The oldest human remains in Britain have been discovered on the site, fossils of Homo heidelbergensis dating to 500,000 years ago.

Parts of the site complex were later 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 approximately half a mile (1 km) south to the sea.

The combination of bones, stone artifacts, and the geology of the landscape gives a very complete picture of the coastal plain as it existed half a million years ago.

Evidence for hunting is, however, tentative, consisting primarily of a horse shoulder blade with a semicircular hole that has been interpreted as the mark of a projectile impact.

Woodcock recorded exceptionally well preserved Acheulean artefacts and mammalian fauna at the intersection between these sediments and determined the potential importance of the site.

The excavations were directed by Mark Roberts of the UCL Institute of Archaeology, with successive co-direction by Martin Bates and Simon Parfitt.

[23] The Horse Butchery Site: A High Resolution Record of Lower Palaeolithic Hominin Behaviour at Boxgrove, UK.

[24] In 1998, Roberts co-wrote a book about the site with prehistoric archaeologist Mike Pitts that is entitled Fairweather Eden: Life in Britain half a million years ago as revealed by the excavations at Boxgrove.