Identifying potential Upper Palaeolithic paintings in Church Hole, Creswell Crags, Nottinghamshire, England

Abstract

This paper examines the discovery and mapping of newly identified painted imagery in Church Hole, located within the Creswell Crags, a natural gorge with caves that contain evidence of Late Upper Palaeolithic activity, in Nottinghamshire (within the northern Midlands of England). The recent findings, made in 2021 and 2024, build upon an earlier discovery by an Anglo-Spanish research team in 2003, which marked the identification of the first verifiable engraved Upper Palaeolithic rock art in the British Isles. This earlier discovery included engraved figurative representations and simple geometric motifs. Notably, several of the panels featured a calcite flow, which were chronometrically dated to the Late Upper Palaeolithic (approximately 13,000 years before present) using Uranium-Thorium dating techniques.

Currently, these newly discovered painted images, similar to the majority of the engraved images discovered in 2003 cannot be directly dated using chronometric dating techniques, owing to the absence of calcite flowstone over applied painted areas.