A GEOGRAPHIC INFORMATION SYSTEMS APPROACH TO THE 19TH CENTURY EXCAVATION OF BRIXHAM CAVERN, DEVON, ENGLAND

The oldest known spatially-explicit archaeological excavation, conducted in Brixham cave, Devon, in 1858, is reconstructed using geographic information systems technology. Two dimensional plots of individual fossil taxa and flint artefacts demonstrate the utility of the technique for elucidating taphonomy and palaeobiology.The cave served as a den for hibernating brown bears, as a den for hyena and cave lion, and as a reliquary for their prey. Scientific study of European ―bone caves‖ can be said to have been placed on a firm foot- ing with the publication of William Buckland's Reliquiae Diluvianae (1824) in which he noted at least eight instances in which human remains were found in cave strata apparently coincident with the bones of extinct mammals. This juxtaposition challenged the prevailing Natural Theology that had developed over the preceding century from the intercalation of Biblical scripture and the emergent field of geology. Buckland, in keeping with his defer- ence to Scripture and a young age for the human species, argued that the bones in these cave deposits were ―....not of the same antiquity with those of the antediluvian animals that occur in the same caves with them‖ (Buckland, 1824, p.169). Others disagreed. John MacEnery began sporadic excavations in nearby Kent's Hole (now Kents Cavern; latitude 50.467 N, longitude 3.503 W, altitude 58 m) in the summer of 1825, inspired by Buck- land's work and initially in the company of Buckland himself (Kennard, 1945). By 1826 MacEnery had apparently satisfied himself that flint implements and extinct mammals were contemporaneous, but he deferred to Buckland's opinion that they were emplaced in oven pits by recent Celtic occupants of the cave, and withheld his manuscript on the subject from publication. The work was eventually published posthumously in 1859 (MacEnery 1