On an apparently Palæolithic Engraving on a Bone from Sherborne (Dorset)

Abstract

Thirty-seven years ago Prof. Boyd Dawkins described to the Society the incised figure of a horse on a piece of bone found with Palaeolithic implements and remains of Pleistocene mammals in the Robin Hood Cave, Creswell Crags. Until the present time, this has remained the sole example of the pictorial art of Palaeolithic Man met with in Britain. It is, therefore, of interest to record the discovery of a second specimen, which appears to date back to the same period, and is especially remarkable as being almost identical with the first, both in subject and in style. The new specimen was found by two boys of Sherborne School, A. S. Cortesi and P. C. Grove, and was submitted to me by Mr. R. Elliot Steel, to whom I am indebted for the opportunity of making this communication. It was picked up, with fragments of calcspar and miscellaneous Inferior Oolite fossils, in an old heap of quarry-debris near the Bristol road, on the outskirts of Sherborne (Dorset); and there can be no doubt that it was originally obtained from one of the small dry valleys with steep sides which furrow the dip-slope of the Inferior Oolite north of the town. A careful consideration of all the circumstances suggests that it may have occurred in a in a rock-shelter, which was destroyed by quarrying : for the heap of d6bris which yielded the speCmen was most probably derived from a sheltered spot with a south-westen~ aspect, whieh would serve admil:nbly for human habitation