Creswell Crags Museum and Visitor Centre

Inspiring visitors for over 50,000 years

In this section...

• The Creswell Area
• Exhibition Objects
• Virtually the Ice Age
  • Stone Age People
    • Test your survival skills
    • Culture and creativity
    • Tools and raw materials
    • Food and hunting
    • Camp sites
    • Pets
  • The Natural World
  • Discover the Past

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• Animals

  

  Bone

  Bone is a useful raw material for tools. Hunters at Creswell during the Ice Age made bone needles, awls and spear tips. The surfaces of bones also had drawings made on them occasionally.

  Fat and greese

  Fat and grease could have been extracted from various parts of the horse such as the bones and used in many different ways. The fat may have been used to waterproof skin boots and other clothing. Grease may have been smeared over the skin to insulate against the cold or protect the skin from biting insects. Lamps made of fat may have been used within the caves.

  Stomach

  The stomach would have made a useful bag for carrying blood, water or fat and grease. Reduced rainfall during the Ice Age would have led to short supplies of water in certain areas so carrying water in a container might sometimes have been essential.

  Hair

  The long hairs in horse mane and tail are strong fibres. They can be twisted together to make thread for sewing clothes or stringing beads and pendants. By twisting several of these threads together, different thicknessess of string and rope could be produced. Mammoth hair could also be used in this way.

• Ice Age toolkits

  

  Leather

  The skin of animals including birds were an essential material for making bags and rucksacks as well as clothes, shoes, sleeping bags, and tents.

  Flint spearheads

  Large flint points were attached to spears as weapon heads.

  Cord

  Plant fibres, animal gut, leather and hair could be woven together to make lengths of cord to fasten flint to wooden shafts, bind or carry equipment, stitch clothes, as well being woven together to make netting.

  Jewellery

  Bone, ivory and teeth were all used to make jewellery during the Ice Age. These objects could either have been sewn onto jackets or worn as a necklace.

  Ivory

  Ivory is extremely hard and, like antler, could be smoothed and shaped into harpoon points. Points of ivory and antler could also be used to retouch the edges of flint flakes and blades by chipping off tiny flakes to bring them to the shape and sharpness needed for a particular job.