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Maeve Kennedy Wednesday September 24, 2003 The Guardian A narrow cave in a gorge in Somerset has been identified as the oldest cemetery in Britain, used by generations of people from one area in the Mendips just after the last ice age, 10,000 years ago. Scientific tests, released yesterday, showed it had been sealed and abandoned more than 6,000 years before the first stone of the pyramids of Egypt was laid. The site, Aveline's Hole, is unique in Britain and earlier than anything similar on mainland Europe. According to legend it was found in 1797 by two boys so determined...

Earliest British cemetery dated A cave in the Mendip Hills in southwest England has been revealed as the earliest scientifically dated cemetery in Britain. The age of the cemetery makes it an important European site The site at Aveline's Hole, near Burrington Combe, contained human bone fragments that have now been confirmed to be between roughly 10,200 and 10,400 years old. The specimens - representing about 21 individuals - were originally removed from the cave in the early years of the 20th Century and were held in a museum in Bristol. There, the collection was largely destroyed in a World...