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CALLING LOW DALE ROCK SHELTER

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Rock shelter at Calling Low Dale excavated between 1937 and 1939 by by Colonel JA Harris or Major T Harris, depending on which source is consulted, with the assistance of Leslie Armstrong. Two features described as cists were found, both being approximate arcs of limestone blocks set against the wall of the shelter. One, cist A, contained a crouched female inhumation, the skull apparently pierced by a sharp weapon at the front. No artefacts were present. Cist B was filled with a fine soil which contained a quantity of human bones, most apparently belonging to a single individual, but bones of three of four other individuals were also present. Among the bones were sherds from two Peterborough Ware bowls, only one of which survives, plus flint and chert "waste" and a single flint petit-tranchet derivative arrowhead. In addition, a female crouched inhumation was discovered near cist A; a human pelvis and a fox's skull were found together in a niche in the shelter wall; at least 6 individual child burials (all crouched inhumations) were discovered at various locations beneath the shelter overhang; just beyond the overhang were some potsherds (described as "indeterminate") with more human bones, and a little further away was a similar group of sherds and bones. To the west of the main shelter, against the rock wall, was an extended inhumation of an adult male with no accomanying artefacts. Three flint flakes of Upper Palaeolithic date were reportedly discovered from "a Late Pleistocene sand". At least some finds from the site (including the surviving Peterborough Ware bowl) are in Sheffield City Museum.

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