A cut-marked Neolithic human tooth from Ash Tree Shelter, Derbyshire, UK

Here we report the recovery of a human tooth, radiocarbon dated to the Neolithic period, from Ash Tree Shelter, near Whitwell in Derbyshire, United Kingdom. The tooth bears scratches on the labial surface of the crown. The morphology and position of these scratches suggest they were produced ante mortem (during the life of the individual) by a stone tool used to process food or other materials held between the jaws. The dating of the Ash Tree Shelter tooth to the Neolithic period adds to the corpus of later prehistoric human remains from caves in the Cadeby Formation. Its Early Neolithic age reveals it to be older than at least some of the prehistoric human remains from the adjacent site of Ash Tree Cave.