Crossing the threshold: the evolution of place and landscape in earliest prehistory

The 'Caveman' persists in the popular imagination as typifying the original human condition. This is despite over 150 years of continuous discovery and the development of our sophisticated understanding of the human evolutionary path. But even with these advances it has proved difficult to shake off the widely held perception that our ancestors led a precarious existence made only bearable by the use of caves as the original primitive home.
Our research programme will scrutinise the evidence for the early human use of caves. By doing so we hope to shift fundamentally the perception of our cave dwelling ancestors for both academics and the wider public.
The fact is that for the majority of human evolution we find little or no clear evidence as to where our ancestors were living. This has led to suggestions that they occupied landscapes rather like other animals. Perhaps this involved using impermanent shelters which left no trace in the archaeological record. However, this situation appears to change quite rapidly across the world after half a million years ago. From this point on we start to see, in Africa, Asia and Europe, early human populations who now occupied caves for extended periods of time. Therefore far from the use of caves representing an original, primitive, human condition, their use points instead to a revolution in human behaviour; A revolution in the use of space, technology, landscape and the conception of time; A revolution that has been overlooked by archaeologists but whose implications are immense.
Our research project will begin with the detailed analysis of a key site which shows this new behaviour. La Cotte de St Brelade is a spectacular cave system on the south coast of the island of Jersey. It provides evidence for the long term occupation of the site by Neanderthals hunters spanning almost 200,000 years. During over a century of excavation it has produced one of the largest collections of Neanderthal artefacts and other remains known from Europe. And yet the archive has remained inaccessible for a generation and has never been subjected to a complete analysis.
We intend to bring modern, scientific archaeological analysis to bear on the unique collections of material from la Cotte de St Brelade. We will do this in order to study in detail the changing nature of human behaviour at the site. We want to know to what extent the site represents a Neanderthal 'home'; how the Neanderthals at the site used the landscape around them; and how they organised themselves socially to become a highly effective species with a long and successful history of settlement in the region.
We will use the la Cotte study as a springboard to develop a new understanding of this radical way of life. We will do this by comparing our findings to other cave sites in Europe which have similar evidence for the development of long-lived settlement sites; Sites where time takes on a vertical dimension for the first time and where the quantity of evidence allows us to call them 'super-sites'.
In the final part of our project we aim to bring together researchers from around the globe who are researching sites showing similar revolutionary behaviour. This will provide a global perspective on the evolutionary significance of the use of caves. Our research will provide the opportunity to determine what sustained cave occupation means for our understanding of human development. It also opens the door to exploring the immensely exciting possibility that the cavemen of popular imagination actually represent a fundamentality transformative phase in the human evolutionary path.

1. Formation of a La Cotte de St Brelade Working Group: Progress has already been made this during 2012 to form a La Cotte de St Brelade Working Group to over see both the immediate remedial measures outlined in this project and the formation of a long term management plan. The working group will comprise key representatives from the Société Jersiaise, Jersey Heritage, the State Planning Department and other identified stakeholders. Academic representatives from the UK and the continent will also be invited to participate/comment. By reporting to the working group directly at regular monthly intervals during the project, momentum towards long term management can be maintained through direct and meaningful engagement.

2. Public Engagement: The information gathered during the project will provide an opportunity to show case both the remaining archaeological potential of the site and modern scientific archaeological techniques. By feeding results directly to Jersey Heritage, they will be effectively placed to arrange both a public presentation of our work and integration of results into existing and new museum displays. The medium term possibility of La Cotte forming part of an exhibition at the Natural History Museum London, will also provide an exceptional means of wider dissemination.

3. Media Engagement: Our project has already attracted considerable media interest, being regularly covered by both the BBC and local Jersey media through 2010 and 2011. BBC coverage this summer on Radio 4's Tribes of Science and BBC1's Digging For Britain has widened our profile further. Further documentary filming is planned for 2012 and negotiations already underway for a focused series of programme on the archaeology of the site.

4. Web Coverage: An account of the project will be provide, along with results as they are published on both our own QAEJ website, the UCL main web site and web sites maintained by Jersey Heritage and the Société Jersiaise.

5. International Promotion: The States of Jersey are keen to showcase the island internationally in terms of natural resources and diversity of interests. The ancient human archaeology of the island is proving itself to be an effective way to promote the island as a whole, widening at the same time, an awareness of the increasingly detailed picture of ancient human life we aim to develop in the course of the work.