Human settlement at Creswell is dated to around 20-30,000, which makes the site roughly contemporary with Chauvet. The site is a beautiful limestone gorge, with a stream running through it which was landscaped in the 19th Century into a very attractive pond. Cave sites along the northern side of the gorge are in full sunlight for much of the day, and must have been a very attractive prospect for paleolithic troglodytes.
The site has been the source of a large range of interesting finds, including Solutrean points, linking the site to other sites in the Solutrean culture in central & southern France.
In 2003, the discovery was made of figurative cave art inscribed on the wall of a cave on the south side of the gorge. We went on the guided tour of Church Hole, and as you'd expect after 25,000 years, the engravings are difficult to make out. They are visibly there though. Until 2003 it was believed that there was no cave art from the paleolithic in the UK. Church Hole changed all that.
One particular piece was the large horse head on a single panel. It's clearly been coloured at some point in the dim and distant past, which helps to make it visible. Horses of course are a regular theme of Magdalenian art, which fits into the known timescale.
The tours were excellent, the guides knew their stuff and set the scene well. The collection of finds on display isn't vast - Creswell only recently got a visitors centre and a lot of finds ended up in the permanent collections of the British Museum and Manchester Museum. The ochre horse head engraved on bone is a spectacular piece - that dates to about 13000 years ago:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Creswell_Crags#mediaviewer/File:Ochre_Horse.jpg
The location itself is fantastic and worth a visit in its own right, but for anyone interested in paleolithic Europe it's a must.
