大象传媒

Ten years ago cave divers Phil Murphy and Andrew Goddard were exploring an underwater passage in North Yorkshire when they made an unusual discovery.

The team enter the cave

With a team of experts from Sheffield University - and followed by 大象传媒's Inside Out programme for Yorkshire & Lincolnshire - they dug out the cave from the hillside and climbed down to investigate.

What they found inside was an archaeological treasure trove and one of the most important cave discoveries ever made.

The true prize, recovered from a perilous slope, was a human skull, entombed in the cave for over a thousand years.

The skull being returned to the cave

Tests later showed it was a woman, in her 40s, dating back to the Roman times.听

The skull then went into storage at Sheffield University.

Now, ten years on, the same team have returned the skull to its final resting place and completed a story that began a decade ago.

Just getting to the site involved a long walk, carrying enough kit to excavate a cave entrance buried beneath layers of rock and mud for a decade.

The cave is filled in after the skull is returned

Once located the digging began. It took five hours of backbreaking work, but finally the massive bolder gave way and the narrow shaft to the cave below was exposed.

The shaft is a vertical 40 foot drop, barely wide enough to squeeze through at the top, which then opens into a large chamber.听

Mystery surrounds why the cave is full of bones.听 Some say it may be a tomb, others that bodies may have been thrown in for disposal.听

The delicate pieces of skull were unwrapped and carefully laid to rest under a shelf where they will hopefully remain protected and undisturbed for the rest of time.