Archaeologists have suggested that the finds in the lowest layers of the cave are of a pre-Acheulean culture, one of the world's oldest (730,00-1,500,000 years) and in many ways similar to the Olduwan culture in Tanzania's Olduvai Gorge and the culture which produced the famous Lascaux cave in southeastern France.
The Clactonian industry may have co-existed with the Acheulean industry, which used identical basic techniques but which also had handaxe technology; tools made by bifacially working a flint core.
The Paleolithic sites, which used handaxe-cleaver tools, have affinities to the Abbevillio-Acheulean culture.
Clactonian and Acheulean flint tools and human remains have been found dating to this stage.
Canteen Kopje is the site of early diamond diggings which also exposed a major archaeological occurrence of stratified Acheulean facies, subject to a current collaborative research venture by the University of Southampton, the University of the Witwatersrand and the McGregor Museum in Kimberley.
Moseley took part in excavation of a Lower Paleolithic (Acheulean) site in Ambrona, Spain, under F. Clark Howell in 1963, a survey and excavation of Cauca Valley sites in Colombia as assistant director of the Cambridge University Second Colombian Expedition in 1964, and an excavation of preceramic and early agricultural sites in central Peru from 1966 to 1967.
The area was already famous for the finds of numerous Palaeolithic-era handaxes—mostly Acheulean and Clactonian artifacts, some as much as 400,000 years old—when in 1935/1936 work at Barnfield Pit uncovered two fossilised skull fragments.