Walking in the Past: Rozel Footprints

Ashleigh is currently a Leverhulme/Isaac Newton Trust Early Career Fellow at the University of Cambridge investigating hominin evolutionary biomechanics.

Her main research interests are evolutionary biomechanics, musculoskeletal modelling, and reconstructing locomotion from fossilised remains.

An update from Ashleigh about her project:

I have been working at the Rozel site since 2018. At Rozel, we have nearly 1000 footprints belonging to individuals living in Normandy around 80,000 years – most likely Neanderthals. Most of these trace fossils belong to children, which is very unusual to have such a distinct lack of adult traces! The PI of the site is Dominique Cliquet, DRAC Normandie.

Whilst this project is very much a work in progress and we cannot give away too much right now, the McDonald Institute funded my research trips in 2022 and 2023 to conduct some on site biomechanical experiments. The experiments were to test a long-held theory on site amongst the researchers, and so far the experiments have proved very promising but more on that to come in the future!

Whilst there, we continued to excavate the site, exposing even more footprints and handprints! Some of the handprints are estimated to belong to children, possibly as young as two years old. On site, we have archaeology students from across France assisting in the excavations, and it was fantastic to have so many of us working on site uncovering many fossil footprints.

It is a very rich site, with plenty of trace fossil evidence. I’m sure Rozel will continue to expose even more trackways in the future.

You can keep up to date with the project by checking out the project website.

Libby Stone and Malaika Standley Barrow, Cambridge students, helped process some data in the UK during Michaelmas 2023.

“Being involved with the Le Rozel project was incredibly exciting. My role consisted of using computer software to create 3D depth models of Neanderthal footprints photographed in northern France. I then sought to identify whether the print was part of a trackway, and whether it was left by a sub-adult, including some comparisons with experimental data (more to come soon!). This was my first opportunity to be part of active research, and has helped me enormously in terms of digital data analysis, as well as creating an image of Neanderthals far more similar, socially, to our own genus.”
Libby

“It was amazing to get this opportunity to learn how to use sometimes intimidating software with the support of Dr Ashleigh Wiseman while on my research placement looking at the Le Rozel footprints. I was able to learn how to fit and scale features while getting to grips with the challenges of identifying footprints in a range of substrates. Having the chance to try and make judgements about if the features were prints or not was especially exciting.”
Malaika

The site of Rozel, 2023 | Image credit: Ashleigh Wiseman

Ashleigh was involved with Néandertal – Dans les pas d'une autre humanité, a documentary produced by Court-Jus Production.

The documentary filmed our excavations and experiments at the site, and even managed to capture new fossil footprint discoveries as they happened.

In the documentary, researchers and scientists debated what life would have been like for the Neanderthals 80,000 years ago, and how the site of Le Rozel fits in with other sites across Northern Europe.

The documentary was released in Spring 2023 and was featured in a number of film festivals across Europe.

In October 2023, the documentary was translated into English and released titled “Neanderthal, in the footsteps of another Humanity”. The documentary can be viewed online.

Ashleigh Wiseman being filmed for the documentary: Néandertal – Dans les pas d'une autre humanité, a documentary produced by Court-Jus Production | Image Credit: Ashleigh Wiseman

Published 17 June 2024

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An update from Ashleigh about her project:

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