Excavation Diary

7th August Day 1.

The team arrive and make a swift start clearing the vegetation and top soil. Before beginnning to excavate the team have to survey the contour of the slope outside the cave. Some team members busy themselves setting up a laser theodolite that will record the position of the excavation trench and finds to within millimetres. Two marquees are set up for washing, recording and studying finds, and after these tasks have been completed the team break for lunch. Work begins on the excavation in the afternoon, and already finds are coming up in the topsoil. These include a plastic comb, a marble, a button, fragments of medieval pottery and several bones of small animals. One of the latter is a leg bone of an arctic hare, an animal which has been extinct in Britain since the end of the Ice Age. This indicates that already on day one the team are uncovering the spoil of the Victorian excavations of 1876. Following a press release earlier in the day, made through the Creswell Heritage Trust, University of Sheffield, and English Heritage, a journalist from the Yorkshire Post has visited, and BBC Look North have booked a visit for tomorrow.

8th August Day 2.

Work progresses quickly on the excavation, and many more finds begin to come to light. We have found a number of Ice Age animal remains, including teeth of hyaenas which were using Church Hole as a den before 25,000 years ago, teeth and bones of woolly rhino, teeth of reindeer and a large antler fragment showing signs of gnawing by hyaenas, and a red deer tooth. Fragments of worked flint and quartzite indicate that waste from the manufacture of stone tools by neanderthals and modern humans will also be found in the spoil heap. In the uppermost part of the trench, where it joins the cliff face to the right of the cave mouth, we have uncovered Ice Age deposits that are still in place as they were deposited. We expect these original sediments to be archaeologically rich. At present we are continuing to excavate the spoil heap and we will survey the position of these deposits before beginning to excavate them carefully. This morning we had a journalist filming us for BBC Look North programme, which will be screened this evening. Students are taken on a tour of the gorge and given a talk on the nature of the archaeology of its various caves.

9th August Day 3.

Excavation of a large collection of limestone cobbles in the spoilheap continues, and the trench is still yielding large amounts of finds. A lamellar plaque from a mammoth tooth is the first indication of this animal from the dig. More hyaena remains come to light, including an excellent example of a hyaena coprolite - fossilised faeces. One arctic hare rib bears two cut marks left by stone tools, which is important as it is unambiguous evidence of human activity which can be dated directly by the radiocarbon method. We continue to expose areas of the browny sediment that underlies the spoilheap tip, which we are assuming is in place Ice Age sediment. So far we have been ignoring this, as we will remove as much of the spoil as possible before cleaning up the site for photography. When this is done we shall begin to excavate the spoil carefully. The weather has deteriorated a little, but at present this is not affecting our work.

10th August Day 4.

Excavation continues into the spoil heap, and a number of students begin washing limestone cobbles and blocks. We will examine every piece for minute traces of engravings. Further faunal remains and lithics come to light. The list of fauna from the site now includes arctic hare, horse, reindeer, red deer, hyaena, mammoth, woolly rhino and a large number of small animals including birds. Lithics include diagnostic items from the Late Upper Palaeolithic Magdalenian, including spalls from the production of burins and bladelets. In addition, more quatzite flakes and a hammerstone from the Neanderthal occupation of the cave come to light. A fragment of an awl made from the tibia of an arctic hare causes excitement, especially when examination with a hand lens shows it to bear deliberate marks of notation similar to lines on a ruler. A similarly notched awl, also on an arctic hare tibia, was found in contemporary deposits at Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge and the similarlity suggests these might relate to the same group of hunter-gatherers. In the eveing a barbeque is held for all excavation staff and for the Creswell rangers.

11th August Day 5.

Much of the day is given to removing the large amounts of limestone cobbles and boulders from the spoil heap, and to transporting them to and from the finds processing area for washing and examination. One piece is found to bear a series of engraved parallel lines, and this will be examined in detail under magnification to establish whether or not this might be Ice Age art. Fauna and lithics continue to come to light. Burnt bone and reddening of some of the limestone blocks suggests that fires were lit in th cave during the Ice Age. A number of visitors turn up and the site and students are taken on tours of the art within Church Hole. A reddish-brown sediment exposed at the bottom of the trench, which was initially thought to be in place Ice Age deposits lying underneath the spoil are now shown to be redeposited tip as they contain fragments of brick, probably deriving from the brick wall that is known to have blocked off the deep part of the cave in the nineteenth century. excavation of this sediment in the afternoon reveals Victorian topsoil underneath. This is very encouraging as the in place Ice Age deposits should be just below this. This means that undisturbed Ice Age sediments should be exposed across the entire trench within a day or two, and after they are cleaned, photographed and surveyed we can begin their excavation. This evening we will have a wine reception hosted by a local heritage group and a lecture in the Creswell Museum by Roger Jacobi.

12th August Day 6

A large number of team members work carefully in the trench in oorder to establish the correct stratigraphy of the exposed deposits. As the day progresses we find that the Victorian spoil is actually restricted to the lower (northern) end of the trench. Quite obviously the excavators barrowed their spoil several metres out of the cave mouth and emptied it over the end of the natural terrace of the slope deposit. excavating into the central area of the trench demonstrates this further. We discover that the dark deposits with limestone blocks are actually in place and not spoil, and they soon begin turning up artefacts from the last few thousand years. This means that we have now exposed three distinct deposits: the Victorian spoil, which is located downslope from the in place deposits of the last few thousand years, which themselves overlie in place scree deposits from the Ice Age. We continue to excavate the two former deposits. Ice Age finds continue to come out from the Victorian spoil, and correctly, no lithics or Ice Age bones come from the in place deposits we now know date to the last few thousand years. We have a high number of visits from members of the general public, and some of our team show them some of the finds from the site.

13th August Day 7

The weather is pretty poor and some of the team have a day off, so progress is a little slower. On the other hand we have several volunteers so we manage to achieve a good day's work. We concentrate our efforts into the spoil, and begin carefully to excavate the in place deposits that yield a good number of sherds of medieval pottery and beneath these Romano-British pottery. More bones are recovered from the spoil, as are a number of bladelet fragments and small flakes from the Late Ice age occupation. As we are now into pristine archaeology, at least in the centre of the trench, we begin to plot all finds in three dimensions. The total amount of finds is now well over one thousand, much of which are small bones. Birds are particularly well represented. The numbers of general public visiting the site and finds processing areas is again high, despite the cloudy and windy weather.

14th August Day 8

A very good day. Eight people are working in the trench. Two continue to excavate in the remaining parts of the spoil, which continues to yield bones and lithics such as a long blade fragment and a small burin, a 'chisel' of definite Ice Age antiquity. In the centre of the trench the medieval finds give way to Romano-British - it seems that the post-Ice Age archaeology has a depth of about 30cm. Towards mid afternoon the contact level between this and the in place Ice Age deposits below is found, and it begins to yield teeth of animals such as hyaena and woolly rhino. One team member begins a painstaking excavation of the in place Ice Age deposits. her investigration turns up large amounts of small angular fragments of limestone, which confirm that this really is an Ice Age scree deposit. Finds today include the end of a long bone from a woolly rhino, several jaw fragments of wild boar, horse, red deer, reindeer and hyaena remains.

15th August Day 9

Work continued intensively in the trench, with excavators working on the in place Medieval and spoil deposits in the middle and lower (northern) parts of the trench. Post medieval pottery continued to be found in place, and can be identified as late 15th and early 16th century Derbyshire Purple ware. Ice Age bones and lithics continue to be found, particularly when, as the day progresses, a contact zone between the Holocene deposits and the underlying Ice Age deposits begins to be excavated in areas of the trench. The most interesting find emerges in the early afternoon - an engraved stone, not from the Ice Age but later. The limestone block was either placed deliberately on the slope outside the cave, or was dumped amidst the rubble there. It bears a deeply-incised design that can be tentatively identified as the game known in Britain as 'Nine Men's Morris'. Dr Maureen Carroll, who is visiting the site from the University of Sheffield, notes that the game has origins in Ancient Egypt and contemporary civilisations elsewhere, and was popular in the Roman and Medieval periods. This means that it could date to either. A specialist in the history of the game will be contacted to identify the age of the 'gameboard' more precisely. Presumably, though, the recovery of post Medieval ceramics, bone and the game from outside the cave indicates that people were living in the gorge in these periods.

16th August Day 10

Work continues in the Medieval and earlier layers, in the spoil heap at the bottom (north) of the trench and in the Pleistocene slope deposits in the upper (south) part of the trench. More hyaena teeth, gnawed bones of other animals such as woolly Rhino and lithics come out of the Ice Age deposits. Some Romano-British and later prehistoric ceramics emerge. These demonsrate at least that there has been activity in the gorge during all major periods of human history from the late Iace Age onwards. We receive a visitation from Nottinghamshire mayors and county councillors, and continue to show numerous members of the public the excavation and its finds. A number of lithics clearly of late Ice Age date have now been recovered from the spoil and from the in place slope deposits. The picture shows (from left to right) a burin (a chisel-like tool), two snapped fragments of small bladelets, and a snapped fragment of a large blade.

16th & 17th August, days 11 & 12

Work began as normal on day 11, with post Ice Age materials continuing to be found. From late morning, however, a violent storm and subsequent rain made the site unworkable. As we felt we had achieved our objectives of locating the Victorian spoil, in place Ice Age deposits and demonstrating that excavating them is worthwhile, in addition to locating later prehistoric, Romano-British and Medieval deposits, we decided that it would be acceptable to close down the site one day early. As the rain continued, some members of the team finished the survey of the site and recorded a section of the trench. Others finished washing, recording and storing finds. Equipment was taken back to Sheffield for storage, and the site was backfilled in a way that will enable us to uncover the trench when we return next year. In all, the project director, Paul Pettitt, and co-directors Roger Jacobi and Andrew Chamberlain, are happy that we have achieved our pilot objectives. We now have enough information to begin planning more major fieldwork at the gorge, which we shall begin when we hopefully return next year. Until then, aurevoir!

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