A Cumbrian archaeologist has excavated some of the oldest human remains ever found in the UK.
Martin Stables, from Ulverston, discovered an 11,000-year-old human bone and periwinkle shell bead at Heaning Wood Bone Cave in Great Urswick.
Working in collaboration with a team from the University of Central Lancashire, team members Dr Rick Peterson and PhD student Keziah Warburton examined and dated the remains and prehistoric artefact.
Dr Peterson, a reader in archaeology, said: “This is a fantastic discovery! We’ve been delighted to confirm Martin’s unbelievable find dates back around 11,000 years ago and gives us clear evidence of Mesolithic burials in the north.
“This is particularly exciting as these are some of the earliest dates for human activity in Britain after the end of the last Ice Age.”
Martin has been excavating the site since 2016 and has discovered human and animal bone, stone tools, prehistoric pottery and beads made from perforated periwinkle shells.
He said: “I never expected anything like the Early Mesolithic connection in my wildest dreams. After six years digging it’s all ended up in a place I never expected it to get to. I can’t wait to hear all the final results, it’s staggering so far, difficult to imagine what it would have been like around here over 11,000 years ago.”
Earlier human remains are known from southern England and from Wales, but the destructive effect of past glaciations means that such finds are rare in northern Britain.
Before this discovery, the ‘earliest northerner’ was a 10,000-year-old burial from the nearby Kent’s Bank Cavern discovered in 2013.
The UCLan team has also been able to prove at least eight different people were buried in the cave. The team believe that the accompanying artefacts make it likely that the burials were deliberate.
Dr Chris Jazwa and his colleagues from the University of Nevada, Reno, along with academics from Pennsylvania State University were able to radiocarbon date seven different burials from the site.
The results show the cave was used for burials at three different periods in the prehistoric past, including around 4,000-years-ago in the Early Bronze Age, approximately 5,500 years ago in the Early Neolithic and around 11,000 years ago during the very early part of the Mesolithic period.
Dr Peterson added: “Cave burials like this are well known from some periods of British prehistory and the Heaning Wood burials are an important addition to our knowledge of funeral practices. Together with the slightly later dates from Kent’s Bank Cavern, it shows, as people re-occupied the land, how important the whole of Britain was to this process.”
Research at the site is set to continue as a detailed study of what happened to the buried bodies in the cave takes place.
Scientists from the Ancient Geonomics Laboratory, at the Francis Crick Institute, have also sampled the burials to look for ancient DNA evidence, which could show where the people buried in the cave came from and how they were related.