Wallerfangen's hand ax

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Wallerfangen's hand ax

The Paleolithic hand ax from Wallerfangen is one of the oldest evidence of the settlement history of the community of Wallerfangen and the Saargau . It is one of only four completely recovered hand axes in the Saarland , with only one other piece also made of rubble quartzite .

Find history

The stone tool was found in 2018 by an eight-year-old girl on the "Harras" parcel of the Wallerfangen community in the excavation of a newly erected road sign. After the first assessment by a regional expert, the find was reported to the Saarland State Monuments Office and handed over. After the evaluation has been completed, the hand ax will be shown in the permanent exhibition of the Historical Museum Wallerfangen in the Romans, Celts, Stone Age department .

description

The hand ax is made of slightly reddish Devonian quartzite , which occurs in the river rubble of the nearby Saar . It is approx. 139 mm long, 82 mm wide and at the thickest point (so-called globe ) approx. 42 mm thick. Since the tip has broken off minimally, an original length of approx. 145 mm can be assumed. The stone age tool has a mass of 387 grams.

Assignment

The Wallerfangen hand ax is the second completely recovered quartzite specimen in Saarland. The other example is the Hüttersdorf hand ax found in 1995 . It is assigned to the Middle Paleolithic , i.e. the middle section of the Paleolithic Age, and thus falls into the Middle to Young Pleistocene , which corresponds to an age of around 80,000 to 150,000 years. At that time, the Neanderthals lived in Central Europe . Based on the processing technique of this so-called core device, one speaks of the culture level of the Moustérien .

The much better known hand ax by Ludweiler , which was found in 1940, is typologically older .

literature

  • Constanze Höpken, Nicholas Conard : The hand ax from Wallerfangen. In: From the Stone Age to the Present - Research on Wallerfanger History , Wallerfangen 2019, pp. 83–90.

Web links

Commons : Wallerfangen hand ax  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Werner Klemm, Hans Dieter Eggers: Monumenta Rustica . Ed .: Siersburg Tourist Office. 1st edition. Conte, Siersburg 2019, ISBN 978-3-95602-209-8 , pp. 7 .
  2. ↑ Constanze Höpken, Nicholas Conard: hand ax on the wayside . In: Association of State Archaeologists Germany (Hrsg.): Archeology in Germany . No. 01 2020 . wbg, Darmstadt 2020, p. 61-62 .
  3. ↑ Constanze Höpken, Nicholas Conard: The hand ax from Wallerfangen. In: From the Stone Age to the Present - Research on Wallerfang History, published in honor of Theodor Liebertz on his 150th birthday. Association for local research Wallerfangen e. V., Wallerfangen 2019, pp. 83–90.
  4. ^ Ehrhard Grein: Rural history in Saar-Niedgau. In: SZ.de. Saarbrücker Zeitung, November 27, 2019, accessed on November 29, 2019 .