Acheulian sites were usually located close to water sources, lush vegetation, and large stocks of herbivorous animals. Some camps have been found in caves, but most were in open areas surrounded by rudimentary fortifications or windbreaks.
Several African sites are marked by stony rubble ought there by Homo erectus, possibly for the dual purpose of securing the windbreaks and providing munitions in case of a sudden attack.
The presumed base campsites display a wide variety of tools, indicating that the camp was the centre of many group functions. More specialized sites away form camp have also been found, these are marked by the predominance of a particular type of tool.
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For example, a butchering site Tanzania contained dismembered hippopotamus carcasses and rare heavy-duty smashing and cutting tools. Workshops are another kind of specialized site encountered with some regularity. They are characterized by tool debris and are located close to a source of natural stone suitable for tool making.
A camp has been excavated at the Terra Amati site near Nice, on the French Riviera, which is “summed to be a Homo erectus site. (But since we do not have any associated human bones, geologists cannot be sure that H. erectus, rather than early forms of H. sapiens, occupied the site.) Camp appears to have been occupied in the late spring or early summer. (The season is indicated analysis of pollen found in fossilized human feces.)
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The excavator describes stake holes driven the sand, paralleled by lines of stones, presumably marking the spots where the people constructed of roughly thirty by fifteen feet. A basic feature of each hut was a central hearth that seems to e been protected from drafts by a small wall built just outside the northeast corner of the hearth, evidence suggests that the Terra Amati occupants gathered seafood such as oysters and mussels, some fishing, and hunted in the surrounding area.
Judging from the animal remains, they inked both small and large animals but mostly got the young of larger animals such as stags, hints, boars, rhinoceroses, and wild oxen. Some of the huts contain recognizable tool-makers’ scattered with tool debris; occasionally, the impression of an animal skin shows where the maker actually sat.