Creswell Crags Museum and Visitor Centre

Discover the past

In this section...

• The Creswell Area
• Exhibition Objects
• Virtually the Ice Age
  • Stone Age People
  • The Natural World
  • Discover the Past
    • Magens Mello and 19th century techniques
    • Leslie Armstrong and early 20th century techniques
    • Excavation in the late 20th century

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• Looking for sites to dig...

  My most extensive work was at Creswell Crags at the caves of Pin Hole and Mother Grundy's Parlour.

  At Pin Hole, The Rev. Magens Mello had undertaken only superficial excavation in 1875 at the entrance of the cave and the important cave-earth deposits contained there remained intact. Since there was no evidence that the deposition of the cave-earth was as a result of torrential inrushes of water, I assumed that the deposition of the cave-earth would be slow. So great a depth of deposits must have accumulated over an extremely long time.

  At Mother Grundy's Parlour the deposits within the cave were already excavated although in front of the cave entrance the layers were intact. Myself and Garfitt began working at both Pin Hole and Mother Grundy's Parlour from 1924. Both excavations were complete by 1936.

• Digging at Pin Hole...

  Pin Hole was a difficult cave to work in. Myself and Garfitt had to squeeze along the passage which eventually broadened out into a chamber. We dug the deposits in layers of 6-12 inches* in thickness as we progressed through the cave.

  At the top of the layers a hard stalagmite floor sealed softer cave-earth underneath. We broke through this hard layer and while I was digging the fine and dry cave-earth, Garfitt sieved the deposits with a one quarter inch sieve. Garfitt certainly excels in the number of bones of small mammals and small flint chips he is able to collect. We progressed into the cave foot by foot and finally finished the excavation 80 feet from the entrance leaving a 12 foot high section of cave fill for future work.

  *The measurements given here are imperial rather than metric which we use today. 1 inch = 2.54cm, 1 metre = 3 feet 3 inches, 1/4 inch = 4mm

• Recording our work...

  

  As the finds were uncovered from Pin Hole, I instantly marked them in pencil with their find details. The letter indicated in which section of the cave we were excavating, for example Area A was between 22 feet and 30 feet from the entrance. I used the numbers to describe the vertical depth from the hard stalagmitic floor and the horizontal distance from the datum point at the entrance.

  I also kept a note book and was able to make some sketches of the layers at various sections as well as a sketch plan of the cave area

• Periods of cave use...

  At Pin Hole we uncovered a rich sequence of bones spanning several periods of cold climate. I relied on my colleague Wilfrid Jackson at Manchester to identify most of this material. Various other specialists looked at the bones from fish and birds, the charcoal, and the engraved bone and the bone tools.

  The stone tools, I believe, indicate five periods of cave use by Man. Three of these were Middle Palaeolithic when artefacts were made of flint and quartzite. These were found in the lower cave-earth. The different occupation layers are separated by slabs of limestone which indicate a very cold climate. Above the yellow cave earth, we excavated the red cave-earth finding Upper Palaeolithic flint artefacts in two horizons as well as the bones of reindeer, mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, arctic fox and arctic hare.

• A brief excavation at Mother Grundy's Parlour

  At Mother Grundy's Parlour, Garfitt and I opened small trenches which we backfilled after each visit to the cave. I am convinced that outside the entrance I found the inglenook where an Upper Palaeolithic hunter had sat while knapping flint tools close to the fire.