Kendrick's Cave on the

Great Orme The Great Orme () is a limestone headland on the north coast of Wales, north-west of the town of Llandudno. Referred to as ''Cyngreawdr Fynydd'' by the 12th-century poet Gwalchmai ap Meilyr, its English name derives from the Old Norse word for ...

, Llandudno, Wales, was the site of important archaeological finds by Thomas Kendrick in 1880. The site is a small natural cavern on the south of the Great Orme Head, a

limestone Limestone is a type of carbonate rock, carbonate sedimentary rock which is the main source of the material Lime (material), lime. It is composed mostly of the minerals calcite and aragonite, which are different Polymorphism (materials science) ...

massif A massif () is a principal mountain mass, such as a compact portion of a mountain range, containing one or more summits (e.g. France's Massif Central). In mountaineering literature, ''massif'' is frequently used to denote the main mass of an ...

on the seaward side of

Llandudno Llandudno (, ) is a seaside resort, town and community (Wales), community in Conwy County Borough, Wales, located on the Creuddyn peninsula, which protrudes into the Irish Sea. In the 2021 United Kingdom census, 2021 UK census, the community � ...

(Ordnance Survey ref SH 78008284). Kendrick, a

lapidary Lapidary () is the practice of shaping rock (geology), stone, minerals, or gemstones into decorative items such as cabochons, engraved gems (including cameo (carving), cameos), and faceted designs. A person who practices lapidary techniques of ...

, was clearing a cave in his garden to extend his workshop. In the process he found a decorated horse jaw, flint artefacts, bear teeth with holes for use as beads or pendants and human and animal bones.Decorated horse jaw.
British Museum, 2011. Retrieved 22 October 2011. A project in 2008 involving the

British Museum The British Museum is a Museum, public museum dedicated to human history, art and culture located in the Bloomsbury area of London. Its permanent collection of eight million works is the largest in the world. It documents the story of human cu ...

, the Field Club, Llandudno Museum and Archives, Llandudno and Colwyn Bay Historical Society, the

National Museum of Wales National may refer to: Common uses * Nation or country ** Nationality – a ''national'' is a person who is subject to a nation, regardless of whether the person has full rights as a citizen Places in the United States * National, Maryland, c ...

, and Oxford and Bradford Universities reunited the once dispersed finds from the cave for an exhibition in Llandudno Museum.

Human diet

An analysis of stable isotopes in the human bones found shows that they had a diet high in seafood. The individuals from Kendrick’s Cave show evidence of intensive consumption of marine and freshwater foods, including piscivorous marine mammals such as

seal Seal may refer to any of the following: Common uses * Pinniped, a diverse group of semi-aquatic marine mammals, many of which are commonly called seals, particularly: ** Earless seal, also called "true seal" ** Fur seal ** Eared seal * Seal ( ...

Radiocarbon dating

The boundary start date for human activity at the site is 16,410–14,070 calibrated years before the present, with a boundary end date of 13,730–13,140 calibrated years before the present. This estimate is subject to more uncertainty than usual because the proportion of stable carbon derived from a marine diet by these humans is uncertain. Text was copied from this source, which is available under
Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

Burial site

The presence of un-modified human bones has been taken to indicate that the cave was a burial site rather than a camp site.

Ancient DNA

DNA from one specimen, Kendricks_074, showed that this person was male and carried haplogroup U5a2. A number of British Mesolithic individuals carry the U5 mitochondrial haplogroup, including one individual from Kent’s Cavern who also carried U5a2. Analysis of the 476,347

single nucleotide polymorphism In genetics and bioinformatics, a single-nucleotide polymorphism (SNP ; plural SNPs ) is a germline substitution of a single nucleotide at a specific position in the genome. Although certain definitions require the substitution to be present in ...

s recovered from Kendricks_074 shows that he shares most drift with the individuals belonging to the ~14,000–7,000-year-old Villabruna genetic cluster. Eleven

Mesolithic The Mesolithic (Ancient Greek language, Greek: μέσος, ''mesos'' 'middle' + λίθος, ''lithos'' 'stone') or Middle Stone Age is the Old World archaeological period between the Upper Paleolithic and the Neolithic. The term Epipaleolithic i ...

individuals from elsewhere in the

British Isles The British Isles are an archipelago in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean off the north-western coast of continental Europe, consisting of the islands of Great Britain, Ireland, the Isle of Man, the Inner Hebrides, Inner and Outer Hebr ...

, the Western Hunter-Gatherer population, can also be modeled as having entirely Villabruna ancestry, except for

Cheddar Man Cheddar Man is a human male skeleton found in Gough's Cave in Cheddar Gorge, Somerset, England. The skeletal remains date to around the mid-to-late 9th millennium BC, corresponding to the Mesolithic period, and it appears that he died a viole ...

with some 85% Villabruna ancestry.

A different contemporary culture with genetically-different individuals

However, a Palaeolithic individual from Gough’s Cave in SW England, who possibly lived at approximately the same time as Kendricks_074, shares most drift with the individuals belonging to the ~19,000–14,000-year-old Goyet Q2 genetic cluster. De-fleshing marks and secondary treatment of human material at Gough’s Cave (also found at other

Magdalenian culture Magdalenian cultures (also Madelenian; ) are later cultures of the Upper Paleolithic and Mesolithic in western Europe. They date from around 17,000 to 12,000 years before present. It is named after the type site of Abri de la Madeleine, a ro ...

sites such as Brillenhöhle and

Hohle Fels The ''Hohle Fels'' (; also ''Hohlefels'', ''Hohler Fels'', German for "hollow rock") is a cave in the Swabian Jura of Germany that has yielded a number of important archaeological finds dating from the Upper Paleolithic. Artifacts found in the ...

in Germany and Maszycka Cave in Poland) has been taken as evidence of cannibalism. This suggests that at least two different human groups, with different genetic affinities and different dietary and cultural behaviours, were present in Britain during the Late Glacial.

References

External links

Antler pin found in Kendrick's cave, Llandudno. People's Collection Wales.Decorated Beads from Kendrick's Cave - BBCFrom Kendrick's Cave at The Antiquarian's Attic.Great Orme cave finds are Llandudno Museum top exhibits - BBC NewsIsotope evidence for the intensive use of marine foods by Late Upper Palaeolithic humans
at the Internet Archive.
Lower Kendrick's Cave at the Megalithic Portal.Lower Kendrick's Cave: Associated Collection Records - Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales.Upper Kendrick's Cave: Associated Collection Records - Royal Commission on the Ancient and Historical Monuments of Wales.
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