Beyond the Ice: Creswell Crags and its place in a wider European context

Since the discovery of Britains first Ice Age cave art in 2003, the site of Creswell Crags has gained international recognition as one of Britains leading Palaeolithic sites. This accessible volume explores the history of research on the site and draws together and interprets the findings, paying particular attention to the cave art.

Since the discovery of Britain’s first Ice Age cave art in 2003, the site of Creswell Crags has gained international recognition as one of Britain’s leading Ice Age sites. For the first time the history of the site is brought together in one accessible volume. Documenting the early fieldwork at the site it uncovers antiquarian discoveries such as the famous horse engraving, excavations in the 1920s that saw our understanding of our early ancestors take shape, discusses the demise of the Neanderthals and the emergence of Modern Man, and looks at how Creswell Crags grew as a heritage attraction of potential World Heritage Status. In Beyond the Ice, Matthew Beresford examines how our ancestors lived, how they hunted, examines the tools and weapons they made and, most importantly, what they left behind. The book also challenges the term ‘Creswellian’, an isolated British culture that occupied the fringe lands of western Europe, and instead offers hard evidence for viewing Creswell Crags and its inhabitants as being part of a vast Ice Age world. Finally, it looks at what happened right at the end of the last Ice Age and examines what the changes in climate and landscape meant to our early ancestors. Beyond the Ice will appeal as much to the general reader as it will to the student or scholar, as it raises fundamental questions and offers up interpretations that apply to us all.