Walking Into The Past

In recent months a new archaeology group has started up in our village with the great name of Time Travellers. We are a small and friendly group of enthusiastic amateurs, a mixture of hands-on types and those like me with more of an interest in the results of someone else's hard work:) Earlier this month we had an outing to Creswell Crags to see the prehistoric cave art that was discovered there recently. Creswell Crags was among the most northerly places on earth to have been visited by our nomadic ancestors during the Ice Age and there have been hundreds of finds there of stone, bone and ivory tools.  (All the photos will enlarge if you click on them.)

These are all replicas of the original finds which are now in various museums around the country. Near the top you can see a bone needle which would have been used to sew animal skins and furs into clothing and bags. The bags would have been used to  carry things both large and small. Some of the axe heads and arrow heads are really beautiful when you look at them closely. The replicas are all made by experts in these ancient crafts.

The interior of the cave which contains the cave art, I have to tell you that I was horrified to discover that there were spiders all over the walls and ceiling!! I concentrated very hard on the art which was actually very necessary as you would never spot it unless it was pointed out. This was not painting as in the caves at Lascaux but simply drawings scratched into the rock using a flint tool of some sort.

This is a carving of an Ibis bird, the top photo is borrowed from the Creswell Crags website and the lower one is my photo. It's hard to photograph it as it's done on a curve of the rock and the man (or woman!) who did it used this curve to form most of the body.  At the top is the beak with a natural indentation in the rock forming the eye and then the lines coming down at an angle are the bird's neck. Once you get your eye in it's easy to see but had I been the one searching in the cave the drawings would have remained forever undiscovered I'm afraid.

This is part of what you can actually see on the wall, can you pick out the stag? Look for his eye to the left of the modern graffiti and then try. No? Then move on to....

....the useful interpretation which shows not only the stag but various other things as well!

There are not only caves to be seen at Creswell Crags,the land originally belonged to the Duke of Portland and it is thanks to him that the site still exists. There were plans to put the a railway through the gorge in the 19th century and in order to prevent this the Duke had a large artificial lake made thus preventing the destruction of the archaeology and also providing a home for large numbers of waterfowl including Mama Mallard and her babies.....

.....and this little family of cygnets. Mummy and Daddy Swan were close by too:)

On Wednesday of this week a small group of us went up onto the moors in search of stone circles and burial cairns. On the way up to Frogatt Edge we passed this huge rock which one of our number called 'The Dog Stone'. We all saw straightaway what he meant, if you enlarge the photo I'm sure you'll see it too:)

Here is one of the entrances to Stoke Flat Circle on Frogatt Edge. The Peak District circles are not on the same scale as places like Stonehenge and Avebury of course but this one is unusual because it has two rings of standing stones on each edge of a low bank. The circle is too big to get the whole of it into a photograph unless you are in an aeroplane or have a very much more powerful zoom than I possess.

This is all of the group except me posing artistically by the largest of the standing stones. You can see for miles in every direction from here.

The moors are covered in wild flowers at this time of the year, this is sheep's sorrel (the red stuff) and what I think may be heath bedstraw.

This is a reconstructed burial cairn on Big Moor, it has been excavated and an urn containing the cremated remains of a child was found. I confess that I don't like the idea of burials being excavated even when they are very ancient. No-one would be allowed to go and excavate a grave in a churchyard however old and interesting it might be so why is it OK if the burial is elsewhere? There is great debate about this of course the main excuse being that 'we can learn so much from the remains'. Possibly, but I still don't think that this is a valid reason for desecrating a grave.

This is another cairn burial that has been excavated but it has been left open. The moors are covered with both stone circles and ring cairns - over 40 of them in the Peak District in fact! I knew that there are three circles near here but had no idea that there were as many as that.

This stone circle is known rather unromantically as Barbrook 2 Circle. It's been excavated and then reconstructed to give an idea of how it would have looked originally. There is a stone cist and a cairn inside the circle both dating to about 1800BC.

There are many of these guide stoops on the moors most dating from the 18th century. They were put there to help guide travellers over the bleak and dangerous moorland tracks, this one has a hand pointing to Sheffield in one direction and on the other side is a hand pointing towards Bakewell. Even today the moors can be dangerous, the weather can close in very quickly and it is very easy to become disorientated.This particular stoop is now close to the main road and marked the end of  a really interesting and enjoyable day - and we got home just before the downpour that had threatened all day finally arrived:)