Penknife groups

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Stone artifacts of the penknife groups

Penknife groups is a collective name for cultural groups of the Upper Palaeolithic due to their characteristic archaeological lead form, the penknife . In the history of research, the synonymous French term Azilien was used , which is now only used for penknife sites in Bavaria (there also called back tip groups or "Atzenhofer group"). The dating of sites of the spring knife groups is between approx. 12,000 and 10,800 BC. Chr.

Surname

The term was introduced in 1933 by Hendrik Jan Popping (1885–1950) after the most common type of flint tool , the penknife. The penknife groups can in turn be divided into three groups: the Tjonger group , widespread in northern Belgium and in the Netherlands ( linked to the English Creswellia ), the Rissen group (north-west Germany and north-east Netherlands) and the Wehlen group (south- Schleswig and Northeast Lower Saxony). In southern Sweden and Denmark the simultaneous phenomenon is called Bromme culture .

Spread

The spread of this culture, which emerged from the Magdalenian , took place in the climate-favored, humid Alleröd Interstadial , which was characterized by the first large-scale expansion of woody areas (pine and birch forests) after the last glacial period ( Weichselian glacial period in the north, Würm glacial period in southern Germany) . Even if the Federmesser sites are mainly to be correlated with the Alleröd Interstadial, some sites are older ( older Dryas period ) and suggest an overlap with the late Hamburg culture ( Havelte group ). Find places in the area between northern England and Denmark in the west and north and the Ukraine in the east and the foothills of the Alps were assigned to the penknife culture.

The northernmost distribution is found in Denmark:

  • Dollerup Sø
  • Egtved
  • Fogense Narrow
  • Gamst Sømose
  • Hasselø Tværvej
  • Hjärup Mose
  • Round bakke
  • Tingvad Bro

Graves

The double grave of Oberkassel dates from approx. 12,000 BC. BC to the time of the penknife groups, after it had long been  ascribed to Magdalenian IV.

Way of settlement

The way in which the mobile hunter-gatherers settled can be traced back to the extensively excavated and high-resolution analysis of storage areas. Since the individual settlement areas were mostly only used for a short time and each had specific functions, individual camps only represent small sections of the entire settlement method. Entire settlement areas with several storage areas are seldom archaeologically developed, such as B. in the Neuwied basin with the sites Niederbieber , Andernach , Urbar , Kettig , Bad Breisig . Find places of the spring knife groups in the Rhineland often have a characteristic stratigraphic marker with the tephra of the Laacher volcano .

The most important game was stag, elk, beaver and aurochs , occasionally reindeer and giant deer . Herds of ungulates ( wild horses ) in the open country had largely disappeared. Woolly mammoth and woolly rhinoceros had largely disappeared in the course of the Quaternary extinction wave at the end of the last Ice Age and were only found in the steppe zones of Eastern Europe and Siberia.

inventory

Leading forms are penknives (back tips), back knives, burins , tips and scratches made of flint .

In the penknife horizon, the amber animal from Weitsche is one of the rare small works of art. It is a representation of a cow elk .

Well-known sites are Weitsche, Niederbieber on the Middle Rhine and Rekem in Belgium.

literature

  • Gerhard Bosinski : The great time of the ice age hunters. Europe between 40,000 and 10,000 BC Chr. Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum Mainz, Vol 34, Mainz, 1987, pp 13-139.
  • Michael Baales : The late Paleolithic site Kettig. Investigations into the settlement archeology of the Federmesser groups on the Middle Rhine. Monographs of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum Mainz, Volume 51, Mainz 2002.
  • Frank Gelhausen: Settlement patterns of all-time penknife groups in Niederbieber, Neuwied town. Monographs of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum Mainz, Volume 90, Mainz 2011.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ M. Beck, S. Beckert, S. Feldmann, B. Kaulich, C. Pasda: The late Palaeolithic and Mesolithic in Franconia and the Upper Palatinate. Report of the Bavarian Ground Monument Care 50, 2009, pp. 269–291.
  2. ↑ Werner Schönweiss: Last Ice Age Hunters in the Upper Palatinate: For the distribution of the Atzenhofer group of the End Palaeolithic in Northern Bavaria. Verlag E. Bodner, Pressath 1992, ISBN 978-3-926817-16-7 , 124 pp.
  3. ↑ O. Jöris, B. Weninger: 14C age calibration and the absolute chronology of the late glacial. In: Archaeological correspondence sheet. 30, 2000, pp. 461-471.
  4. ↑ DDL Stoop: Federmesser mobility patterns in the Western Meuse area, Limburg, the Netherlands: the case studies of Horn-Haelen and Heythuysen-de Fransman I , MA-Thesis, Leiden 2014, p. 27.
  5. ^ Frank Gelhausen: Settlement patterns of all-time penknife groups in Niederbieber, City of Neuwied. Monographs of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum Mainz, Volume 90, 2011.
  6. ^ Stephan Veil, Klaus Breest: The archaeological context of the art objects from the Federmesser site of Weitsche, Ldkr. Lüchow-Dannenberg, Lower Saxony (Germany) - a preliminary report. In: Eriksen, Bratlund: Recent Studies in the Final Palaeolithic of the European Plain. Aarhus University, 2002, pp. 129-138.
  7. ^ S. Veil & K. Breest: Die Kunde NF 51, 2000, p. 179.