Creswellia
Creswellia (English Creswellian) is an end Paleolithic cultural stage , which between 12500 and 8000 BC. In southern England and Wales . It is named after the Creswell Crags in Derbyshire England .
description
In the deposits of the Mother-Grundys-Parlor cave, three layers of Moustérien devices were found, on top of which there was a layer with blade-tip devices and scrapers of the Aurignacia type , on top of that a layer with Font-Robert character ( Gravettia ) and on top the layer of Creswellia which includes a piece of Magdalenian style ivory spearhead. The cave art, which was only discovered later and is estimated to be over 12,000 years old, includes symbols that can be interpreted as stylized representations of the female genitals. They probably served religious rituals.
The south of England was ice-free in the final period of the last ice age and the sea level was around 100 m lower, making the island situation impossible. Around 15,000 years ago, Magdalenian people immigrated from the south to northern France , Belgium , southern England and the north German lowlands . The penknife groups formed in the north German plains, the Tjonger group in the Netherlands and the creswellia in England.
In the find inventory, the creswellia shows certain similarities with the Hamburg culture and also has connections to the Tjonger group. All groups show impacts of the Magdalenian. Typical tools are triangular, trapezoidal, segment and spring knives, knives with a bent back, as well as scrapers, burins , prongs and blades with a geometric shape and with one or two working edges and two-row harpoons . Some pieces of bone have engravings .
Fragmentary fossil bones have been found in the Gough Cave. The excavations from 1986 to 1987 show that human bones were mixed with animal bones. These and other modifications indicate that both humans and animals were eaten. Although this is interpreted as nutritional cannibalism, differences in the treatment of the skull compared to other places highlight ritual cannibalism as a possible element.
literature
- Roger M. Jacobi : The Creswellian, Creswel and Cheddar , in: N. Barton / AJ Roberts / DA Roe (eds.): The Late Glacial in north-west Europe - Human adaptation and environmental change at the end of the Pleistocene , London 1991, pp. 128-140 (= CBA Research Report , No. 77). ( Online version PDF; 119 kB) ISBN 1-872414-15-X
- P. Andrews / Y. Fernández-Jalvo: Cannibalism in Britain: Taphonomy of the Creswellian (Pleistocene) faunal and human remains from Gough's Cave (Somerset, England) , in: Bulletin of the Natural History Museum: Geology , Cambridge University Press, London 2003, pp. 58-81. ( Abstract )