Heaning Wood Bone Cave
Excavation
E.G. Holland, 1958.
Curation
Barrow Museum.
Burials
MNI: 8 (4 adults, 4 juveniles)
Finds
Perforated shell beads, Collared Urn, worked stone, bone pin, animal bones.
Dates
| Period | Reliability |
|---|---|
| Bronze Age | 14C date obtained directly on human remains |
| Neolithic | 14C date obtained directly on human remains |
| Mesolithic | 14C date obtained directly on human remains |
14C
9720 bp (PSUAMS-11381), 4910 bp (PSUAMS-11383), 4885 (PSUAMS-11384), 4870 bp (PSUAMS-11379), 4765 bp (PSUAMS-11380), 3730bp (PSUAMS-11382), 3660 bp (PSUAMS-11891), 3705 bp (PSUAMS-11378) on human bone. 9755 bp (PSUAMS-11407) on shell bead.
External References
| National Monuments Record | SD27SE 65 |
| Sites and Monument Record | C 2366 |
| Northern Caves Index | 2087 |
Bibliography
Barnes, F. (1970) Prehistoric pottery from Furness. Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society 70: 1-8.
Allshorn, S. & Swire, P. (2017) Northern Caves. The Three Counties System and the North West. High Mead, Leeds.
Harrison, P.A. (1974) The caves of North-West Lancashire and South Cumbria. Contrebis: Bulletin of the Lancaster Archaeological Society 2 (2): 34-35.
Holland, E.G. (1967) Underground in Furness. Dalesman, Clapham.
Longworth, I.H. (1984) Collared Urns of the Bronze Age in Great Britain and Ireland. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge.
Smith, I. (2012) Radio-carbon dating of bones from caves in Furness. Cumberland and Westmorland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society Newsletter 70:6.
Warburton, K.C. (2023) The Descent: Geographical Information System Mapping as a Method of Quantification in Osteoarchaeological and Taphonomic Analysis of Early Neolithic Human Remains from Cave Burials in North-Western England. PhD thesis, University of Central Lancashire.
Warburton, K.C. et al. (2026) Farthest North: Human Remains from Heaning Wood Bone Cave, Cumbria, UK and their European context. Proceedings of the Prehistoric Society 91: 47-66.
Article Author Graham Mullan