Ice Age Engravings Found In Jersey

The engravings, which are estimated to be at least 14,000 years old, are the first of their kind in the British Isles.

16:14 04 November 2015

Archeologists have discovered artefacts from the end of the last Ice Age that include stone engravings with carved lines. They are estimated to be at least 14,000 years old. This places the camp in Jersey among the earliest in northern Europe after the freeze.

 

The markings pre-date the earliest known art in the UK, which was found carved into stone walls and bones at Creswell Crags in Derbyshire in 2003.

 

Dr. Chantal Conneller, the co-director of the Ice Age Island project in Les Varines site in the south east area of Jersey, said: "We're feeling reasonably confident at the moment that what we've got fits into this broader idea of non-representational Magdalenian art."

 

She added: "We're hoping this is a hint of what is to come, because at some other sites you get hundreds of these pieces. What we've got at the moment is only a fragment of something much larger,"

 

Her colleague Dr Silvia Bello, from London's Natural History Museum, added: "We can already say the stones are not natural to the site, they show clear incised lines consistent with being made by stone tools, and they do not have any obvious functional role."