La Hoguette group

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The La Hoguette group or La Hoguette culture , often also the La Hoguette group , is an archaeological culture or group of finds from the oldest Neolithic in Eastern France . It is named after the French town of La Hoguette in the Calvados department in Normandy on the far western edge of the well-known distribution area. The name was introduced to archaeological research in 1983 by the French prehistorian Christian Jeunesse .

The La Hoguette Group is the oldest ceramic-leading group in the region, with radiocarbon dates essentially from 5800 to 5500 BC. The ceramics are occasionally proven up to the time of the late linear ceramics . To the west of it exist at the same time: the cultural group Villeneuve-Saint-Germain (VSG) ( French Néolithique ancien ) and the group “Néolithique ancien atlantique” spread at the Loire estuary . All three are offshoots (epicardial) of the cardial or imprint culture widespread in southern France and in the western Mediterranean region . The La Hoguette group is considered a pastoral culture.

distribution

The La Hoguette group goes back to the western route of agricultural expansion to Europe. While the culture of the band ceramics, which was more strongly influenced by agriculture, came over the Aegean Sea and the Balkans, the knowledge of the La Hoguette culture based more on livestock farming spread over North Africa and the western Mediterranean region.

The La Hoguette group was mainly found in the catchment area of ​​the Meuse , Moselle and Rhine . In the west there are only two sites on the Meuse and the eponymous site in the Calvados department (west of the Seine estuary ). In the south, the Grotte du Gardon ( Dep. Ain , north of Lyon ) is the most distant point of discovery and in the north the course of the Lippe is the border. Finds from Franconia form the eastern border . In 2010, La-Hoguette ceramics were also found in a band ceramic settlement near Uffenheim .

The concentration of the finds in the area of ​​overlap with the Bandkeramik (LBK) is probably not representative of the former overall distribution, in that apparently hardly any pits were dug by the sponsors of the La Hoguette group. On the surface, shards weather very quickly, so they only survive in a protected location such as in caves ( Grotte du Gardon or Bavans ), under a younger megalithic grave (La Hoguette) or sedimented on a slope foot ( Liestal , Cannstatt ). The lack of massive and frequent ground interventions clearly distinguishes the wearers of the La Hoguette group and the producers of Limburg ceramics (see below) from the band ceramists. However, if La Hoguette shards got into ceramic pits, they were preserved there. This implies direct contact between the cultures or the subsequent use of an abandoned settlement area of ​​La Hoguette by band ceramists. In the distribution area on the left bank of the Rhine, La Hoguette ceramics are more likely to be found together with a younger band ceramics or independently, in the eastern distribution area, on the other hand, they are almost always associated with a stylistically older band ceramics.

Material culture

Little more is known of the La Hoguette Group than their ceramics, which differ significantly from the band ceramics in terms of color, shape and decor. This is characterized by stitching decorations in ribbons or garlands, some of which are accompanied by plastic strips. Similar puncture decorations, but without plastic additions, can also be found in the West Mediterranean cardial or imprint culture . The only good parallel, however, is only offered by the Leucate-Corrège (Languedoc) site, which is difficult to date. Another typical feature is the emaciation of the bones in the pottery, which can also be found in the chronologically partly younger Limburg group and in the Blicquy and Villeneuve-Saint-Germain group . Bone emaciation is an element that appears at best sporadically in the western Mediterranean region. A cultural influence of the bearers of the cardial or imprint culture on the bearers of the La Hoguette group and thus an origin from the western Mediterranean and a very early migration up the Rhone - be it of ideas, cultural techniques or people - is nevertheless very likely.

The lithic industry is evidenced by triangular arrowheads in Bruchenbrücken and Cannstatt . Dorsally reduced blades with smooth and never faceted remnants of the face point to Mesolithic traditions, as evidenced in Switzerland and south-eastern France.

Settlements

So far, La Hoguette pottery has mainly been found in settlements of the oldest and older ribbon ceramics, but there are also finds together with younger ribbon ceramics, almost all of which are in the western area of ​​distribution. There are only a few sites where La Hoguette pottery was not found together with ribbon pottery:

  • the eponymous site of La Hoguette in the Dép. Calvados, France,
  • Anröchte and Bad Sassendorf , Germany,
  • Liestal -Hurlistrasse, Switzerland (shards and cylindrical long ax),
  • Grotte du Gardon, Dep. Ain, France,
  • Found at Wilhelma in Bad Cannstatt
  • Sweikhuizen, Limburg Province , The Netherlands

A richly decorated egg-shaped vessel from the La Hoguette group from Dautenheim, district of Alzey-Worms, shown in the Alzey Museum , comes with the remains of five other vessels from an old excavation with unclear find conditions.

Other sites are Assenheim , Friedberg-Bruchenbrücken, Goddelau , Gerlingen , Nackenheim.

Graves

There are no graves or skeleton finds so far. However, the new dating of the skull finds from the Hohlenstein near Asselfingen in the Lone Valley northeast of Ulm shows that the victims must be settled very close to the beginning of the Neolithic area. On the approximately 7,800-year-old skulls of a 20 to 30-year-old man, an approximately 20-year-old woman and an approximately 4-year-old deformed child (water head), it was found that the neck had been severed from front to back. The adults have punch marks in the area of ​​the temples as if from a club. The child was killed by a blow to the head. Whether the skulls are attributable to Mesolithic hunters and gatherers or members of the La Hoguette group cannot be determined by dating alone.

Economy

Finds from Wilhelma (Stuttgart) prove knowledge of domestic animals. Perhaps the bristle poppy was also brought from the Mediterranean to Western Europe by the carriers of the La Hoguette culture. It was already noticed decades ago that poppy seeds, which come from the western Mediterranean, were only grown in the western area of ​​the ribbon ceramics . In 1982 it was still inexplicable how poppy seeds got from Spain or the south of France to the Rhineland, but the La Hoguette Group is a possible "transporter".

Some researchers also associate La Hoguette pottery with early human influences on vegetation. Various botanical and pollen analysis studies show that the people north of the Alps cleared forests and planted plants even before the band ceramics. However, as finds from Wallisellen near Zurich show, this process does not begin with the beginning of La Hoguette in Central Europe, but as early as 6900 BC. This means that about 1500 years before the establishment of arable farming in Central Europe, but also 1000 years before the beginning of the Cardial culture in southern France , at least the basic principles of plant cultivation were known in Central Europe. How and how this knowledge and plant seeds came from the Middle East to the area north of the Alps is unknown.

Linear ceramics, La Hoguette and Limburg

In the east of its distribution area (Upper Rhine area, Rhineland, central Neckar and Main Franconia), La Hoguette ceramics usually appear in association with the oldest, and occasionally older, ribbon ceramics. The question of to what extent La Hoguette reflects a group of people - perhaps even immigrating from the southwest - (problem of ethnic interpretation ) or whether it is just a competing style within a society has not yet been clearly answered. With the current state of research, contacts between the two cultures become clear. Apart from the frequent socialization, in which the regionally different preservation conditions could have an effect, from the oldest band ceramic sites Goddelau , Bruchenbrücken and Zilgendorf, for example, oldest band ceramic imitations of La Hoguette decorations are known, from Friedberg Bruchenbrücken also undecorated La Hoguette ceramics, which - otherwise largely absent - could be seen as a direct ceramic influence on LaHoguette pottery. The relatively quick disappearance of the La Hoguette culture in the east of the distribution area can possibly be traced back to the superior technical equipment of the band ceramists, who probably already worked with ox and plow, although the question then arises why their culture in the west so far Should have survived the end of the band ceramic.

It is difficult to assess the relationship between the La Hoguette group and the Limburg group , also known today as the Rhine-Maas-Scheldt Mesolithic , which - albeit less pronounced - contains elements of the cardial like La Hoguette. The focus of the Limburg group's discovery lies in the northwest of the distribution zone of La Hoguette within its original distribution area, as the independent Sweikhuizen site in Dutch Limburg proves. Since Limburg ceramics only appear in an older to younger band ceramic find context west of the Rhine, the question has been raised for some time whether it reflects at least a local chronological sequence La Hoguette - Limburg, or whether it is an independent epicardial group . At the moment it seems as if the Limburg group should be seen as an independent regional group, which is also reflected in the prevalence of asymmetrical trapezoid blades. Since the end of the Mesolithic, bipolarity has crystallized in Central Europe, in which trapezoids lateralized to the right in what was later to become the Limburg region and lateralized to the left in the Hoguette region.

The points of connection between the La Hoguette ceramics and the western Mediterranean cardial or imprint ceramics certainly point to influences that appear alien in the linear ceramics with their Danube background. Towards the end of the ribbon ceramics, more and more elements appear which suggest that the ribbon ceramics itself was subject to Mediterranean influences, which is particularly evident in the west-east drift of the tremolating stitch pattern on the ribbon ceramics.

Interestingly, with the Cerny culture and the Blicquy and Villeneuve-Saint-Germain group (VSG) in the Paris basin, Middle Neolithic successor groups of the RRBP (Rubané récent du Bassin Parisien) appear, which suggest that a synthesis between cardiac influences, the band ceramics as well the Limburg culture took place. As the sources progress, it becomes apparent that the early Neolithic population of Central Europe was in a lively exchange.

literature

General

  • Maria Cladders: The earthenware of the oldest band ceramics. Studies on the temporal and spatial structure , Bonn 2001
  • Claude Constantin: Fin du rubané, céramique du Limbourg et post-rubané. Le neolithique le plus ancien en Bassin Parisien et en Hainaut British Archaeological Reports, Internat. Ser. 273 (1985)
  • Christian Jeunesse: La Céramique de la Hoguette. Un new “élément non-rubané” you neolithiqie ancien de l'Europe du Nord-Ouest , in: Cahiers Alsaciens d'Archéologie, d'Art et d'Histoire 30 (1987) 3-33.
  • Jens Lüning , Ulrich Kloos, Siegfried Albert: Western neighbors of the ceramic band culture: The ceramic groups La Hoguette and Limburg , in: Germania 67 (1989) 355-420
  • Ernst Probst: Germany in the Stone Age: Hunters, fishermen and farmers between the North Sea coast and the Alpine region , Munich 1999 ISBN 3-570-02669-8 p. 269
  • Jürg Sedlmeier: New findings on the Neolithic in Northwestern Switzerland, in: Archeology of Switzerland 26.4 (2003) 2-14

For early cultivation

  • Christiane Erny-Rodmann, Eduard Klee-Gross, Jean Nicolas Haas, Stefanie Jacomet, Heinrich Zoller: Formerly 'human impact' in the transition area between the Late Mesolithic and Early Neolithic in the Swiss Plateau , in: Yearbook of the Swiss Society for Prehistory and Early History 80 (1997) 27 -56
  • Corrie C. Bakels: The poppy, the linear ceramic band and the western Mediterranean area , in: Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 12 (1982) 11-13

Remarks

  1. ↑ Jens Lüning , Ulrich Kloos, Siegfried Albert: Western neighbors of the ceramic band culture: La Hoguette and Limburg 1989
  2. ↑ Almut Bick: The Stone Age . Theiss WissenKompakt, Stuttgart 2006. ISBN 3-8062-1996-6
  3. ^ Andreas Tillmann: Continuity or discontinuity? On the question of a ceramic land acquisition in southern Central Europe , in: Archäologische Informations 16 (1993) 157–187.
  4. ↑ Hans-Christoph Strien, Andreas Tillmann: The La Hoguette site from Stuttgart-Bad Cannstatt: Archeology , in: Birgit Gehlen, Martin Heinen, Andreas Tillmann (eds.): Zeit-Raum. Commemorative publication for Wolfgang Taute , 2 volumes, Bonn 2001, pp. 673–681 ( online , PDF).

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