Hand ax from the Goitzsche

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The hand ax from the Goitzsche is, like most of the 40 known hand axes in Saxony-Anhalt , flat and has parallel surfaces. The artifact comes from the eponymous Goitzsche, a former, around 760 ha large floodplain forest , which stretched around 5 km southeast of Bitterfeld . The device is made of gray flint ; it is designed symmetrically, machined on both surfaces, and ellipsoid . Originated in the Glaciation of the Vistula , it is assigned to the Neanderthals . This makes it one of the youngest hand axes in the country, but also the largest. He was found by Günther Lochner.

Dimensions, processing marks

The device weighs 395.5 g and measures 16.3 cm in length, only 8.9 cm in width and only 2.8 cm in thickness. The upper edge is rounded and slightly splintered. It is a little thinner than the middle part of the piece and has the remainder of a slightly weathered knock-off surface on the ventral side, which appears to be older. The lower end of the hand ax is thicker and more pointed, and quite large cuts have been cut off on both sides. The dorsal surface has a more pronounced convex shape than the ventral surface on which the elevations were made.

The edges were processed alternately - except in the edge area and in the upper third of the right edge. The left edge was trimmed coarser than the right and has a kind of wavy line. The upper and the right edge have been finely finished as a cutting edge. Isolated remaining areas indicate that the fine-tuning of the pages may not have been completed. On the ventral side, two small cavities were exposed in the upper right area during the strike. Despite this incompleteness, the hand ax seems to have been used. The shape is similar to two hand axes from Barleben ( district of Börde ) and Mosigkau as well as pieces from the Löbnitz gravel works in Saxony.

Repository

The hand ax is in the paleolithic and mesolithic collection of the State Office for Monument Preservation and Archeology Saxony-Anhalt .

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Jean-Marie Le Tensorer : Faustkeile , in: Harald Floss (Ed.): Steinartefakte. From the Old Paleolithic to the Modern Age , Tübingen 2012, pp. 209–218, here: p. 212.