Creswell Crags
Creswell Crags is a limestone gorge that lies near the villages of Creswell and Whitwell on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire in England. There are several caves in the cliffs of the gorge that were inhabited in the last glacial period about 43,000 to 10,000 years ago. These caves have the northernmost cave art in Europe.
Finds
Since 1876, various machined bones have been found alongside the remains of many different prehistoric animals including hyenas and hippos. Ocher-Horse ( dt. Ocher horse ), an engraved bone on which a horse's head is represented, was found on 29 June 1876 at the back of the West Chamber of Robin Hood cave. Its age is dated between 11,000 and 13,000 years.
caves
The inhabited caves included:
- Mother Grundy's Parlor, in which numerous stone tools and split bones were discovered. It was inhabited until the Mesolithic.
- Robin Hood's Cave. The location of a bone engraved with a horse's head (the ocher horse), as well as other finds that indicate that its inhabitants hunted woolly horns and arctic hares.
- The pin hole. The location of an engraved woolen wethorn bone, which represents a human figure (the pinhole cave man)
- Church Hole with over 80 rock engravings. It was inhabited discontinuously until Roman times.
Rock art
The rock engravings discovered by Paul Bahn, Sergio Rippoll and Paul Pettitt in April 2003 include depictions of bison, a deer and, according to some experts, several different species of birds. These finds were considered the first evidence of British cave art and are still the northernmost examples in Europe. The age of the thin calcium carbonate layers above was determined by uranium-thorium dating to be at least 12,800 years in order to determine the minimum age of the paintings. Based on this, the paintings most likely come from the same time as the traces of habitation in the late glacial warm phase between around 15,000 and 13,000 years ago.
Visitors
The site is open to the public and there is a visitor center available. Guided tours of the caves are offered.
Coordinates: 53 ° 15 ′ 29.5 " N , 1 ° 11 ′ 52.4" W.