Buhlen hunting station
The Buhlen hunting station in Edertal - Buhlen is a Middle Paleolithic dwelling place of the Neanderthal man in the valley of the Netze in the north Hessian district Waldeck-Frankenberg , in Germany .
The Buhlener Felsen was settled mainly during the cold sections of the younger ice age . In the tundra , big game herds found a rich food supply and the Neanderthals found a strategically suitable hunting station. Buhlen became known among the 130 Neanderthal sites as the site with the most numerous animal bones, wedge knives and artistic artefacts . The finds are exhibited in the Hessian State Museum in Kassel .
history
In 1906, when the road from Wildungen to Waldeck , (today's federal highway 485 ) was expanded, north of Buhlen, reindeer antlers were found. For a long time it was not clear about the significance of these finds. There were mammoth - reindeer, elk - and woolly -Funde for dating used. In addition, the sediment layers were used for dating.
Based on studies by geologists Manfred Horn and Jens Kulick, the reindeer antlers were first associated with human settlement history. In 1965 Kulick carried out the first soundings and excavations to clarify the stratigraphic situation. Gerhard Bosinski examined the site from 1965 to 1969 . Further excavations were carried out by the Hessian State Office for Monument Preservation . Investigations at the lower living space at the foot of the limestone rock should provide information about the location and distribution of stone and animal tools. In 2004 the site was dug up again by the State Office for the Preservation of Monuments, and more animal bones from the Paleolithic were discovered . A toe bone was found from a Neanderthal girl.
geology
Coming from the plateau, the floodplain of the Netze flows into the broad Eder lowlands after a few kilometers. The floodplain is filled with Ice Age and Post Ice Age sediments , some of which were deposited by the stream itself, and some of which were washed off the slopes. In 1908 the front part of the limestone "Hundsköppel" was blown away for the road expansion in the area of today's federal highway 485. This dolomite rock has different hard parts, which has led to a stepped weathering in some places, so that overhang-like shapes were created. On the southern slope of the Hundsköppel there is a mighty loess package , ice-age rock dust that was deposited in the lee of the dolomite rock. The loess became paralyzed by being washed out and the nets shifted in places. The hillside loess covered the gravel of the nets. This is evidenced by the cold-age transport of frost protection, the sandstone , which was usually rounded to form rubble , which was so strong that a barrier was created before the confluence of the nets into the Eder , which led to the terrace-like filling of the valley floor. A breakthrough occurred in the later phase of the Ice Age, and the nets flushed the valley back to a lower level. The upper gravel lies on high-tide loam, which in turn lies on slope loess. In addition, the boundary of the old ballast is cut in the Buhlen profile, because down the slope the gravel layers interlock with the sediments. At this point the nets hit the loess slope, and gravel and draining clay overlapped in the bank area. The loamy soil formation prevented the slope from being washed deeper. The underlying cultural horizons are accompanied by blocks of frost rubble and are separated in the deeper part by an inconspicuous, only sporadic and at most 5 cm thick layer of 50,000-year-old volcanic drift sand , which is likely to come from the Eifel . The culture layers marked with small charcoal are closed at the bottom by a red gravel. Below this is the dolomite rock, which, however, is weathered in these layers and encloses an older loess of yellowish color in former cavities. The oldest finds were found in these layers.
Buhlen site
The site consists of an upper and a lower living area . The Middle Paleolithic Neanderthal site is a place to live and a hunting station for hunters and gatherers of a large family. The Neanderthals lived both on the dolomite rock and on its slope. They built tent-like huts and fire pits. They used furs as clothing. Hides and wooden implements were worked with stone tools. They extracted the raw material silica slate , carnelian and quartzite from the rubble of the Eder and nets. They also set up their resting place on the flat apron. The culture layers of the lower one can also be found in a comparable sequence on the upper site. The temporal and typological graduation of the two sites corresponds and could reach a span of 100,000 years.
The upper, younger horizons belong to the middle of the last glacial period and are estimated to be 50,000 years old. It is a Middle Paleolithic residential area. It cannot currently be proven whether the users of the next lower find horizon were also Neanderthals. The tools of this time are made less of flakes than of flatly hewn core pieces and differ significantly from the higher-lying finds. The finds from the lower stratum can be classified chronologically in the last glacial period and should therefore be 70,000 years old. An even deeper find horizon in which small animal remains were found can probably be dated to the Eem warm period. The finds are therefore around 100,000 years old. The oldest devices are finds from the loess under the gravel layer, which are 200,000 years old. In all cultural strata there are numerous testimonies of Ice Age animals that served as food for humans. Mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, bison , wild horse , reindeer, deer and bear were found .
On the lower site of the find, fireplaces could be detected that were surrounded by partially bricked dolomite chunks and interspersed with clear layers of charcoal. In the Cold Age, which was poor in wood, the Neanderthals added broken bones to the fire as fuel. The stone tools and the waste from their manufacture consist mainly of silica slate found in the gravel of the Eder. There are also devices made of carnelian , quartzite and, more rarely, flint . The top layer of the find is marked by scrapers , toothed pieces, points, blades and sickles . Typologically, these forms belong to a late pattern . Bone implements made by chipping were found in all layers. There are pointed pieces suitable for pricking or digging and others with more or less sharp edges for chopping and scraping. Retouchers who worked on the edges of the stoneware were often made of bone and were found just as often. The lower horizons belong to the cultural context of the Micoquien .
The hunters used different techniques to work stones. 150 stone wedge knives were found. The most important stone tools were made from one piece by hewing both surfaces. Tack-off devices play a subordinate role, but there are simple scrapers, broad scrapers and small, basal, retouched tips. The found wedge knives and hand ax blades were hacked off through a blade-shaped split along the retouched edge in order to produce a straight edge. Tools made with this technique were used to butcher meat and cut leather . The scrapers were used for woodworking hunting weapons . The deepest find horizons did not yield any tool types that allow a cultural assignment. Core stones and chips and a small number of scrapers were found. These finds are to be distinguished from the finds of the Micoquienkreises, which were made at this site using the Levallois technique. This process was developed to produce even cuts and blades from prepared cores in the penultimate glacial complex.
Coordinates: 51 ° 11 ′ 26 ″ N , 9 ° 5 ′ 12 ″ E
literature
- Doris Walther: A settlement site of the Neanderthal near Buhlen, Kr. Waldeck-Frankenberg . In: History sheets for Waldeck . Vol. 93, 2005, pp. 6-25.
- Doris Walther: The Middle Paleolithic and the Neanderthals using the example of the Edertal / Buhlen site. Lecture at the Kurhessische Gesellschaft for Art and Science Kassel. Hessisches Landesmuseum, February 9, 2007.
- Lutz Fiedler: Buhlen, Gde. Edertal, Waldeck-Frankenberg district - Paleolithic hunting station. Leaflet on the Middle Paleolithic site and the new excavations in 1980. (Archaeological Monuments in Hessen, Issue 18.) State Office for Monument Preservation Hessen, Wiesbaden, 1981, ISBN 3-89822-018-4 .
- Eduard Brauns: Hiking and travel guide through North Hesse and Waldeck. Bernecker, Melsungen 1971, p. 144.