First pioneers in northern Europe 900,000 years ago

Happisburgh (pronounced Haze-bru), on the north Norfolk coast, has a remarkable concentration of early Stone Age sites that have all been discovered since 2001. These are part of the Cromer Forest-bed which is a complex series of river, estuary and floodplain sediments that span over a million years. They lie beneath and pre-date the coastal cliffs and have only been exposed because of coastal erosion. 

The oldest of these sites, known as Happisburgh Site 3, is an ancient river channel dating to either 850,000 or 950,000 years ago. Archaeologists from the Ancient Human Occupation of Britain (AHOB) Project and subsequently the Pathways to Ancient Britain project have been working at the site since 2005. Collaborating with local experts, they've excavated and studied artefacts preserved at this site that reveal a grassland river valley teeming with deer, horses, mammoths, rhinoceroses and even hippopotamuses, with the surrounding hills dominated by thick coniferous forest. 

The large-scale excavations were completed in 2012 and human footprints were discovered during a geological survey in 2013. Since then, the team has worked with local amateur archaeologists and palaeontologists to help collect and record the numerous stone tools and fossil bones that are regularly found on the beach, and to identify new sites along the East Anglian coast.

This project aims to:

• Discover new sites along the East Anglian coast that may reveal even earlier evidence of humans in the Cromer Forest-bed.
• Record new discoveries of stone tools and fossil bones from the Cromer Forest-bed in collaboration with Norfolk Museums Service.
• Contribute to future British Museum exhibitions on early humans.

Alongside this work on the coast, Rachel Bynoe and a team from the University of Southampton have located offshore deposits of the Cromer Forest-bed. At what may be the world's oldest underwater archaeological site, the team aims to recover stone tools from these sediments.  

To encourage interest and understanding of the significance of the Cromer Forest-bed to studies of early human history, the team regularly give public talks and beach walks showing the sites and cliff-edge exposures. They also hold regular 'fossil road shows' so that people can bring new beach finds to be identified and recorded.

The coastal exposures around Happisburgh continue to reveal evidence of the earliest humans in northern Europe, with several sites dating from 900,000–500,000 years ago. The earliest showed humans occupying the grassland estuary of the proto-Thames (an early stage of the Thames' development as a river) surrounded by coniferous forest. Questions remain as to whether they had clothing, shelter or fire to survive the long, cold winters of northern Europe.

Excavation on the beach is now difficult due to access problems between tides, so work is focused on maximising the recovery and recording of artefacts and fossils through local volunteers and collectors. Almost 2,000 flint artefacts and mammalian fossils have been discovered by members of the public and recorded by the project team in the last few years. These new finds have not only added to the excavated assemblages from Happisburgh, but they've also led to the location of potential new sites, both on and offshore.