CRESWELL CRAGS

ravine about 1,500 feet (450 m) long, near Creswell in northeastern Derbyshire, Eng. It contains caves that have yielded one of the most important British series of extinct vertebrate remains, accompanied by implements of Paleolithic hunters. Creswell Crags was excavated in 1875 and intermittently thereafter until 1960. Although traces of Mousterian artifacts were found, the best-attested evidence of human occupation belongs to the so-called Creswellian culture, widely regarded as a provincial variant of the later Magdalenian culture of southwestern France and assigned to the final episodes of the Wrm glaciation. The accompanying remains of mammalian fauna include reindeer, woolly rhinoceros, mammoth, and wild horse.