Micoquiae

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Micoque wedge

The Micoquien is an archaeological culture of the Neanderthals in Central and Western Europe, named after the southern French site " La Micoque " near Les Eyzies-de-Tayac-Sireuil , the focus of which is in the late Middle Paleolithic (approx. 60,000 - 40,000 before today). More recent research in Micoquian only a stone tool - industry , the overlapping in time with the culture of Moustérien occurred. The leading forms are the wedge knife and the micoque wedge , a special hand ax type. Although the first wedge knife inventories were found in the Eem warm period (130,000 - 115,000 before today) and in the early section of the Würm and Weichsel Ice Ages, most of the sites in Central and Western Europe date to the late Neanderthal period.

Material culture

Technologically, the Micoquien is characterized by the appearance of asymmetrical hand axes, which are called "wedge knives" because of their blunt back. Wedge knives in their typical form have a chronological leading character. Other Micoquian tools, such as scrapers and small hand axes, have similarities to both the Late Acheuleans and the Moustérians. The hand axes from the La Micoque site often have a rounded, talon-shaped base and led to the introduction of the term “micoque wedge” for this type ( see illustration ).

The micoquia term

The Micoqien culture was named after the archaeologist and art dealer Otto Hauser , who first used the term in 1906 and obtained his doctorate in 1916 at the University of Erlangen with a dissertation on the Micoquien culture. Hauser sold an estimated well over 100 of these Micoque wedges, which he found during the excavations in La Micoque, to museums and collectors.

The problem with the term Micoquien is that later excavations have revealed the much older date of the Micoque wedges at the La Micoque site, which now date to the Riss Cold Age. As early as 1932, Henri Breuil assigned the Micoquien layer, referred to by Otto Hauser as "Layer 6", to the Acheuléen for the first time . Since the Keilmesser inventories increasingly turned out to be the latest stage of the Acheuléen, the type locality originally propagated by Hauser is chronologically rather unsuitable. Therefore, some archaeologists today use the term wedge knife groups for the chronologically vague term micoquien instead . The term Keilmessergruppen also reflects the distribution area in Central and Eastern Europe, which is geographically demarcated from the simultaneous Micoquia of southwest France. Important sites in Germany are the Balver Cave (North Rhine-Westphalia), the Bockstein in the Lone Valley (Baden-Württemberg), the Lichtenberg site (Lower Saxony) and the Sesselfelsgrotte in Altmühltal (Bavaria).

literature

  • Debénath, A .; Rigaud, J.-Ph., Le gisement de La Micoque. - in: Rigaud, J.-Ph. (dir.): Information archéologiques: circonscription d'Aquitaine; Gallia Prehist. 29 (1986). Paris (CNRS). Pp. 236-237
  • Debénath, A .; Rigaud, J.-Ph., La Micoque. Gallia Informations Préhistoire et Histoire 1 (1991). Paris (CNRS), pp. 21-25
  • Peyrony, D., La Micoque et ses diverse industries. XVe Congrès International d'Anthropologie et d'Archéologie Préhistorique (suite), Ve Session de l'Institut International d'Anthropologie; Paris September 20-27, 1931; Librairie E. Nourry, Paris (1933). Pp. 1-6
  • Peyrony, D., La Micoque. Les fouilles récentes. Leur signification. Bulletin de la Société Préhistorique Française 35 (1938). Pp. 121, 257-288

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Hauser: La Micoque (Dordogne), and their results for the knowledge of the Paleolithic culture. (1st part), Basel, 1906-1907.
  2. ↑ Otto Hauser: About a new chronology of the middle Paleolithic in the Vézèretal. Dissertation at the University of Erlangen, 1916
  3. ↑ Otto Hauser: La Micoque, the culture of a new Diluvialrace. Leipzig, 1916
  4. ^ Rolland, N .: Recent Findings from La Micoque and other Sites in South-Western and Mediterranean France: Their Bearing on the "Tayacian" Problem and Middle Palaeolithic Emergence. - In: Bailey and Callow (Ed.): Stone Age Prehistory. Studies in Memory of Charles McBurney. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1986, pp. 121-151
  5. ↑ Gaelle Rosendahl: La Micoque and the Micoquien in the Paleolithic collections of the Reiss Museum Mannheim. Mannheimer Geschichtsblätter (New Series), No. 6, 1999, pp. 315–351
  6. ↑ Olaf Jöris: On the chronostratigraphic position of the late Middle Paleolithic groups of wedge knives. The attempt to delimit a Middle Paleolithic group of forms and their European context in terms of cultural geography. Reports of the Roman-Germanic Commission, Volume 84, 2003, p. 49 ff.
  7. ↑ Stephan Veil (Ed.): 55,000 years ago: A hunting ground for people in the past near Lichtenberg, Lüchow-Dannenberg district. Isensee, 1995, ISBN 3-89598-274-1

Web links

Commons : Micoquien  - collection of images, videos and audio files