Display Case 1: ‘The First Hunters’ circa 1 million years ago, Audio Description Duration 3 minutes 10 seconds
This display case is built into the wall and has a square window to look through. Inside, the bottom of the display case is a triangle and there are 2 internal walls. It features examples and information about animals hunted at Swanscombe in Britain, and hunting tools found at this site. The hunting tools are original stone handaxes and flakes, dated from this period and all made of flint. There are 4 tools hanging against the wall on your right and 3 tools presented along the bottom of the display case on a red gravel surface. The walls inside are a light yellow at the top and gradually become a dark orange at the bottom.
On the left wall, along the full width of the top, is an illustration of men with spears and rocks hunting running deers. Underneath it is the title ‘Swanscombe: a stone age site in Britain’. There are 4 animal illustrations in a vertical column along the left-edge of the corner, and the title 'animals hunted at Swanscombe'.
From top to bottom on the right wall there is the focus object, a pointed handaxe, to which we will return. Next is a cordate or ovate handaxe, a ‘twisted’ handaxe, and pear-shaped handaxe. To the right of these tools is text and accompanying illustrations with the titles ‘fashioning the tool kit’ and ‘cross-section of the levels at Swanscombe’. Along the bottom of the display case from left to right there is a large piece of flint. A tough fine-grained rock, this flint is grey white and rough on the outside, and a glassy dark grey blue where this outer layer has chipped away. Next to it is another pointed handaxe and a flake tool.
The focus object at the top of the right wall, titled ‘pointed handaxe’, is dated circa 480,000 BC. It is a long narrow triangle, pointed at one end and domed at the other. A sharp edge runs along each side. It is crude in form with pockmarks and dark grey blue in colour. It fits in the palm of your hand, measuring 16 centimetres long, 5 centimetres high and 10 centimetres at its widest point. It is from the Middle Gravels in Swanscombe, England, and is typical of hundreds of handaxes found at this site in Barnfield Pit during gravel-digging operations. Handaxes were probably all-purpose tools used for butchering, wood working and root digging, as well as for defence.
Listen to the next recordings to hear the full text on the panels inside this case.
Display Case 2 is located straight ahead 3 metres, on your left-hand side.