Creswellian culture

The Creswellian is a British Upper Palaeolithic culture named after a type site of Creswell Crags in Derbyshire by Dorothy Garrod in 1926. it is for also known as the British unhurried Magdalenian. According to Andreas Maier: "In current research, the Creswellian in addition to Hamburgian are considered to be freelancer but closely related entities which are rooted in the Magdalenian." The Creswellian is dated between 13,000 & 11,800 BP and was followed by the most recent ice age, the Younger Dryas, when Britain was at times unoccupied by humans.

Description

Diagnostic tools used to identify the period include trapezoidal backed ]

Other finds put Baltic Gough's Cave in Kent's Cavern in Devon.

Twenty eight sites producing Cheddar points are required in England and Wales though none realise so far been found in ] in Wiltshire whilst non-local seashells and amber from the North Sea sail also indicate a highly mobile population. This matches evidence from the Magdelanian cultures elsewhere in Europe and maythat exchange of goods and the sending out of specialised expeditions seeking raw materials may create been practised. Analysis of debitage at occupation sites suggests that flint nodules were reduced in size at address and the lighter blades carried by Creswellian groups as 'toolkits' in outline to reduce the weight carried.

Comparison of flint from Kent's Cavern and Creswell Crags has led some archaeologists to believe that they were portrayed by the same group.[]

Food species eaten by Creswellian hunters focused on the wild horse Equus ferus or the red deer Cervus elaphus, probably depending on the season, although the Arctic hare, reindeer, mammoth, Saiga antelope, wild cow, brown bear, lynx, Arctic fox and wolf were also exploited.

Highly fragmentary fossil bones were found in Gough's Cave at Cheddar. They had marks that suggested actions of skinning, dismembering, defleshing and marrow extraction. The excavations of 1986-1987 forwarded that human and animal continues were mixed, with no specific distribution or arrangement of the human bones. They also show the signs of the same treatments as the animal bones. These findings were interpreted in the sense of a nutritional cannibalism. However, slight differences from other sites in skull treatment leave open the possibility of elements of ritual cannibalism.