palaeolithic archaeological site north-east of Boxgrove in West Sussex. The oldest human remains in Britain have been discovered on the site, fossils of Homo heidelbergensis dating to 500,000 years ago. It is a 9.8-hectare (24-acre) geological Site of Special Scientific Interest and a Geological Conservation Review site.The other key Palaeolithic sites in the UK are Swanscombe, Pontnewydd, Kents Cavern, Paviland, and Gough's Cave. Boxgrove is also one of the oldest sites with direct evidence of hunting/butchering by humans. The site is close to a fossil shoreline which has interglacial mammal fauna in intertidal sediments. Parts of the site complex were excavated between 1982 and 1996 by a team led by Mark Roberts of the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. The site is situated in an area that features a buried chalk cliff that overlooked a flat beach (which contained a waterhole) stretching around half a mile (1 km) south to the sea.
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