Petersfels
The Petersfels is a rock formation with caves in the Jura in the "Brudertal", a dry valley in Hegau near Engen in the district of Constance . Significant finds from the Upper Paleolithic were made in the former hunting station used by reindeer hunters .
Research history
In search of the infiltration points of the Danube near Aach, the retired Chief Post Councilor Eduard Peters explored the Wasserburgertal and the area around the Brudertal together with the geologist and paleontologist Wilhelm Deecke . On August 18, 1927, while searching for sites from the Stone Age, Eduard Peters found the first evidence of a Stone Age station, and in two subsequent excavations he explored this site. In 1930 he published a work about it. Financing by the city of Engen, which wanted to open a local history museum, allowed a third excavation together with the Freiburg geologist and prehistoric historian Volker Toepfer in 1932. The scientific director of the Unteruhldinger Pfahlbaumuseum, Hans Reinerth, and a shoemaker have chosen to discover the previously unnamed Petersfels Singen, P. Dreher, who said they had found finds here in earlier years, have reported.
Interrupted by the Second World War, Hans Reinerth started again with probes in the 1960s and W. Schiele discovered a child burial of the Magdalenian . In the 1970s, Reinerth made excavator cuts in the Brudertal. In the years that followed, many amateurs searched the area, so the Freiburg Monuments Office decided to dig again. From 1974 to 1979 the Institute for Prehistory at the University of Tübingen carried out the scientific excavations at Petersfels under the local direction of Gerd Albrecht. In four campaigns, the still undisturbed shifts were examined with specialist students.
Finds
Peters has recovered extensive finds, 1,000 bone and antler tools, 50,000 flint artifacts , 1.5 tons of bones from Ice Age animals. The finds of Magdalenian art from Gagat and incised drawings of reindeer consecrated to reindeer have become important , these are similar to the finds from the Kesslerloch .
Unlike other sites, such as the by the discovery of the Venus of Hohle Fels became famous in 2008 Locality Hohle Fels , no finds from here were mammoth - ivory discovered. Peters described some ivory bone slices, but this is not certain.
Former hunting station
About 13,000 to 11,800 years ago ( geologically in the Young Pleistocene ), reindeer, which moved north in herds in autumn, were hunted here almost exclusively . During this glacial period , the Würm glacial period , the mean temperature was around -3 ° C (today + 7 °). The well manageable tubular terrain of the Brudertal, located below the Petersfels, forms a narrow point here, a natural trap, which may have made it possible to catch many animals at once. In addition to reindeer, mountain hares in particular were hunted, the bones of which were then used to make needles for sewing clothing and making shelters from reindeer skin . Wild horse bones were also found .
In the cold phase ( Older Dryas Period 11,590–11,400 BC), carriers of the Hamburg culture evidently migrated from the North German Plain to the low mountain range. Evidence for this is provided, for example, by typical notch tips at the Petersfels site.
Ice Age Park Engen
The Engen Ice Age Park was created in the area around the Petersfels, and events on the Stone Age are held here.
Museum Engen
Some finds are exhibited in the Badisches Landesmuseum in Karlsruhe and in the Museum of the City of Engen, the course of hunting and life in the Brudertal in the Stone Age are reproduced in dioramas , and the work of the archaeologists during the excavations is also documented in this way. There are also several Venus figurines from Petersfels on display .
literature
- Eduard Peters: The paleolithic cultural site Petersfels , Augsburg 1930.
- Gerd Albrecht: Magdalenian inventories from the Petersfels. Settlement archeological results of the excavations 1974-1976 . Publishing house Archaeologica Venatoria, Institute for Prehistory of the University of Tübingen, Tübingen 1979.
- Gerd Albrecht, Hubert Berke: "New Venus' engravings on a bone fragment from the Magdalénien vom Petersfels", In: Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt 10, 1980, pp. 111-115.
- Gerd Albrecht, Heidi Engelhardt: Ice Age finds from the Brudertal near Engen. Stone Age settlement of the Swabian Alb. Booklet accompanying the prehistoric exhibition Engen / Hegau . In: Bulletin of the Archaeologica Venatoria 13th special issue . Tübingen 1988.
- Gerd Albrecht and Andrea Hahn, with contributions by A. Schreiner and G. Dieterich, reindeer hunters in the Brudertal, the Upper Palaeolithic sites around the Petersfels and the Municipal Museum Engen im Hegau (= Guide to Archaeological Monuments in Baden Württemberg Volume 15) Theiss, Stuttgart 1991 , ISBN 3-8062-1002-0 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ State education server Baden-Württemberg: Paleolithic at the local example Petersfels bei Engen , accessed on April 6, 2015
Coordinates: 47 ° 51 ′ 39.71 " N , 8 ° 48 ′ 23.04" E