These pages are concerned with the pleistocene Bison and Reindeer
bones found in an inlet passage, known as the Barmaids' Bedrooms, in
Hunters' Lodge Inn Sink. Hunters' Lodge Inn Sink is a cave dig on
the Mendip Hills in Somerset, UK. The cave dig was started in the
summer of 2002 in the car park of Hunters' Lodge Inn. Because of
the foot and mouth disease outbreak at the time, all other caving
activity had effectively ceased. The lack of access to other sites
on Mendip made the car park dig seem almost attractive.
Persistence paid off and the long, low, blasted entrance
passage (the "Pub Crawl") eventually gave access to an ancient,
large-bore descending passage ("Happy Hour Highway").
Unfortunately, this was heavily choked at the bottom.
Various digs were started here in search of the way on and it was
one of these that broke into an passage running in a north easterly
direction, back towards the surface. This passage (the "Barmaids'
Bedrooms") and the Happy Hour Highway are in the form of a "V", with the base pointing
south. The diggers take this as a sign of vindication of their
efforts in the face of much scoffing and ridicule in the early days of
the dig.
The boulder floor of the upper section of the Barmaids' Bedrooms
inlet passage has a scattering of bones, some entire, some fragmentary.
These have been identified as Bison and Reindeer and it is
possible that they are in to order of 80,000 years old.
The following pages show the first bones to be removed to the cave
and a brief illustration of the nature of the entrance series, the
Happy Hour Highway and the Barmaids' Bedrooms pasages.
The bone fragments illustrated below were found in August 2003 in the upper section of the "Barmaids' Bedrooms".
Roger Jacobi of the Department of Prehistory at the British Museum has examined the bones and identified them as Bison (Bison Priscus) and Reindeer (Rangifer Tarandus) as follows...
No dating has yet been carried out (October 2003), but arrangements are being made to date a sample of bone and also the stalagmite deposit which coats another bone. However, it is not impossible that they are of the same age as the bones in Banwell Bone Cave. If this is the case, they could be as much as 80,000 years old.
03h18-15 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
Fragment of L mandible (lower jaw) of mature Bison and smaller fragment
of R mandible of Reindeer.
03h18-06 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
L mandible fragment - as above.
03h18-01 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
Detail of L mandible fragment. The bone shows markings which are
possibly caused by gnawing (?? by wolf ??).
03h18-07 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
03h18-22 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
A modern cow jaw for comparision - Unfortunately this is the other side
and from a rather younger animal, but we can't have everything.
03h18-25 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
As above
03h18-08 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
The bone shows signs of rolling or abrasion.
03h18-09 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
As above.
03h18-10 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
As above.
03h18-11 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
Detail of late post-mortem midshaft break - ie occurred (probably)
underground when bone was no longer green.
03h18-12 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
03h18-13 (Photographed 17 Aug 2003)
Click to enlarge
As above
Roger has also examined a second batch of bones which were removed from the cave on 3rd September 2003. Like the bones illustrated above, these are Bison and Reindeer:-
Reindeer
Bison
19 August 2003
(Revised:27 October 2003)
