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Ice Age Caves in Devon and Yorkshire
Dr Paul PettitDepartment of Archaeology, University
of Sheffield
Excavations into Ice Age deposits in the Great Chamber at Kent’s Cavern (Torquay, Devon)
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Excavations in the cave in the 1820s were the first of their kind to demonstrate that humans had been on Earth considerably longer than the 6000 years that had previously been assumed.
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Kent’s Cavern has been a showcave for over a century, and new excavations directed by Paul Pettitt are refining our knowledge of Ice Age environments, the extinction of the Neanderthals, and the arrival of our own species, Homo sapiens.
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A Sheffield student excavates in Kent’s Cavern.
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Close up of a fissure in the bedrock filled with Ice Age sediments that contained the bones and teeth of cave bears, hyaenas, reindeer and mammoth
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Paul Pettitt (right) holding the cranium of a sabre-tooth cat. Ferocious predators such as these shared caves with other Ice Age predators such as hyaenas, wolves, Neanderthals and our own species.
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Excavations ay Church Hole, Creswell Crags
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Paul Pettitt (foreground) has directed excavations outside Church Hole cave, Creswell, since 2006.
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Paul excavating the shoulder blade of a large red deer stag outside Church Hole cave. Probably around 10,000 years old.
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A new cave, called “The Crypt” has been discovered beneath Church Hole, which promises to contain a rich Ice Age archaeology.
This will be the first cave with Ice Age sediments to be excavated with modern archaeological methods and will dramatically improve our understanding of Britain’s inhabitants 14,000 years ago.
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The deep excavation. The top of “The Crypt” is visible to the right
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14,000 year old stone tools from Creswell Crags. New research lead by PP and funded by the National Science Foundation (USA) and AHRC (UK), is being conducted to identify the source of the flints used at British Ice Age sites, using Laser Ablation inductively-coupled plasma mass-spectrometry. Pilot results suggest the source of these was over 200km away in the Vale of Pewsey
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A partially-worked piece of amber from the Ice Age levels at Creswell Crags. Today the source of such Baltic amber in the east coast of the UK, but as the North Sea was dry land for much of the Ice Age the source for this piece much have been the coast north of Edinburgh.
Amber seems to have enjoyed a major importance in prehistory, possibly as it was thought to possess magical properties. Courtesy Bolton Museum.
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• For further information about these projects, please contact:
• Dr Paul PettittDepartment of ArchaeologyUniversity of SheffieldNorthgate HouseWest StreetS1 4ET
