Fetzershaldenhöhle
| Fetzershaldenhöhle
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| Location: | Rammingen , Alb-Donau district , Baden-Württemberg , Germany | |
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Geographic location: |
48 ° 33 '16.9 " N , 10 ° 9' 48.8" E | |
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| Geology: | White Jura ζ , mass limestone | |
| Lighting: | no | |
The Fetzershaldenhöhle is a horizontal cave located in the Lonetal near Rammingen in the Alb-Donau district .
Geographical location
The cave is located around 18 m above the valley floor in the upper third of the right valley slope, about halfway between the Bockstein cave and the Hohlenstein barn .
Research history
The Fetzershaldenhöhle is almost completely filled with sediment , so its exact dimensions are not known. After surveys by Friedrich Seeberger and Hermann Glatzle, it was considered as a possible Paleolithic site for a probe . Investigations with the ground penetrating radar carried out in April 2013 showed a large cavity in the bedrock and were decisive for the following excavations lasting several weeks in the summers of 2013 and 2014 by employees of the Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen . At the same time, the linden cave, 50 m further east, was explored. These were the first new excavations in the Lone Valley since the abandonment of Otto Völzing's excavation in the Hohlenstein-Stadel, immediately before the start of the Second World War .
Stratigraphy and Finds
The cave and the forecourt were excavated on an area of 8 m × 2 m down to the rock at a depth of 1.8 m. Under a humus cover layer, three geological horizons (GH 1 to GH 3) could be differentiated, which consist of a mixture of dark to red-brown clayey silt and limestone rubble . The concentration of limestone rubble increases with depth and sometimes reaches a volume fraction of up to 80%. In the upper third, the loose sediment is criss-crossed by animal tunnels and roots and here, in addition to late Neolithic ceramic fragments, also exhibited relocated remains of fauna from Pleistocene animal species.
The inventory recovered during the excavations includes 53 stone artifacts , one of which has Middle Paleolithic features and two blades can be addressed as Upper Paleolithic . A fabricated from a mammoth rib trowel and a machined piece of mammoth ivory , bone coal, and cut marks on the metatarsal of a wild-Horse also validate the presence of people in the cavity. The remains of the faunas make up the far greater part of the finds measured in 1276; they mainly come from Ice Age animal species such as wild horses, reindeer , woolly rhinoceros , cave bears , cave lions and cave hyenas . Many bones are bitten open and gnawed, they were probably brought into the cave by hyenas.
Based on the range of finds, it is assumed that the cave mainly served as a hyena nest or was visited by cave bears to hibernate. People were probably only sporadically in it.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ Nicholas J. Conard, Mohsen Zeidi: Archaeological excavations in Baden-Württemberg . Ed .: State Office for Monument Preservation in the Stuttgart Regional Council. tape 2013 . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2014, ISBN 978-3-8062-0005-8 , excavations in the Fetzershaldenhöhle and the Lindenhöhle in the Lonetal as well as new finds from the Vogelherd, p. 63-67 .
- ^ Nicholas J. Conard, Alexander Janas, Mohsen Zeidi: Archaeological excavations in Baden-Württemberg . Ed .: State Office for Monument Preservation in the Stuttgart Regional Council. tape 2014 . Konrad Theiss Verlag, Stuttgart 2015, ISBN 978-3-8062-3212-7 , News from the Lone Valley: Results of excavations at the Fetzershaldenhöhle and the Vogelherd, p. 59-64 .
- ↑ Nicholas J. Conard, Michael Bolus, Ewa Dutkiewicz, Sibylle Wolf: Ice Age Archeology on the Swabian Alb . Kerns Verlag, Tübingen 2015, ISBN 978-3-935751-24-7 , The sites in the Lonetal - Fetzershaldenhöhle and Lindenhöhle, p. 184-186 .