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La Cotte De St. Brelade, one of Jersey's key Palaeolithic sites, will be gracing TV screens tonight as part of a documentary exploring neanderthal discoveries fronted by Sir David Attenborough.
'Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard' will be airing tonight at 20:00 on BBC.
The documentary will feature La Cotte De St. Brelade, considered as one of the most significant Neanderthal archaeology sites in the world, as the team involved in the documentary tries to understand a recent UK discovery of wooly mammoth bones.
The granite headland on Jersey's west coast has provided extraordinary prehistorical archaeological discoveries over the past century, stretching back to 1881, when stone tools were found on the site, including Neanderthal teeth and bone.
Pictured: 'Attenborough and the Mammoth Graveyard' sees the natural historian join a team of archaeologists and palaeontologists as they try to understand a recent UK discovery of wooly mammoth bones.
It will be the focus of a segment in the documentary to provide wider context to its main subject matter and give an insight into Neanderthal history.
UCL's Dr Matt Pope, who is part of Le Manche Prehistoric Research Group and the key contemporary archaeologist to work on La Cotte De St. Brelade, is one of the contributors to the documentary.
While the overall Attenborough documentary is not about Jersey Neanderthals, Dr Pope explained how the "BBC Team went to visit other experts and other sites as part of this documentary build up a wider picture, and of course in doing that they came to La Cotte and they came to the Jersey Heritage Collection, because of course if you want to tell a Neanderthal story, you come to La Cotte De St. Brelade."
He added: "These are documentaries that are going to be seen by domestic audiences, then they're going to be syndicated and telling the story to the whole world, and I think it's really exciting that in telling the global story they're regularly coming back to La Cotte, visiting our excavations, visiting the Jersey Heritage collection."
Jersey Heritage CEO Jon Carter said: "Our work at La Cotte over the last ten years has paid huge dividends in terms of international media coverage of this special part of the story of Jersey.
"It shows what an important ambassador heritage can be if we give it the care it deserves and work closely with the right international academic partners. As we continue the project I am sure there will be more stories to come from this amazing site and collection."
Attenborough documentary visits Neanderthal headland in Jersey
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