Familiar Caves and Unfamiliar Landscapes: Approaching Cave Use During the First Millennia in Britain

Abstract

Recent research has highlighted the importance of contextualising caves in order to understand the broader significance of cave use, including what may have motivated cave selection and how these sites are situated within archaeological frameworks. Despite this, caves are frequently isolated in studies of first millennia BC and AD landscapes across Britain. Material has often been interpreted on a site-specific basis or as an adjunct of wider research focusing on specific chronological or regional narratives. This chapter will explore the broader significance of cave use in the British Late Iron Age and early Roman Iron Age (c. 200 BC–AD 200) by focusing on the landscape context of caves in southern Cravendale, North Yorkshire. By doing so, it will be possible to discuss what may have motivated site selection and how caves may have been connected to social attitudes towards landscape, including the projection of identity and the formation of cosmology.