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Discovery of Palaeolithic cave art in Britain

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2015

Paul G. Bahn ,
Paul Pettitt  and
Sergio Ripoll
Paul G. Bahn
Affiliation:
428 Anlaby Road, Hull HU3 6QP, (Email: pgbahn@anlabyrd.karoo.co.uk)
Paul Pettitt
Affiliation:
Keble College, Oxford OX1 3PG, (Email: paul.pettitt@keble.oxford.ac.uk)
Sergio Ripoll
Affiliation:
Depto. de Prehistoria e Historia Antigua, UNED, Apdo Correos 60.147, 28080 Madrid, Spain, (Email: sripoll@geo.uned.es)
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Extract

We are pleased to present here a preliminary account of the first discovery of Palaeolithic cave art in Britain.

On 14 April 2003 we made the first discovery of Palaeolithic cave art in Britain. Since portable art of the period has long been known in this country (Sieveking 1972; Campbell 1977: vol. 2, figs 102, 105, 143), it has always seemed probable that parietal art must also have existed. We knew that we were most unlikely to discover paintings, since these are generally quite visible; but as far as we knew, nobody with a trained eye and advantageous lighting had combed the British caves in search of engravings, which are often extremely difficult to see. Such was the purpose of our initial survey and, sure enough, we rapidly encountered engraved marks in a number of caves, which we will be investigating more fully and systematically in the near future. At the well-known sites of Creswell Crags, in Derbyshire, we found both figurative and non-figurative engravings of the period. What follows is a brief, preliminary announcement of a discovery soon to be further amplified in print following systematic investigation.

Type
Research
Information
Antiquity , Volume 77 , Issue 296 , June 2003 , pp. 227 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © Antiquity Publications Ltd. 2003

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