Hartmut Thieme

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The archaeologist Hartmut Thieme (left) explains the find situation of Speer VI of the Schöninger Speere to the then mining director of the Braunschweigischen Kohlen-Bergwerke AG Klaus Friedrich

Hartmut Thieme (born November 20, 1947 in Oberhausen ) is a German prehistoric archaeologist who worked for the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation from 1981 until his retirement in 2012 . His specialty was the Paleolithic . In 1994 he discovered the Paleolithic Schöningen spears during excavations in the Schöningen open-cast lignite mine .

Life

After graduating from high school in 1966, Hartmut Thieme did his military service in the armed forces. At the Ruhr University in Bochum , he studied English and geography for higher education as well as law . Inspired by lectures by Gerhard Mildenberger on Celtic Oppida , he changed his subjects. From 1969 he studied prehistory and early history at the University of Cologne with a minor in Quaternary geology and ethnology .

Thiemes interest in Paleolithic research was shaped by participation in excavations at the Upper Paleolithic Gönnersdorf site . As a student, Hartmut Thieme was involved in numerous other excavations, such as investigations of the Aldenhovener Platte in the Rhenish lignite mining area . Between 1973 and 1981 he carried out his own prospecting and excavations in the brickworks mine of Rheindahlen , which were based on ancient and middle Paleolithic find horizons. This topic was the subject of his dissertation, published in 1983, “The Palaeolithic Rheindahlen site”. After completing his studies, Hartmut Thieme worked on the processing of a paleolithic site for the Schlossparkmuseum in Bad Kreuznach .

In 1981 he moved to a position for the Palaeolithic and Middle Stone Age at the Institute for Monument Preservation in Hanover, which was still under construction at the time and later renamed the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation. In 1982 Thieme and Mamoun Fansa carried out the archaeological investigations of the earthworks at Esbeck near Schöningen. This excavation initiated the long-term project of archaeological focus investigations in the Helmstedt lignite district , which began in 1983 and ended in 2013 . The major archaeological project managed by Hartmut Thieme in collaboration with Braunschweigische Kohlen-Bergwerke AG led to year-round rescue excavations on the approximately 6 square kilometers of the Schöningen open-cast lignite mine. In the process, sites from the Neolithic , Bronze Age and Iron Age were largely discovered and excavated.

As from 1992 bucket wheel of Schöninger pit soil profiles from the Paleolithic aufschlossen , Thieme watched them systematically. In 1994 he discovered a camp site for Stone Age hunters on a lake shore around 300,000 years ago, where the Schöningen spears were also found. In 2009, after 27 years of excavation work in Schöningen, Thieme relinquished the management of the excavation and returned to the State Office in Hanover, where in his final years of service until 2012 he dealt with the evaluation of his long-term excavations.

Memberships

Writings and contributions (selection)

  • The palaeolithic discovery site Rheindahlen , 1983, dissertation doi: 10.11588 / ai.1973.0.28838
  • with Stephan Veil: New studies on the Eemzeit elephant hunting ground Lehringen, Ldkr. Verden. Die Kunde 36, 1985, pp. 11-58.
  • with Reinhard Maier: Archaeological excavations in the Schöningen open-cast lignite mine. Hahn, Hannover 1995, ISBN 3-7752-5640-7 .
  • Lower Palaeolithic hunting spears from Germany. In: Nature . Volume 385, 1997, pp. 807-10, doi: 10.1038 / 385807a0
  • Old Paleolithic wooden tools from Schöningen, district of Helmstedt. Significant finds on the cultural development of early humans. In: Germania. Volume 77, 1999, pp. 451-487.
  • The Lower Palaeolithic art of hunting. The case of Schöningen 13 II-4, Lower Saxony, Germany. In: C. Gamble, M. Porr (eds.): The hominid individual in context. Archaeological investigations of Lower and Middle Palaeolithic landscapes, locales and artefacts. Oxford 2005, pp. 115-132.
  • as editor: The Schöninger Speere. Humans and hunting 400,000 years ago , Stuttgart, 2007 ( review )

literature

Web links

personal data
SURNAME Thieme, Hartmut
BRIEF DESCRIPTION German prehistoric archaeologist
DATE OF BIRTH November 20, 1947
PLACE OF BIRTH Oberhausen