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Neanderthals in Gibraltar

Every September for the four years 1995 to 1998 we were, at the request of Professor Stringer of The Natural History Museum (London) responsible for a large three-week excavation studying Neanderthal occupation layers in Pleistocene cave deposits in Gibraltar. This was to attempt to date the transition from Neanderthal to modern human occupation of the caves and to compare the ways in which the two different peoples had lived there. The excavation team consisted mostly of staff from the Natural History Museum and Oxford Brookes University, with a team of local archaeologists from Gibraltar and Spain, and additional experts from other countries around the world. The two caves being excavated during the four field seasons were at the bottom of a 180-foot sea cliff, with no access possible from the sea, making logistics a little more difficult than they might have been.

The caves are on the right, just above sea level Working inside Gorhams Cave in 1996 Gorhams Cave, later in the 1996 season

As site manager, duties included:

· Liasing with many individuals in different institutions, indeed different countries, during several months of organisation prior to the excavation each year to assess all the needs of the team and select appropriate equipment

· Arranging aspects of travel and accommodation

· Organising site communication (including getting portable two-way short-wave radios loaned from Motorola, and organising licensing)

· Assisting advising on health & safety issues

· Advising on, and sourcing, hiring or purchasing, all tools and consumables

· Hiring specialist equipment (generators, cabling, lights, pulleys, scaffolding) and approaching organisations for sponsorship and loan of equipment

· To be the point of contact for media crews, and to advise on their travel, logistics, equipment and health and safety

· We were the main drivers, responsible for collecting and dropping off different groups of people and transporting equipment

· Each year we transported all the tools and materials and some equipment to Gibraltar by road in a Land Rover

· On arrival we prepared the site and organised all the equipment and materials ready for the arrival of the main team

· We assisted in devising and erecting a pulley system to transfer the bagged residues some 200 feet from the rear of the caves to the seashore where they were sieved in sea water with a petrol driven pump and sorted

· We catered for food and water needs and other consumables every day of the dig and kept the equipment maintained (petrol driven pump, generator, lights, cabling, scaffolding, pulley, vehicles), fixing or replace items at short notice.

· We also liased with the local officials, including the Gibraltar Museum and the military on whose land we were working.

During the dig there were up to 35 workers at any one time, divided between the two caves, with numbers fluctuating daily as different specialists, each with unique requirements, arrived and departed.

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Lunch break at Vanguard Cave – note the sand bags and equipment stretching to the back on the left

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