The excellent preservation and documentation of archaeological data from Boxgrove have fueled expectations that assemblage studies will yield new insights into hominid behavior. Different data sets have been compiled to suggest that the hominids who left their artifacts at Boxgrove hunted large game, cooperated with each other, planned ahead, and used spoken language. Although these characteristics would not be unbecoming to those thought to be among the earliest colonizers of northern Europe, they remain contested. As research continues, the data from Boxgrove may prove particularly informative for the potential of and the limits to archaeological interpretation.

Josara De Lange

References

Roberts, M. B., and S.A. Parfitt. 1999. Boxgrove. A Middle Pleistocene Hominid Site at Eartham Quarry, Boxgrove, West Sussex. English Heritage Archaeological Report 17. London.

Roberts, M. B., S.A. Parfitt, and M.I. Pope. In press. The Archaeology of the Middle Pleistocene Hominid Site at Boxgrove, West Sussex, UK: Excavations, 1990–1996. English Heritage Monograph Series. London.

Roberts, M. B., S.A. Parfitt, M.I. Pope, and F.F. Wenban-Smith. 1997. “Boxgrove, West Sussex: Rescue Excavations of a Lower Palaeolithic Landsurface (Boxgrove Project B, 1989–91).” Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 63, 303–358.

Braidwood, Robert John (1907–)

Robert Braidwood, born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1907, first studied to be an architect but returned to university in 1930 to study art history and anthropology because of the adverse effects of the Great Depression on the building industry. He traveled to Iraq in 1930–1931 to participate in the excavation of Seleucia, and this trip marked the beginning of his long interest in and significant contributions to Near Eastern archaeology. Braidwood worked briefly in Illinois and New Mexico, but all the rest of his fieldwork was under the aegis of the University of Chicago’s oriental institute: Syria, 1933–1938; Iraq, 1947–