Fig. 20.—Longitudinal Section of Victoria Cave.
The committee resolved not to begin at the entrance which Mr. Jackson discovered in 1838 ([Fig. 19] A), but to make a new passage, at a point where daylight could be seen through the chinks of the broken débris, which there prevented access. Ground was broken on a small plateau in front of this ([Figs. 19] B, [20]), which, from the sunny aspect and commanding view, would naturally be chosen by the dwellers in the cave as their more usual place for eating and lounging, and in which we might therefore expect to find the remains of whatever they had dropped or lost. The gloomy recesses of a cave, indeed, even if lit up by large fires or by torches, are not fitted for any other purpose than for sleeping or concealment; and if we add in this case the damp cold clay under foot and the constant drip of the water overhead, it was only reasonable to infer that most of their life was spent out of doors, and that the cave was used merely as a place of retirement for shelter. As the trench progressed we dug first of all through a thickness of two feet ([Figs. 20], [21]) of angular blocks of limestone, that had fallen from the cliff above, and that rested on a black layer (No. 4) containing the kind of remains which we had expected. The layer was composed of fragments of bone and charcoal, surrounding the burnt stones which had formed the ancient hearths, and contained large quantities of the broken bones of animals which had been used for food, and coins and articles of luxury, as well as those instruments which were more naturally suited for the half-savage life of dwellers in caves. As we opened out the new mouth, the angular fragments disappeared and the black layer rose to the surface, composing the floor, and lying in some places beneath enormous blocks of limestone which had fallen from the roof since its accumulation, and being continuous with the layer in which Mr. Jackson first made his discoveries.
Fig. 21.—Vertical Section at the Entrance to the Victoria Cave.
It was evident that this stratum had been formed during the sojourn of man in the cave, and we shall find, in the examination of the remains which it furnished, proof that it is connected with the obscure history of Britain during the fifth and sixth centuries. We will take each group of objects in its proper class, beginning with what at first sight seems the least promising, the broken bones of the animals that supplied the inhabitants with food.
The Bones of the Animals.
The bones of the Celtic short-horn (Bos longifrons) were very abundant, and proved that a variety of ox, indistinguishable from the small dark mountain cattle of Wales and Scotland, was the chief food of the inhabitants. A variety of the goat with simple recurved horns, which is commonly met with in the Yorkshire tumuli explored by Canon Greenwell, and in the deposits round Roman villas in Great Britain, furnished the mutton; while the pork was supplied by a domestic breed of pigs with small canines; and since the bones of the last animal belong for the most part to young individuals, it is clear that the young porker was preferred to the older animal. The bill of fare was occasionally varied by the use of horse-flesh, which formed a common article of food in this country down to the ninth century. To this list must be added the venison of the roedeer and stag, but the remains of these two animals were singularly rare. Two spurs of the domestic fowl, and a few bones of wild duck and grouse, complete the list of animals which can with certainty be affirmed to have been eaten by the dwellers in the cave. The numerous unbroken bones, some very gigantic, of the badger, and those of the fox, wildcat, hare, and water-vole, commonly called water-rat, have probably been introduced subsequently, from those animals having used the cave as a place of shelter. There were also bones of the dog, which from their unbroken condition proved that the animal had not been used for food, as it certainly was used by the men who lived in the caves of Denbighshire in the Neolithic age. The whole group of remains implies that the dwellers in the Victoria Cave lived upon their flocks and herds, rather than by the chase. And since the domestic fowl was not known in Britain until about the time of the Roman invasion, the presence of its remains fixes the date of the occupation as not earlier than that time. On the other hand, since the small Celtic short-horn (Bos longifrons) was the only domestic ox in use known in Roman Britain, and since it disappeared from those portions of the country which were conquered by the English, along with its Celtic possessors, the date is fixed in the other direction as being not much later than the Northumbrian conquest of that portion of Yorkshire. I shall return to this part of the subject presently; here I will only remark, that the present distribution of the lineal descendants of the Celtic short-horn, the small, dark-coloured Scotch and Welsh cattle, corresponds with those regions on which the Celtic population fell back before the English. And its survival in Wales, and until comparatively recently in Cornwall, Cumberland, and Westmoreland, may be accounted for by the fact, that in those districts the Celtic populations of Roman Britain were not displaced by the English invaders.[50]
The larger breed of cattle known in its purity as the white ox of Chillingham, from which all our purely English breeds have been derived, was imported originally by the English, and spread over the whole country which they occupied, until at last the smaller and more ancient oxen survived only in a few isolated areas in the north and west of Britain. This displacement of the Celtic short-horn by the English oxen of the Urus type corroborates, in a striking degree, the truth of Mr. Freeman’s view of the ruthless destruction of everything Roman and Celtic at the hands of the English. It is clear, therefore, that from the examination of the bones we may infer that the cave was occupied before the Celtic short-horn was supplanted in this district by the larger domestic breed of oxen, and after the introduction of the domestic fowl, that is to say, in the interval which elapsed between the Roman and English invasions.
We must now treat of the remains of man’s handiwork in the cave.