Life on the Edge: Ice Age Frontier

Just 20 miles south east of Sheffield, Creswell Crags was once Europe’s northern frontier of settlement. During this period of great climate change between 50,000 and 10,000 years ago, a series of caves at Creswell provided occasional shelter to nomadic hunters in search of food.

The items these distant relatives left behind tell a story of lives lived on the edge and are the subject of this new exhibition, in partnership with Creswell Heritage Trust. From the remains of long extinct woolly rhinos and mammoths, to the tools and weapons used to hunt them, Life on the Edge will explore the close relationship between Ice Age people and their environment. It will show that despite the daily struggle to survive, our ancestors displayed a taste for creativity and decoration we can recognise today, crafting jewellery, bone carvings and cave paintings to depict the world around them.