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Around 13,500 years ago, human hands gently grasped a slender piece of bone. It was the rib of a wild horse – an unmistakeably familiar animal to the hunter-gatherer groups who followed migrating herds across the wide plains that once connected Britain to Continental Europe – and it was just such an animal that this particular individual had decided to draw. The bone had been carefully prepared, scraped clean and smooth with a stone tool, and across its surface the anonymous artist deftly wielded a burin – a small stone blade with a nib-like point – to incise the outline of a galloping horse. Although a static image, its fine lines capture a powerful sense of motion, showing the animal in profile with its head thrust forward and a short mane bristling along its outstretched neck. Eyes and nostrils are delicately drawn, while the sharp angle of the horse’s jaw, the softer, sensitive flesh of its muzzle, and the powerful muscles of its shoulder are captured in keenly observed detail. Despite the skill evident in its execution, however, at some later point the image was deliberately defaced, with heavy, horizontal lines scored across the horse’s back, and the rib itself snapped in two.
The surviving portion, measuring just 7.3cm (2.9 inches) long, was rediscovered in 1876 in what today is called Robin Hood Cave, part of Creswell Crags, a limestone gorge running along the Nottinghamshire–Derbyshire border. Across the millennia, it offers a fleeting glimpse into the imagination of an individual who lived during a period of profound change: the dying days of the last Ice Age, when receding glaciers and a gradually improving climate allowed humans to re-establish themselves in areas of Europe that had long been inhospitably frozen – including, eventually, Britain. But, while the position of these prehistoric pioneers must have felt precarious, this was not a constant struggle for subsistence.
As well as the stone tools essential to their everyday activities, communities had the space, the mental energy and, crucially, the downtime to create items and images that offered no functional benefit to their odds of survival. Detailed drawings on stone and bone; skilfully sculpted pieces of antler and ivory; jewellery fashioned from animal teeth and shells; and, most famously, vibrant cave paintings at sites like Lascaux in France and Altamira in Spain. None of these creations would have kept people warm or put food in their bellies – but they were clearly important enough to merit time and resources that could have been put to more practical uses. Perhaps this ancient imagery was a way of forging social bonds and expressing identities. Then, as now, art contributed to people’s psychological and emotional wellbeing, helping to establish the strong relationships essential to sustaining their ways of life.
Art of this period is not the only (or, indeed, the oldest) evidence of imaginative endeavours. Nevertheless, between c.24,000 and 12,000 years ago, Europe witnessed a remarkable outpouring of creative activity that has left enduring marks on the archaeological record. This productive period forms the focus of a recently opened British Museum Partnership Exhibition with Bradford 2025 UK City of Culture and Bradford District Museums & Galleries. Curated by Dr Jill Cook, Keeper of the Department of Britain, Europe, and Prehistory at the British Museum, it is hosted by Cliffe Castle Museum, a romantically grand Victorian residence in Keighley, West Yorkshire, which has been a museum since the 1950s. A key part of Cliffe Castle Museum’s permanent displays is its fine art collection and, until mid-September (see ‘Further information’ below), these will be complemented by the works of not just Old, but Ancient Masters.
Animal imagery
Ice Age Art Now features artefacts drawn from the British Museum’s collections, mostly gathered in the 19th century from rock shelters, caves, and open-air sites across Continental Europe, together with two important finds from Britain. British examples are relatively late in date and scarce compared to those on the European mainland, possibly because initial post-glacial expeditions to these shores were limited to seasonal visits. Nevertheless, similar impulses were clearly at work: Creswell Crags is home to the only confirmed cave art of this period in Britain, with more than 50 engraved figures of birds and animals decorating Church Hole Cave (see CA 197), while a handful of decorated objects are known from other cave sites including Somerset’s Cheddar Gorge.
The horse drawing from Robin Hood Cave is, so far, Britain’s only example of ‘portable art’ of this date depicting an animal, but it fits into a well-established tradition in wider Europe. Tiny, intricate images of animals drawn on pieces of stone and bone make up the first section of the exhibition. Their small size is testament to the improving climate, as they surely speak of people able to work outside in daylight rather than by the flickering firelight of a cave. Above all, however, these detailed drawings attest to how incredibly familiar hunter-gatherers were with the animals that they lived alongside, and on which they depended for food, pelts, and other important materials. Their images skilfully capture how specific species stand and move, the texture of their fur, and how some features such as antlers vary by sex and season. Among the depictions on display are a male reindeer calf nestling against his mother’s flank; the bearded face of a male ibex (from Courbet Cave, France); and multiple renderings of running horses.
Herd-dwelling herbivores are the most common subjects, but images of carnivores are also seen. The exhibition includes a c.14,500-year-old engraved drawing of a wolverine on a 6cm-long (2.4in) sliver of bone. It is shown in the act of walking, with one distinctively broad paw raised and skilful shading representing its thick pelt. Found in the Grotte des Eyzies in France, this was clearly the creation of someone who had spent time observing a wolverine – perhaps hunting them for their warm furs, although, given the animal’s renowned ferocity, the image might have been intended as some kind of totem or protective symbol. The piece of bone is perforated at one end so that it could be worn as a pendant.
Ancient artistry
Such accomplished drawings defy prejudices that long stereotyped these people as primitive cavemen – attitudes that saw the Altamira cave paintings initially dismissed as forgeries. While these communities lived in very different ways from us, ‘Stone Age’ technology was sophisticated: being able to look at a raw lump of stone, visualise the finished tool within, and carefully remove flake after flake to achieve the desired shape and sharpness required refined skills even for everyday implements – and some were exceptional. Ice Age Art Now also includes a delicate leaf-shaped point from a c.24,000-year-old open-air site at Volgu, France. Measuring 28.2cm (11.1in) long, it is impressively symmetrical but astonishingly thin, just 0.6cm (0.2in) thick, making it too fragile for any obvious practical purpose. Nevertheless, its creation must have held some significance, not only because of the effort and time (an estimated five hours) invested, but because the flint used to make it was sourced from over 150km (93 miles) away. Among the displays of drawings and carvings, this object easily holds its own as a work of art.
Similarly virtuosic skill is shown by a c.16,000-year-old sculpture of two reindeer, created from a single 12.4cm- long (4.9in) piece of mammoth tusk. Found at the Montastruc rock shelter in France, the carving depicts a male and female reindeer, one behind the other, making ingenious use of the tapering tusk to reflect their different sizes, with the smaller female’s nose tucked into the narrowest point. Both animals are shown with legs extended and noses tipped up as if swimming, perhaps crossing a lake or river during migration.
Elsewhere, images of horses and fish adorn more functional items, including perforated antler ‘batons’, and a spear thrower from Montastruc has been shaped to depict a mammoth. People decorated themselves, too, using hair ornaments, items affixed to their clothing, and jewellery made from shells and the teeth of wolves, bears, red deer, and bison – choices that could have communicated all kinds of ideas about individuality, identity, and belonging.
Labours of love
More poignant stories are told by personal adornments, among them a number of tiny, perforated sea-snail shells that are included in one of the display cases. These delicate items represent just some of thousands that were found in the Grotte des Enfants in Liguria, Italy. This cave takes its name from the discovery of human remains representing two young children who died c.14,500 years ago. Their short lives were not easy – both skeletons showed signs of malnutrition, rickets, and scurvy – yet their deaths were not solely due to ill health. The youngest of the pair appears to have died from a neck wound inflicted by a stone-tipped weapon.
Whether the children had been murdered, met with a tragic accident, or were killed in some kind of ceremonial act cannot be known, but they had been laid to rest with great care, both lying on their backs with their arms by their side and their heads turned to the left as if peacefully at rest. Their lower bodies, meanwhile, were covered with thousands of shells, each of which had been carefully perforated and presumably sewn on to some kind of belt, apron, or blanket that was worn by or placed over each child. Piercing and stringing the shells would have represented hours of painstaking work: a powerful testimony to how cherished these children had been, and how keenly their loss was felt.
One more find, which may also have been used in a burial context, brings us full circle back to Britain. At Kendrick’s Cave in Conwy, Wales, a horse’s chin bone was decorated with multiple rows of zigzags. The meaning behind these c.12,000-year-old markings has long been lost to memory, but human remains are known to have been found within the same cave, as were animal-tooth beads (though unfortunately their 19th-century finder did not document where). It may be that the horse chin was a specially made funerary item, or perhaps an elaborate ornament or symbol of power that had been worn by one of the individuals laid to rest in the cave. Significantly, while the bones of red deer and aurochs were also found within this space, no other indication of horses was seen, perhaps suggesting that the chin had been brought from another site. Objects like these would have been imbued with powerful symbolism that we cannot today understand – nevertheless, the impulse to craft and create, and to express ideas, identities, and emotions, as is reflected by so many of the objects on display, remains entirely relatable and powerfully human.
Further information:
• Ice Age Art Now is at Cliffe Castle Museum until 14 September 2025; http://www.bradfordmuseums.org/event/ ice-age-art-now.
• Jill Cook, Ice Age Art Now (British Museum Press, ISBN 978-0714123516, £14.99).
All Images: © Trustees of the British Museum
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