The Highfurlong Elk


Any history of Poulton has to begin with its oldest inhabitant, the Highfurlong Elk, affectionately named by the press as Horace. He now resides in the Harris Museum in Preston, but it was only by chance that he was ever found at all.
The discovery was made in 1970 when the footings for a new house were being excavated on a plot of land in Carleton, and an observant neighbour, Mr Scholey, noticed bones protruding from the cutting. At first it was thought they might be a pet burial, but it soon became clear that they belonged to a much larger, and far older, animal. Further excavation revealed the skeleton of an elk, and more surprisingly, a length of bone with barbs like a small harpoon, clearly a man-made artefact.
The bones were brought to the attention of a local archaeologist, J.S.Hallam. He visited the site and realised that following the amateur excavation the skeleton was not actually complete – the bones of the hindquarters were still in the ground. This meant that a professional excavation under controlled conditions to find the rest of the animal could be undertaken. The excavation that followed looked not only at the skeleton, but also the artefacts found with it and its environmental context.
The excavation continued to reveal the bones of the rear hindquarters of the elk, making the skeleton complete. But the most exciting find was a second barbed point lying in situ across the left lower leg bone. During the excavation core samples of the soil were taken to search for macrofosssils (fossilised plant remains), and pollen deposits which would identify the type of plants growing at different levels, indicators of the climate and environment in which the elk lived.
There were clues about the location of the find even before the excavation began. On the Tithe Commutation Award map for Carleton of 1838 the field was named as ‘Great Moss’ suggesting an area of wet, peaty soil. The environmental samples revealed that the skeleton lay in a layer of organic mud at the bottom of a pool. The landscape was ‘park tundra’, that is an open landscape with scattered copses of trees and shrubs such as birch and willow, with areas of fen and swamp. Analysis of the deposits indicated that the elk died during a warm period towards the end of the last Ice Age known as the Allerod dating to around 13,500 years ago, after which there was a return to colder conditions. This was a period when Britain was still attached to mainland Europe.
The skeleton was found to be an adult male elk of about 5 or 6 years old (determined by his teeth). His antlers were about to be shed indicating he died in late winter. The skeleton showed evidence of at least 17 lesions suggesting the use of a variety of implements, including flint-tipped weapons and a stone axe. Some of these injuries were thought to have been inflicted 2 or 3 weeks before death. The barbed bone points found with the skeleton indicated that it may have been hunted a second time. However, the hunters failed to capture the elk and the body was not butchered but remained intact until its modern discovery.
The people who stalked the elk were hunter/gatherers living in a period known as the Late Upper Paleolithic. Barbed bone points similar to those found at Highfurlong have been found at a site at Starr Carr near Pickering (although the Highfurlong elk is much older than Starr Carr). The remains of the Highfurlong Elk provide the oldest evidence of human activity in Lancashire.
Article by Lynda Wright
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The story of the last days of the elk, based on the archaeological evidence, is a matter of interpretation. The earliest was made by Ben Edwards, then the County Archaeologist for Lancashire. He envisaged the stalking of the animal by a party of hunter gatherers, possibly over a period of a couple of weeks. Initially they only wounded him and he retreated to a pool beyond their reach. When he emerged from the pool they had a second attempt, but he fled again to the deepest part of the pool, out of the reach of the hunters, where he eventually died and sank to the bottom. Over time the body was covered in silt and plant remains, the pool became a bog, and 13,000 years later a pasture field called Great Moss.
(‘Horace – the story of the High Furlong Elk’ by B.J.N. Edwards published by Lancashire Archaeological Society.)
The interpretation made after the original excavation of two hunting episodes has been challenged on a couple of occasions. In 1975 N. Noe-Nygaard, a Danish geologist, published a paper which argued that many of the lesions on the skeleton of the elk, particularly on the ribcage and forelegs, were of modern date, possibly inflicted during the excavation. Only the lesions on the rear leg bones were interpreted as ancient, and it was argued that there had been only one hunting episode. However, this argument was rebutted by the original excavation team and the original ‘two hunting episodes’ scenario was re-affirmed.
In 2013 a renovation of the archaeological galleries at the Harris Museum enabled fresh scientific analysis of the skeleton and the bone harpoons to be undertaken. This provided new information and a new interpretation of the finds. Firstly, using isotope analysis of the teeth, the scientists were able to determine that the elk originated in the local area of Poulton-le-Fylde (i.e. it had not migrated from elsewhere), and its diet was consistent with an open birch environment. Secondly they estimated its age at time of death as between 3.5 and 4.5 years. Thirdly they concluded that the ‘two hunting episodes’ scenario could not be sustained and that many of the lesions on the skeleton were consistent with excavation damage. Only one hunting episode was evident when the elk was shot in its hind feet by the bone points. They suggested that the animal may have been swimming at the time, kicking out at its hunters, who may even have been pursuing in a canoe. But the main conclusion remains: that “the Poulton elk is a very rare example of an Allerod elk hunted, unsuccessfully” around 13,500 years ago.
(‘A cold case closed. New light on the life and death of the Lateglacial elk from Poulton-le-Fylde, (Lancashire UK)”, Pettit P., Rowley-Conwy P., Montgomery J., Richards M., Dec 2017.)
Accessed on 4/2/24 at https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1327665
The Harris museum is currently closed for refurbishment and is due to re-open in 2025. Visit www.theharris.org.uk for more information.