The Magdalenian era saw a flourishing of early art, from cave paintings and drawings to the decoration of tools and weapons to engraving on stones and bones.
Despite evidence of Magdalenian settlements existing in the far north-west as Britain, no similar examples of artistic expression had previously been found in the British Isles from such an early time.
Dr Chantal Conneller, a co-author from Newcastle University, said: “These engraved stone fragments provide exciting and rare evidence of artistic expression at what was the farthest edge of the Magdalenian world.
“The people at Les Varines are likely to have been pioneer colonisers of the region and creating engraved objects at new settlements may have been a way of creating symbolic relationships with new places.”