Excavations at Victoria Cave have produced a collection of over 3,000 artefacts. From long-extinct animals and Ice Age hunting weapons, to the offerings left by an emerging Romano-British cave cult.
First discovered in 1837 by two friends and their dog, Victoria Cave’s deposits are now known to span 600,000 years and include evidence of the last four times northern England was covered in glaciers, as well as evidence of what happened during the six warm (inter-glacial) periods in between.
But as so often happens with artefact assemblages, items end up scattered across different locations; some on display, some in museum storage and some in private collections. But with digital copies, we can bring them all together in one place.
And that’s exactly what happened with the Victoria Cave collection. Held in storage across several museums including Lower Winskill Farm, Manchester Museum, and Saffron Walden Museum, many of them have now been reunited and made publicly accessible right here thanks to our willing team of Venturers.
What’s inside Victoria Cave?
Excavations at Victoria Cave uncovered the remains of top Ice Age predators, and long-extinct mega-fauna, dating back 125,000 years to a time when Yorkshire was a tropical landscape.
There’s also evidence of the first humans and animals to arrive in northern Britain after the last glaciers retreated nearly 15,000 years ago.
But that’s not all. Archaeologists have also found unique evidence that thousands of years later, Victoria Cave came back into use, this time as the home of a Romano-British cave cult.
In other words, you can now see the skeletons of Ice Age animals, the left-behinds of hunter-gatherers and even evidence that Roman auxiliary troops from across Europe were intentionally depositing personal artefacts in the hidden depths Yorkshire’s caves.
How To Use The Virtual Artefacts
The virtual artefacts are available to everyone to view and study for free. They’re so accurate that when we asked zooarchaeologists to identify the bones, they were able to do so with 100% success.
We have annotated each virtual artefact so that you can see where it fits into the story of Yorkshire’s hidden past, but there is plenty more information available in the archive too.
You can skip directly to the archive here, or just browse the Virtual Museum and click the ‘see more’ on any artefact you’re interested in.
If you’d like to download copies of any of the virtual artefacts for further study, to display offline, or to use for 3D printing, just email hello@digventures.com.
Making the Virtual Artefacts
All of the artefacts in the Under the Uplands Virtual Museum were made using photogrammetry. This method involves taking lots of photos of each artefact from different angles, and stitching them together using a piece of software.
Not only does this provide an easily accessible digital archive of the material, but also reunites a collection of finds which is otherwise dispersed.
Try it yourself!
The instructions used during the training workshops with volunteers are now freely available in the Under the Uplands library.
If you’d like to learn more, or even help us to make new virtual artefacts to add to the museum, email hello@digventures.com.
