Feuersteinstrasse

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The Feuersteinstraße is one of the oldest reconstructed trade connections, the 250 km long route across the Bohemian Forest between Bavaria and Bohemia . Another road of this kind, over 100 km long, existed during the ceramic phase of the early Neolithic on the Swabian Alb between Gerlingen and the Viesenhäuser Hof near Stuttgart and Nürtingen and on to the main mining site in Wittlingen .

history

Flint from Bavaria reached the settlements in the Pilsen and Prague basins as early as 7000 years ago . According to the studies of the geoarchaeologist Alexander Binsteiner , a direct trade route connected the Arnhofen mine with the Stone Age settlement areas of Bavaria and Bohemia. Only the flint as a hard quartz mineral , which was already rough worked on the way, was preserved for thousands of years. The litter was left behind, marking a route to Bohemia.

Shell-like fracture of the flint and sharp-edged cuts.
Stone Age Flint Ax; Length 31 cm

Flint was the most important raw material of the Neolithic Age , some of the tools and weapons were made from it because of its high hardness and good cleavability. One of the largest known old flint mines in Europe is located near the village of Arnhofen near Abensberg in the Kelheim district . The valuable banded slab horn stones were extracted in many thousands of shafts . The narrowness of the shafts, which are up to eight meters deep, even suggests child labor.

A large part of the route obviously led along the rivers Danube , Regen , Naab and Schwarzach , where remnants of flint processing could be identified near the banks. It is assumed that these routes were covered by a dugout canoe . After the passage from Furth im Wald and the pass from Waldmünchen , which had to be conquered on foot, the trail of the flint can be recorded again near the Czech Domazlice . From there it runs over the Pilsener pool, past the settlement area of Rakovnik until after Prague .

hypothesis

Such a developed operation of a trade route would have to be based on a social system that already knew a specialization in professions, but which cannot be archaeologically proven. It is only assumed that prospectors and miners were responsible for the extraction of the raw material flint, while others in the nearby settlements manufactured flint tools and raw forms for export. Ultimately, the community had to select men and give them time off from other work in the village for the strenuous expeditions.

critic

The archaeologists Marjorie de Grooth and Georg Roth, who specialize in flint mining, can, in their opinion, refute the hypotheses presented here. On the basis of extensive data analyzes, according to their studies - and not only for Arnhofen - such a complex division of labor in the Central European Old and Late Neolithic can not be found in mining, processing or distribution. For example, by means of point field statistical analyzes of the Arnhofen mine field, a clearly emerging, small-scale structure of mining can be identified which, in Roth's opinion, cannot be combined with full-time specialized mining. In particular, the alleged child labor cited due to the Arnhofen shaft dimensions can already be refuted when considering traditional well construction in Africa: adult men dig wells with a diameter of <1 m to over 30 m deep. If the picture is complemented by the height of Neolithic adults known from anthropological research since the 1970s, there is no reason to suspect "child labor". Men reached an average of 1.67 m, women 1.57 m. Heretically speaking, if the shaft dimensions were to be taken as an indication of the size of the people working there, one would have to postulate "mountain women" according to the archaeological source base (cf. also the Lengyel temporal - i.e. simultaneous - burials in the chert mine of Krumlovsky Les / CS) .

De Grooth and Roth also state in their studies that the processing of the material in the settlements does not show any patterns compatible with full-time specialists or a differentiated division of labor. Finally, the geostatistical analysis of the distribution after the analysis of Roth's distribution organization forms suggests, as they were already modeled by the archaeological-economic-historical theorist Colin Renfrew in the early 1970s.

Roth is therefore skeptical of the term "Feuersteinstrasse" not only from the point of view of archaeological source analysis, but also particularly with regard to the intellectual responsibility of archaeological interpretation: Industrial ages which, as shown above, are simply out of place. "

literature

  • A. Bach, Neolithic populations in the Middle Elbe-Saale area. On the anthropology of the Neolithic with special consideration of the band ceramists. Weimar Monographs on Prehistory and Early History 1 (Weimar 1978).
  • Alexander Binsteiner : The Feuersteinstrasse between Bavaria and Bohemia. In: Bavarian history sheets . 66, 2001, pp. 7-12.
  • Alexander Binsteiner: The deposits and the mining of Bavarian Jura chimneys as well as their distribution in the Neolithic of Central and Eastern Europe. In: RGZM yearbook. Volume 52, 2005 (Mainz 2006), pp. 43–155.
  • F. Burgeap, Eau-sol-environnement, la construction des puits en Afrique tropicale. Techniques rurales en Afrique (Paris 1992).
  • Marjorie E. Th. De Grooth, Studies on Neolithic flint exploitation. Socio-economic interpretations of the flint assemblages of Langweiler 8, Beek, Elsloo, Rijckholt, Hienheim and Meindling "(Maastricht 1994).
  • Marjorie E. Th. De Grooth, The supply of flint in the bank ceramic settlement Hienheim “Am Wienberg” (Ldkr. Kelheim) and the organization of the mining on banded slab horn stones in the district of Arnhofen (Ldkr. Kelheim). Germania 72, 1994/2, pp. 355-407.
  • Erwin Keefer: Stone Age. Württemberg State Museum Stuttgart. Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 1993, ISBN 3-8062-1106-X .
  • Martin Oliva, L'extraction de silexite jurassique dans la forêt de Krumlov (Krumlovsky Les, Moravie du sud, Rép. Tchèque). In: Service régional de l'archéologie d'Auvergne, Les matières premières lithiques en préhistoire. Table ronde internationale organisée à Aurillac (Cantal), du 20 au 22 June 2002. (= Préhistoire du Sud-Ouest, Supplement 5) [2003], pp. 245-251.
  • Colin Renfrew, The Emergence of Civilization. The Cyclades and the Aegean in the third Millennium BC (London 1972).
  • Colin Renfrew, Alternative models for exchange and spatial distribution. Chapter 4. In: T. Earle / J. Ericson (eds.), Exchange systems in prehistory (New York 1977), pp. 71-90.
  • Georg Roth, GIVE AND TAKE. An economic-historical study of the Neolithic chert mining from Abensberg-Arnhofen, Kr. Kelheim (Lower Bavaria) [in IV volumes]. Dissertation, University of Cologne 2008 [Online 2011]. [Online publication http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/4176/ ]

supporting documents

  1. ↑ Keefer, p. 99 f. (also card).
  2. ↑ De Grooth 1994a and 1994b; Roth 2008 [2011], e.g. B. 750.
  3. ↑ Roth 2008, 126–166.
  4. ↑ BURGEAP 1,992th
  5. ↑ Bach 1978, 77 tab. 40.
  6. ↑ Oliva 2003.
  7. ↑ De Grooth 1994b; Roth 2008, vol. 3.
  8. ↑ Roth 2008, Vol. 4.
  9. ↑ Renfrew 1972; Renfrew 1977.
  10. ↑ ibid., 828.

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