#creswell crags

[kateboyfieldphotography]

Creswell Crags, Nottinghamshire. Autumn 2014.

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2003, Creswell Crags (see earlier post) commissioned a few more artworks. These included two acrylic paintings featuring hunter gatherers inside a cave that possessed a newly discovered engraving of a deer. Here's one of those paintings, it's called "The Engraver."

[historia-vitae-magistras]

Can you tell us more about who England refers too as mother? And did you divide the UK siblings roughly into two pairs because of Roman Britain? I'm sorry you just keep dropping hints and no one else has asked 💌

Oh lord, okay. So disclaimer, working with prehistory is a fucking crap shoot. Archaeology has a lot of interpretations and not as many facts as historians and archivists like me, especially who studied modern history, would like. And even when history does come to the islands in the form of the Roman writers, that is also largely questionable because propaganda is as old as human communication. So I try to work with what we do know, but before a certain point, I'm basically writing fantasy. But also, no one has to work with history ever in a fucking stupid anime fandom. I'm just a diagnosed anxious headcase who copes with the uncertainty of existence by researching the fuck out of every choice I've ever made sober, including this shitshow of a blog and predecessors. Most of my focus is on much later history, so I'm taking a minimalist approach here and making as little work for myself as possible while at least taking some guidance from history to fit the themes I like so none of this is likely going to be the best take, tbh. That said, onwards into the breach, I fucken guess.

Can you tell us more about who England refers to as mother?

Yes. So most of the time, the conglomerate characters of "Germania" or the fanon "Native America," where dozens and hundreds and thousands of politically interlocked or entirely separate cultures are smushed into one character, make zero sense to me. In the case of Native America, it's downright racist, and in the case of Germania it's basically sucking Tacitus off 2,000 years after the fact. But Brittania could make sense. Being an island separated from mainland Europe made for some attractive socio-political and cultural unity hinted at in writing after the Roman invasion and before the fact in the archaeological record. But how long before the Romans? Where do I begin with Brittania, eh? The Red Lady of Paviland? The Creswell Crags? The Starr Mesolithic Site? Neolithic Chambered Tomb-Shrines? Stonehenge? The Iron Age Hillforts? Ah! There we go, the Celtic arrival in Britain. i.e. the option that makes me do the least work to get the job done. The Celts arrive in Britain about 1,300-800 BCE and in Ireland about 800-500 BCE depending on who you read. There is one tribe among the Celtic that had strong links to Britain and Ireland. The Brigantes were stuck in the border region between what is today Scotland and England, with at least some sort of material connections in Wales and Ireland. So my shortcut to a decent storyline that had some basis in fact, was to have her people interpret her as their patron goddess of Brigantia and link her tightly to Celtic paganism and weakened by the invasions of Rome but also the widespread adoption of Christianity in the 5th century. She was a proud woman who enjoyed the worship she once knew and who loved her children fiercely. She was every bit a Cartimandua or Boudicca. And when Christ and his nails bled her to death, her sons eventually dug her a barrow at the foot of an iron age hillfort, and her only daughter braided her hair and placed her golden jewelry on her one last time and their world was never the same.

And did you divide the UK siblings roughly into two pairs because of Roman Britain?

Yes and no. The Romans did take and hold England and Wales but Wales was much harder to hold onto. Under the Romans, life didn't change there or in Scotland nearly as much as in England. My main reason for splitting them into Brighid and Alasdair and Rhys and Arthur beyond much more modern politics is linguistic. Scottish Gaelic is much more related to Irish than it is to Welsh. And the Welsh word Cymru once referred to both the Welsh and Cumbrians. Now Cumbrian is a fascinating little language that is now dead, but it left a fantastic legacy in its counting system. @oumaheroes headcanons it as being something he uses to refer to his weans, and I, sobbing, concur wholeheartedly. I also have made random references to a shitfaced Arthur babbling in Cumbrian. So with that being a Celtic language in what is today England, et voila, two pairs.

[salmonsown]

Funny you should say that...when we did a tour of Creswell Crags, we were allowed to handle a hand axe that they found ... it was a dark cave, tiny bit of light, so I thought I'd take a pic: if nothing else, I'd get the shape, right? And I accidentally got a picture that I find quite moving. And it was made when cave lions were roaming what became the UK.

I got to hold a 500,000 year old hand axe at the museum today.

It's right-handed

I am right-handed

There are grooves for the thumb and knuckle to grip that fit my hand perfectly

I have calluses there from holding my stylus and pencils and the gardening tools.

There are sharper and blunter parts of the edge, for different types of cutting, as well as a point for piercing.

I know exactly how to use this to butcher a carcass.

A homo erectus made it

Some ancestor of mine, three species ago, made a tool that fits my hand perfectly, and that I still know how to use.

Who were you

A man? A woman? Did you even use those words?

Did you craft alone or were you with friends? Did you sing while you worked?

Did you find this stone yourself, or did you trade for it? Was it a gift?

Did you make it for yourself, or someone else, or does the distinction of personal property not really apply here?

Who were you?

What would you think today, seeing your descendant hold your tool and sob because it fits her hands as well?

What about your other descendant, the docent and caretaker of your tool, holding her hands under it the way you hold your hands under your baby's head when a stranger holds them.

Is it bizarre to you, that your most utilitarian object is now revered as holy?

Or has it always been divine?

Or is the divine in how I am watching videos on how to knap stone made by your other descendants, learning by example the way you did?

Tomorrow morning I am going to the local riverbed in search of the appropriate stones, and I will follow your example.

The first blood spilled on it will almost certainly be my own, as I learn the textures and rhythm of how it's done.

Did you have cuss words back then? Gods to blaspheme when the rock slips and you almost take your thumbnail off instead? Or did you just scream?

I'm not religious.

But if spilling my own blood to connect with a stranger who shared it isn't partaking in the divine

I don't know what is.

[melissajanart]

Cave girl and her hyena friend! Inspired by Creswell Crags, a local prehistoric gorge 

[archaeologicalnews]

Centuries-Old 'Witch Marks' in Hidden Cave Can Finally Be Seen ... in 3D

Mysterious "witch marks" that were carved into a cavern's walls centuries ago to ward off evil are getting a public viewing, thanks to 3D modeling and animation.

The marks were discovered earlier this year in Creswell Crags, an enclosed limestone gorge in the United Kingdom that houses a cave used by humans during the Ice Age, Creswell Crags Museum & Heritage Centre representatives said in a statement. But humans were also using the cave during the medieval period, covering its walls and ceilings with so-called witch marks as a form of protection against evil spirits and witches.

During a tour in February, a team of cavers spied marks on the cavern walls that had previously gone unnoticed, or were dismissed as modern graffiti. Further investigation revealed hundreds of marks; carved emblems such as these were common in the medieval U.K., etched around doorways, windows and fireplaces to keep evil spirits out, site representatives said in the statement. Read more.

[jason-1971]

Creswell Crags Prehistoric Caves

[twentyfourstar]

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Heritage experts have revealed what is thought to be the biggest concentration of apotropaic marks, or symbols to ward off evil or misfortune, ever found in the UK.

The markings, at Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge on the Nottinghamshire/Derbyshire border, include hundreds of letters, symbols and patterns carved, at a time when belief in witchcraft was widespread. The scale and variety of the marks made on the limestone walls and ceiling of a cave which has at its centre a deep, dark, hole, is unprecedented.

Believed to protect against witches and curses, the marks were discovered by chance at the site, which is also home to the only ice age art ever discovered in the UK.

Paul Baker, the director of Creswell Heritage Trust, said the marks had been in plain sight. They had known they were there. “But we told people it was Victorian graffiti,” he said. “We had no idea. Can you imagine how stupid we felt?”

The trust was alerted to the marks last year by Hayley Clark and Ed Waters. The two keen-eyed cavers thought there were perhaps two or three markings; it soon became clear there were dozens and then on further investigation up to a thousand. And counting. “They are everywhere,” said Baker. “How scared were they?” [...]

From the 16th century to the early 19th century, when people made witches marks, there may have been a lack of association with religion, such as today when people might cross fingers or say “oh god”. She said: “It just becomes a protective symbol. It was a mark you always made to protect yourself.”

- Mark Brown, “The gateway to hell? Hundreds of anti-witch marks found in Midlands cave.” The Guardian, February 15, 2019.

[paleocore]

Robin Hood Cave Horse, found in Creswell Crags, Derbyshire, dated to approximately 12.5 kya. 

[davidsankey]

Juvenile Hyaena tooth @ Creswell Cave

"""Take a look at this hyaena tooth discovered last week outside one of our caves.

If our Curator, Angharad, was on Mastermind, her specialist subject would be 'Hyaenas of the Ice Age', so she took great interest in seeing the tooth before it is taken to the University of Sheffield for more research.  

Despite having found a number of hyaena bones and teeth within the Crags over the years, including Eric the baby hyaena, this is an exciting moment.

Hyaenas were last dated to have been in Britain around 35,000 years ago, and here at Creswell 42,000-50,000 years ago, which makes this tooth really, really old.

Together with Kevin from the University of Sheffield, it was agreed that it belonged to a juvenile hyaena, and after a little more research the tooth will be returned to the museum collection here at the Crags.

The tooth is believed to be an upper pre-molar, featuring 3 roots, all of which would have sat in the upper jaw. The shinier section would been the biting  surface."""   https://www.facebook.com/creswellcrags  28th June 2022 ...from comments later, it was found  during an excavation by the ( closing down soon ) University of Sheffield Archaeology Department   https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/education/university-of-sheffield-archaeologists-given-two-year-reprieve-from-departmental-closure-and-staff-will-not-be-made-redundant-3708017

An "almost complete" skeleton of a baby hyaena was found previously at Creswell Crags https://www.creswell-crags.org.uk/the-collection

Photo credit Creswell Crags Creswell Heritage Trust

Hyaenas are responsible for the accumulation of much of the Pleistocene animal bone in the caves https://museumcrush.org/the-bone-crunching-cave-hyenas-that-tell-the-story-of-creswell-crags/

[kateboyfieldphotography]

Creswell Crags, Nottinghamshire. Autumn 2014.

[bobnichollsart]

My 25 years of palaeoart chronology...

In 2001 I was commissioned by the Creswell Crags Visitor Centre to create a series of paintings illustrating the gorge at different times in the past. These pictures look pretty rudimentary now (I was still learning to paint) but I loved this project so much! Visiting the caves and reconstructing these scenes confirmed to me that this was how I wanted to make my living.

Here are the two pictures from 12,000 years ago...

[ejlance1975-blog]

‘Headhunter’ Two of a series of large scale drawings I exhibited at Creswell Crags Museum exploring the relationship between humans and vultures using their amazing skeletal collection as inspiration. I loved drawing these and the Museum was delighted with them. Ink and Stylus on fabric 

[sleepynerds]

went to one of the sites today... totally marvelous. it is true, all websites should be this website and only this one matters.

all websites should be this website

[melissajanart]

My exhibition at Creswell Crags starts today and will run throughout August!

The exhibition is about the UK wildlife and how important it is to protect what we have.

You can grab this little mammoth as a pin in my Etsy shop too.