In the 1920s, laborers and amateur archaeologists at gravel quarry pits in southeastern England uncovered more than 300 ancient, sharp-edged oval tools. Researchers have long suspected that these hand axes were made 500,000 to 700,000 years ago. A new study confirms that suspicion in the first systematic excavation of the site, known as Norwich.
Dating those tools and more recent finds suggests that humanlike folk inhabited the area between about 560,000 and 620,000 years ago, researchers report in the June Royal Society Open Science. Relatively warm conditions at that time drew hominids to what’s now Northern Europe before the evolutionary rise of Neanderthals and Homo sapiens.
The results confirm that Norwich is one of the oldest hominid sites in England. Previous discoveries place hominids in what’s now southeastern England at least 840,000 years ago and perhaps as far back as nearly 1 million years ago. No hominid fossils have been found at Norwich. It’s unclear which species of the human genus made the tools.
In 2020, archaeologist Alastair Key of the University of Cambridge and colleagues unearthed 238 stone artifacts at Norwich that display grooves created by striking the surface with another stone. Other finds include three stones with resharpened edges, presumably used to scrape objects like animal hides.
A method for determining when sediment layers were last exposed to sunlight indicated that the newly discovered artifacts date to roughly 542,000 years ago. The previously unearthed hand axes probably came from the same sediment.
Hominids must have fashioned tools at Norwich a bit earlier than 542,000 years ago because ancient climate data suggest that an ice age at that time made it hard to survive in Northern Europe, the team concludes. Warmer conditions between 560,000 and 620,000 years ago would have enabled the hominid toolmakers to live so far north.
A gravel pit is a type of mine that is left exposed to the surface of the earth. While a great deal of mining is performed deep underground, a gravel pit is used to mine materials located close to the earth's surface. These mines start off as relatively small holes, or voids, and grow larger and larger as more mining is completed. Gravel pits may also be referred to as rock quarries or open-cut mines in some parts of the world.

Gravel consists of small rocks that are used as aggregate in concrete or paving. This material is also used to create a structural base for a roadway, or to aid in soil drainage. Different types of gravel are also placed around planting beds to serve as decoration and as a form of weed control. A gravel pit that provides this type of small stone will generally not include any type of slabs, or larger stones. Some gravel pits, however, may naturally include metals or minerals that can be mined along with the gravel.

To construct a gravel pit, miners start by stripping away topsoil and subsoil layers from the earth, using large stripping machines. This reveals the layers of rock and gravel below the surface, so these materials can be easily extracted using front-end loaders and other large machines. Next, the gravel is subject to washing and processing before it is shipped to asphalt plants or other manufacturing facilities.

While a gravel pit serves as a simple and effective method of mining gravel from the earth, it also poses a number of challenges for miners. As workers dig down below the local water table, these pits gradually fill with water, which can make mining difficult. In this type of situation, workers may dredge the gravel from below and simply allow the water to fill the pit. Other times, miners rely on large pumps to remove water temporarily to allow the extraction process to continue.
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