Upland Cave Network

Caves fascinate people. Something about dark underground holes makes people want to explore them, throw things into them or tell stories about the monsters that live within them. Humans have been doing this in northern Britain for thousands of years, leaving behind artefacts and bones to tell the tale of upland cave usage from the end of the last ice age to the present day. The Upland Caves Network is concentrating on the upland areas of northern Britain from North East Wales to the North York Moors, including the Yorkshire Dales, Morecambe Bay area and the Peak District. These areas were near the edge of the ice during the last ice age and therefore have similar geological histories, although people have used them very differently.

Every cave is unique - some can be walked into, while others require caving ladders and ropes. Some are dry, while others still have rivers running though them. Experts in areas such as archaeology, palaeontology, geology and ecology need to work together to understand the processes that form and fill caves, as they can be very complex. Animals such as wolves and bears may den in caves, people may have buried friends (or enemies) within them, and floods and slumps may fill them with debris. The same cave may have had all of these processes occurring within it, at different times, and these contributing factors can be teased apart with careful study. Recent work at Kinsey Cave near Settle has shown that it was used at least four times over the last 12,000 years, first by bears, then by humans in the Neolithic and Roman periods and finally by modern badgers who found the sediments a handy place to build their sett.

It's not just people in the 21st century who are interested in understanding these deposits. In the 19th century, finds from caves in northern England were at the forefront of discussions of the great flood and the antiquity of our species. These 19th century archaeologists, geologists and palaeontologists left a great legacy of caves explored, fossils and artefacts excavated, and notes and papers written on their discoveries. However, not all these caves and items have survived - the location of caves can be lost, or they may have been quarried away, fossils and artefacts can be mislaid or mislabelled and notes and papers are vulnerable to destruction or decay. Therefore the study of caves requires not just finding new ones, or re-examining known sites, but also being something of a detective hunting through libraries, archives and museum collections to find information about the finds and records of these earlier cave explorers.

The Upland Caves Network will, over a period of two years, bring together specialists in all these areas to discuss why these caves are such important and unique environments, and why people have felt compelled to revisit them for centuries, even up to the present day. The ultimate aim is to have an understanding of the work that has been undertaken in the upland region in the past, and to put forward strategies for the future of cave studies in northern Britain.