Report of a committee consisting of Professor Rolleston ... [et al.] appointed for the purpose of examining two caves containing human remains, in the neighbourhood of Tenby.

  • Rolleston, George, 1829-1881.
Date:
1878
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Report of a committee consisting of Professor Rolleston ... [et al.] appointed for the purpose of examining two caves containing human remains, in the neighbourhood of Tenby. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

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    [From the 11kport of the liurnsii Association for th- Advancement of Science for 1878. fO -J / h rf^' i ^ }£} Report of a Committee consisting of Professor Rollkston, Major- General Lane Fox, Professor Busk, Pxpifessor Boyd Dawkins, Dr. John Evans, and Mr. F. G. Hilton Price, appointed for the pur- pose of examining Two Caves containing human remains, in the neighbourhood of Tenby. Operations were commenced in the way of the exploration of the “ Little Hoyle ” Cave, Longbury Bank, parish of Penally, near Tenby, on Monday, July 22, 1878, and were continned during that week and upon the ensuing Monday. It will be well to begin our report by a summary of the results which we have attained, and in the second place to give in detail the facts upon which our general conclusions have been based. The two caves which we here examined are contained in a peninsula of mountain-limestone known as “Longbury Bank,” bounded on either side by a valley which unites with its fellow at the bluffly-ending N.E. ex- tremity of the “bank.” If we compare the levels hereinafter given with the facts spoken to by the- raised beaches along this coast, and by other observations we cannot doubt that Longbury Bank was once, and that in no very remote geological period, washed on either side by the sea, and presented much the same general appearance as some of the still so ci dition 1 banks in the neighbourhood of Pembroke. Of the two caves e.-a ined by us, one contained no objects of special interest, and the other j-.it • een previously investigated by other exploi'ers, viz., the Rev. H. H. V iod, of Bach (see ‘Cave Hunting,’ by Professor Boyd Dawkins, Fill.i p. 133, and ‘British Mammalia,’ Memoirs Palceont. Society, 1878, ]>. ■ \ and Mr. Edward Laws, of Tenby (see ‘ Journal of Anthropo- logi ■ istitute,’August 1877). A very considerable segment, however, of this i/ter cave had been left unexamined, and it has been by the ex- aminatior of this undisturbed portion of the cave, and by the clearing out and .restigation of the contents of all the rest of the cave, and comparison of them with the specimens previously obtained and most liberally pu at our disposal for this purpose by Mr. Edward Laws, that we have beei? able to come to the following results. The cave n question, known in the neighbourhood as “ Little Hovle,” in contradistii ction to a much larger cavern close by, known as “ Hoyle’s Mouth,” may ! e divided roughly into two main segments, one beginning with a large mo th opening northwards, and extending from that mouth in a direction S. anu with a sharp slope upwards up to a point distant 25 feet from the mouth he other of about 16 feet in length, dipping downwards from that pomt in a S.E. direction, to communicate by a narrow hole with a wide cave mouth n the S.E. side of the bank in which bones of man, bear, and ox had been previously found by Mr. Laws. This second segment of the cav< had underlaid one of those “ initiatory areas of depression,” to use 3 phraseology of the late Professor Phillips (see ‘Report of British Association,’ Bath Meeting, 1864, p. 63-64), which