Creswell Crags Museum and Visitor Centre

In this section...

• Object Catalogue
• Teacher Pack
• Collection Resource
• Research Bibliography
• Teacher Bibliography
• Webliography
• Glossary
• Guides

Expand all Collapse all

• Museum web sites

  Web sites are still a developing area for most museums and it will be some time before virtual collections are widely available. Three museum sites offer material particularly relevant to this one:

  www.thebritishmuseum.ac.uk/compass : this is a virtual collection of some of The British Museum's most important antiquities. It includes some objects from Creswell Crags, as well as artefacts of the same period from other sites in Britain and Europe. New entries are gradually being added so it is worth returning from time to time to see what is new or improved. Search by site name, object type or period. The site is print friendly and offers a picture purchasing service.

  www.si.edu : this address takes you to the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. By searching by topic such as human evolution or ice ages you can find useful lists of references or, click on for the virtual tour and find yourself in the galleries face to face with a mammoth skeleton or, looking at a handaxe. This is one for general interest and background.

  www.hermitagemuseum.org : this is a virtual collection of a small fraction of the treasures of the Hermitage Museum in St Petersburg, Russia. This includes some of the wonderful finds from sites on the Russian plain where house-like structures were built from mammoth bones and contain a remarkable range of tools, personal ornaments and works of art. Click on the Palaeolithic and art sections to find these. Some contrasts to the British Palaeolithic here. English text available.

• Palaeolithic sites

  Searching for Palaeolithic sites turns up book adverts and excavation projects but there are few resources like this one for Creswell Crags. Some of the best may be found via the French government culture site: www.culture.fr . Those dealing with painted caves are listed below under art. For other, go to the site home page and click on the link: Portail sites web artistiques culturels et scientifique. When you reach the next page, enter the name of the site or museum which interests you in the box labelled: recherche. This will connect you to hyperlinks to the relevant material. For example, if you search on La Chapelle aux Saints, a site near Brive which contained a burial of a Neanderthal, you will find a link to the site museum. Follow the link to find the story of the discovery and how the skeleton influenced ideas about the Neanderthals at the turn of the last century, as well as a picture tour of the little gallery. These links usually offer English, as well as French, German and Italian texts. Includes tourist information.

  www.insticeagestudies.com : Although the Institute of Ice Age Studies sounds like a major organisation, it is not an academic institution in its own right but an association formed to support palaeoanthropological work on the Pleistocene. The editorial is provided by its director, Dr Randall White of New York University, an authority on Upper Palaeolithic personal ornaments and female figurines. The site concentrates on White's work at Abri Castanet an important Aurignacian site in southwest France, as well as his research on the figurines from Gargarino. A good site for following the progress of some important research projects.

  For information on famous sites try one of the encyclopaedias. These give concise information, web links and bibliographic references to many archaeological sites.

  Other Palaeolithic sites in the UK which you can visit include Kents Cavern in Devon. 

• Palaeolithic art

  Many web sites can be found searching on this category ranging from site details, American university course material and publications to new age and avant garde items. Here are some of the better sites which I enjoyed:

  www.culture.fr follow the instructions above and search on Pech Merle, Lascaux, Chauvet or Cosquer to reach links to various sites including the following:

  www.quercy.net/pechmerle/actu.html : a good site about the painted cave of Pech Merle which is still open to the public. It includes a map showing the different painted galleries and allows you to explore them. With sections on the latest information and dating, as well as tourist information, this is user friendly site with a lot of fascinating material.

  www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/chauvet/en/ : information about the oldest known painted cave of Chauvet, discovered in 1991. Excellent pictures of some magnificent paintings, as well as news of the ongoing research.

  www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/lascaux/en/ : moving the mouse across the black opening screen gives you a torch light view along one of the painted galleries of this great cave. Virtual tours allow you to explore some of the friezes panel by panel offering explanations to the scenes, outlining features it may be difficult to see and highlighting words with a glossary tag. Text panels provide background information. A good introduction to the cave which fails to do its magnificence justice.

  www.culture.fr/culture/arcnat/cosquer : a goodguide to a painted cave which can now only be entered underwater from the sea. The birds and animals shown in the paintings reflect the situation of the site on the Mediterranean coast.

  www.subtlemoon.com/palaeo: an American site offering pictures of miniature or portable art objects and basic information about Palaeolithic art.

  www.humanities-interactive.org/ancient : an American site offering pictures of miniature art objects and female figurines and some basic information about Palaeolithic art. Click or search on ice age for another section about life in the Ice Ages.

• Stone tools

  A good site which offers more information about stone tools than is possible here, comes from the University of Oslo. Go to www.hf.uio.no . On the home page, click on Institutt for arkeologie, kunsthistorie og konserving, then click on arkeologi and, on the later page click on SARC. You will then find sections on stone tool typology, technology, raw materials, methods of studying stone tools including use wear analysis and refitting, as well as a good bibliography and index. An excellent resource for further study. English or Norwegian text

• Neanderthals

  A web search on this topic throws up over 12,000 finds of varying relevance. 

  For such a wide topic it is best to start with the encyclopaedias but the site for the museum in the Neander Valley (Tal) which gave its name to this species of human is helpful: www.neanderthal.de : this museum dedicated to the Neanderthals offers a virtual visit to its galleries, as well as some background on the discovery site itself. 

  It has a good research bibliography and an image archive which shows some of the Neanderthals which have been modelled for the museum. These give a good impression of what Neanderthal people looked like. Sadly, the only picture of the famous skull cap is on the home page. It is slowly turning in such a dark image that it is hard to see. English text available

• Encyclopaedias

  A useful starting point for wider topics such as Ice Ages, human evolution, the Palaeolithic and Palaeolithic art, as well as for some more famous sites.

  www.britannica.com : concise well written entries are accompanied by web and book references. 
  www.encarta.msn.co.uk : a good range of entries but, perhaps, less wide ranging than britannica. This site offers a good entry for Palaeolithic art written by Paul Bahn

  www.odur.let.rug.nl/arge : This site is an archaeological resource guide and virtual library for European archaeology. All the entries are reviewed ensuring that they are mainstream and educationally useful. There is nothing fancy about the site, the entries have a simple listings format with the advantage that they are hyperlinked. You can simply check for the regular updates or, you can search the listings by subject, country and period. This is an excellent resource but remember it contains only European material which will not necessarily give you a full picture of all research on the Palaeolithic, human evolution or Ice Age ecology.

• Evolution

  www.becominghuman.org This site if fun to use and packed with well presented information. Designed for a general audience, the centre piece is an interactive documentary narrated by Professor Don Johanson who has discovered and described several famous human fossils. While viewing the video, you can stop to explore topics under the headings: evidence, anatomy, lineages and culture. Selecting evidence provides access to profiles of fossils giving basic details and a picture that in some case can be turned through 360?, as well as an excellent section on how African fossil sites are dated. Culture offers information on themes such as hunting, fire, shelter and clothes. Moving to the learning centre there are three good games and notes for teachers on related activities. Overall, this is a good starting point for anyone interested in human evolution.

  www.talkorigins.org This site offers debate on evolution versus creationism . It contains useful resources such as a list of significant hominid fossils, their characteristics and significance. However, its main focus is controversy and the presentation of the debate in which it is a participant provides lots of material of general interest. There are various ways to navigate through it but this aspect and the unfortunate choice of fonts mean it is not especially comfortable to use.

• Reconstruction Specialists

   John and Val Lord have been recreating prehistoric tool kits for years and regularly run workshops and events at Creswell Crags, demonstrating the art of flint knapping, fire setting, and cord making. Please take a look at their website about Flint Knapping