Product Description

Creswell Crags, located on the Nottinghamshire and Derbyshire border, is a limestone gorge honeycombed with caves and smaller fissures, and was among the most northerly places on earth to have been visited by our ancient ancestors, a story that is unique on a European and World Scale. In 2003 Britain's first Ice Age cave art was discovered at Creswell Crags by Paul Bahn, Paul Pettitt and Sergio Ripoll, a discovery billed as one of the most important prehistoric finds of the last decade.The book starts with the discovery of the art, places the Ice Age archaeology of the crags in a national context, draws on continental parallels and details the scientific verification of the art. It concludes with a chapter on the national search for other examples of Ice Age cave art by the Cave Art Survey Team, commissioned by English Heritage.Providing a final, definitive list of the motifs, each with a photograph, line drawing and full description, while setting the art into its archaeological and geological context, the book is intended to inform specialists, students and visitors to the caves.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #212353 in Books
• Published on: 2009-03-10
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 120 pages

Review
"authoritative, well-written, beautifully illustrated - The study of British rock art is flourishing as never before, and these two books are both outstanding contributions to the field." The Prehistoric Society June 2009 "An informative guide to this fascinating discovery" / "features atmospheric images" Derbyshire Times 04.06.09 "A clever format, both monograph and souvenir." British Archaeology, July/August 2009

About the Author
Paul Pettitt is Senior Lecturer in Palaeolithic Archaeology at the University of Sheffield. Paul Bahn is a freelance writer, editor and translator of books on archaeology. His previous publications include Images of the Ice Age, Journey Through the Ice Age (1997), Mammoths (2007), The Cambridge Illustrated History of Prehistoric Art (1998) and Cave Art: A Guide to the Ice Age Decorated Caves of Europe (2007).

Customer Reviews

Art that jumps the cracks
How to jump across 12000 years in a few pages? Todays history of discovery is told clearly and placed in a context of other cave art finds.. There is enough speculation by the authors to provide intelligent thoughts regarding the actual images depiction and as to what they might be. It is well illustrated with both photographs and line drawings, neither of which can ever reproduce the actual vivacity of the original, but they are the next best thing. They show that art has not really developed, can it ever?, since the time of these engravings. We have jumped, but only back to where we were.