The Archaeology of Britain: An introduction from ... - waughfamily.ca

The Lateglacial colonization of Britain
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soon after death. In one case, the incisions made on the inside of the chin leave no doubt that the
tongue was removed, before the jaw was detached from the rest of the head.
While today such activities would be considered macabre, none of these practices is necessarily
interpretable as proof of cannibalism. Examples of two-stage burial practices and secondary
reburial are not uncommon in the prehistoric record. Indeed, the evidence from Gough’s Cave
merely suggests that the corpses were deliberately skinned and the insides removed, prior to the
bodies being dismembered and the remains thereafter perhaps carefully placed in hide sacks
around the edges of the cave. Equally valid is the view that since food was plentiful at the time of
occupation, there was little need to supplement the diet with human meat. On the other hand, the
evidence does not rule out the possibility of ritual consumption of the softer human tissues, as a
mark of respect to the dead, a practice known ethnographically amongst tribes in Papua New
Guinea. An interesting twist to this interpretation is that some of the post-cranial human remains
at Gough’s Cave are burnt and are highly fragmented, suggesting further smashing and perhaps
cooking. Ultimately, the verdict remains an open one. The only certain means of identifying
cannibalism would be a piece of human bone in a human coprolite!
Art
Despite recurring claims of Palaeolithic cave wall art in Britain, none has so far proved genuine.
Nevertheless, the existence of Upper Palaeolithic engravings at the cave of Gouy, near Rouen
(Normandy), less than 160 km from the Sussex coast, suggests that Britain was well within range
of the cave artists. Gouy Cave is especially interesting because it is in Senonian (Cretaceous)
chalk, similar to geological formations found in southern Britain and normally considered
unsuitable for the preservation of fragile art. Engravings on the soft chalk walls of horses, bovids,
a pig or badger, birds, sexual symbols and stylized figures were made before the natural infilling
of the site, which is dated by bone debris to 12,050±130 BP (GifA-92346).
Examples of mobiliary (portable) art objects are known from several Creswellian localities.
These include non-figurative abstract engravings on stone, bone and ivory from Gough’s Cave,
Robin Hood Cave, Pin Hole and, possibly, Mother Grundy’s Parlour (Creswell Crags, Derbyshire).
Church Hole has a unique example of a notched bone pendant. Regularly spaced groups
of delicate incisions on hare tibia awls and on a section of bovid rib from Gough’s Cave
Figure 2.6 A horse’s head engraved on a rib fragment from Robin Hood Cave (Creswell Crags,
Derbyshire).
Source: Courtesy of the British Museum