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Creswell Crags is an enclosed limestone Canyon on the border between Derbyshire and Nottinghamshire, England, near the villages of Creswell and Whitwell. The in the ravine contain several that were occupied by Neanderthals and modern humans during the Last Glacial Period, between around 60,000 and 10,000 years ago. The caves contain Upper Palaeolithic cave art, the northernmost cave art in Europe with other Palaeolithic art objects having also been found in the caverns.
The caves contain occupation layers with evidence of flint tools including those of the Neanderthal-made Mousterian, and the modern human-made Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician and the eponymous Creswellian cultures.
All of the major caves in the Creswell Crags, but especially Robin Hood's cave, show evidence of having been occupied during the late Middle Paleolithic (probably around 60,000–40,000 years ago) by Neanderthals, who created a variety of stone tools, including scrapers, choppers and Lithic reduction tools found in the caverns, primarily using quartzite from local Triassic aged "bunter" pebble beds. The Creswell Crags show the most intensive evidence of occupation by Neanderthals of any site in Britain. Robin Hood's Cave and Pin Hole Cave have also yielded Initial Upper Paleolithic stone tools of the Lincombian-Ranisian-Jerzmanowician industry that are likely more than 36,000 years old, representing some of the oldest evidence for modern humans in Britain.
Following the abandonment of Britain by modern humans due to the harsh environmental conditions in the time surrounding the Last Glacial Maximum, Britain was recolonised by Magdalenian peoples around 16-15,000 years ago. Magdalenian stone tools found at Creswell Crags have been assigned to the Creswellian industry named after the site. Creswellian stone tools have also been found in temporally equivalent sediments elsewhere in Britain, as distant as Kents Cavern in Devon.
A bone engraved with a horse's head and other worked bone items along with the remains of a variety of prehistoric animals have been found in excavations since 1876. The "Ochre Horse" was found on 29 June 1876 at the back of the western chamber in the Robin Hood Cave. In 2003, the Ochre Horse was estimated to be between 11,000 and 13,000 years old.
A canine tooth of the sabertooth cat Homotherium was also excavated from Robin Hood Cave in 1876, one of only a handful of finds of this cat known from Britain. The tooth may have been transported into the cave by humans as is suggested for the canine saber teeth of Homotherium found in Kents Cavern in Devon. Other remains found in Robin Hood Cave, which dates to the primarily to the Last Glacial Period (though spanning from shortly prior to the Last Glacial Period to historical times), includes those of cave hyenas, Wolf, Red fox, brown bears, woolly mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, wild horse, wild boar, reindeer and red deer. Evidence has been found for the butchery of mountain hare by humans in the cave. At Pinhole Cave, animals found there (that are not found in Robin Hood's cave) include Irish elk, Panthera spelaea, steppe bison and Russet ground squirrels.
Neolithic, Bronze Age, Roman Britain, Medieval and post-Medieval artifacts have also been found at Creswell Crags, such as pottery and antique coins. The dates given in the source are 28,000 14C years ago for the Gravettian and 12,500 to 12,200 14C years ago for the Magdalenian. The 14C years have been adjusted to give calendar ('real') years.
Thin layers of calcium carbonate flowstone overlaying some of the engravings were dated using the uranium-series disequilibrium method, which showed the oldest of these flowstones to have formed at least 12,800 years ago. This provides a minimum age for the underlying engraving. The scientists and archaeologists concluded that it was most likely the engravings were contemporary with evidence for occupation at the site during the late glacial interstadial around 13,000–15,000 years ago. Most of the engravings are found in Church Hole Cave on the Nottinghamshire side of the gorge. Since this discovery, however, an engraved reindeer from a cave on the Gower Peninsula has yielded two minimum dates (through uranium-series dating) of 12,572 years BP and 14,505 years BP.
Not all of the figures identified as prehistoric art are in fact human made. An example given by archaeologists Paul Bahn and Paul Pettitt is the 'horse-head', Which they say is "highly visible and resembles a heavily maned horse-head... lacks any trace of work: it is a combination of erosion, black stains for the head, and natural burrow cast reliefs for the mane." Others are a 'bison-head' which they think may be natural and a 'bear' image which "lacks any evidence of human work." Notwithstanding they believe that more figures may be discovered in the future. (2026). 9781848020252, English Heritage. ISBN 9781848020252
The site was the subject of the BBC Radio 4 documentaries Unearthing Mysteries, Nature and Drawings on the Wall, and featured in the 2005 BBC Two television programme Seven Natural Wonders, as one of the wonders of the Midlands. In the Drawings on the Wall (Episode 1) Dr Paul Pettitt was interviewed about the so-called 'naked ladies' engravings in Church Hole Cave.
- The outstanding landscape of a narrow limestone gorge containing a complex of caves having long-intact palaeoenvironmental cave and gorge sediment sequences, containing rich cultural archaeological remains as well as diverse animal bone, plant macro- and micro-fossil assemblages
- In situ Palaeolithic rock art on the walls and ceilings of caves, dated directly to 13,000 years ago, providing direct cultural associations with Late Magdalenian human groups operating at extreme northern latitudes
In addition, Creswell Crags' significance has been enhanced by the discovery of a number of pieces of portable art made of engraved bone – the UK's only known figurative Ice Age art – as well as assemblages of bone, stone and ivory tools.
Creswell Crags was removed from the World Heritage Site tentative list in 2023.
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