archaeology

The upland landscape around Ingleborough contains a classic example of a Karst landscape, and one of the UK’s largest and most famous cave resources. Over the past 60 years cavers have reported large numbers of archaeological finds from these caves, ranging in date from the Upper Palaeolithic to the Early Medieval period. The finds include human and animal remains, lithics, pottery and metalwork. The caves, and the landscape they sit in, are of very high archaeological and palaeoenvironmental significance and are the focus of the ‘Overground-Underground’ project. This is funded by the Foundation for Common Land as part of its ‘Our Common Cause’ project. This year on the project we have assessed human and animal remains from cave sites within the study area and carried out new radiocarbon and stable isotope analysis on 30 samples from 12 of these sites. Results of these analyses, alongside previously published data, allow more detailed understandings of cave use and the wider environment in prehistory.