10 big questions archaeology must answer

[What can archaeology do for us? It can find old things, explain the bend in your road and offer hours of television. It can also create history, bring past times to life and tackle profound issues about our identity and origins. For British Archaeology, Mike Pitts proposes the big questions about the human journey in Britain that need answers – ones that only archaeology can give. And four leading archaeologists offer their personal thoughts on what matters to them in their different fields. What would your questions be?]

1 What species were Britain's first humans?

All 10 of these questions are about more than just Britain, but perhaps especially the first two. A few decades ago the answer to this one would have been neanderthals, or their immediate European precursors, as seen, for example, in the Swanscombe fossils (Kent). Excavations at Boxgrove (West Sussex) in the 1990s took the story back to 500,000 years ago and Homo heidelbergensis, a species thought to have evolved in Africa. But since then evidence has been found for humans in Britain over 800,000 years ago, and it is believed older remains probably exist. The Boxgrove fossils are still the oldest we have, but who made the flint tools excavated on the East Anglian coast that approach a million years old? It could have been a little understood species known as Homo antecessor, or another yet to be identified. But whatever it was (or even they were), this is the furthest north early humans have been found anywhere in the world. How they survived in the challenging environment has implications for their behaviour and intelligence, and how we evolved.

Ever-expanding antiquity Timothy Darvill

Prehistory is where it all began. As we benefit from new finds and better dating techniques, it's the part of Britain's past that is expanding rapidly. Major advances have revolutionised thinking, highlighting the adaptiveness of successive cultural groups after the end of the ice age; the brevity of long barrow building and use; the variety of ceremonial centres in the late third millennium BC; the great density of Beaker activity; the relatively late date (c1200BC) of the first real field systems and "farming" as we might recognise it today; and the immense diversity of communities living across Britain in the first millennium BC. This is only the start. Big issues now in the spotlight include: social connections between different parts of Britain and the continent; cultural changes around 4000BC; how cosmologies, world views, magic and ritual shaped daily lives; relationships with the natural world; recognising identity at a range of different scales; the languages spoken by prehistoric people; and the continuation of prehistoric lifeways into the first millennium AD. The "three age system" of stone, bronze and iron has yielded to scientific dating to real years. Prehistoric archaeology can at last consider dynamic societies with lasting traditions cheek by jowl with passing fashions; cultures and sub-cultures jostling for position; and both internal and outside stimulation. As the wealth of new information from development-led investigations and innovative research starts to flow, there are exciting times ahead for discovering our most ancient past.

Timothy Darvill is professor of archaeology, Bournemouth University, and author of Prehistoric Britain (Routledge 2010).

2 What were handaxes for?

They look simple: flattened pear-shaped stones, comfortably weighty in the hand and ringed with a sharp if slightly irregular edge. Yet since the recognition that handaxes are artificial and not natural (in 1797 in Suffolk – the relevant "axe" can be seen in the British Museum), there has been debate about what they are. The question lies at the heart of the origins of the modern mind during the past two million years: partly because handaxes were made across Europe, Africa and western Asia during a key evolutionary era between the earliest hominins and Homo sapiens; partly because, being stone, they have survived and are extremely common (over 1,000 from one site in Hampshire); but especially because their manufacture involves sophisticated thought – itself much debated. Were they tools for hunting, butchery, digging or cutting plants? Were they held in the hand, hafted or thrown like Frisbees? Were their shapes determined by sexual or natural selection, time constraints at hunting opportunities or pure technology? Were they just waste from making other tools? With some of the finest handaxes and best preserved contexts in the world, Britain is a good place to solve the handaxe mystery.

3 What was Star Carr?

Archaeology students will recognise the tongue-in-cheek question: Star Carr has been on reading lists for decades. But with good reason. The site of an excavation in North Yorkshire 60 years ago, Star Carr was a place where, around 9000BC, people like us who lived entirely off the wild did things on the edge of a lake, in a world whose plants, animals and landscapes would be familiar to us (unlike those of the preceding ice age). Peat preserved wood, antler and bone objects very rarely found, so we have an exceptionally full picture of hunter-gatherer life at Star Carr. Yet archaeologists find it impossible to agree on what it was people were actually doing there. Eating and sleeping? Repairing tools and preparing to hunt? Clearing trees and reeds to attract game? Running a mini industry using flint, bone, antler and hides? Practising unknown rituals? To understand Star Carr is to understand 6,000 years of our early history, what archaeologists call the Mesolithic – half of all the time between now and the end of the ice age.