Geoarchäologie

Hohle Fels

Overview

Hohle Fels Cave (southwestern Germany) is a site of considerable archaeological importance. Set in the landscape of the Ach Valley, it is part of a larger archaeological landscape of the Swabian Alb, recognized by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site for the exceptional nature of its deposits. The cave has a long history of archaeological research that began in the late 19th century under the supervision of Oscar Fraas and Theodor Hartmann and continues today under the direction of Nicholas Conard.

In Hohle Fels and other sites in the region, the caves are infilled with calcareous loess which later becomes phosphatized. It was the identification of such phosphatized sediment in drill cores from the valley floor that enabled Barbieri and colleagues to identify material eroded from the caves. Photograph from a micromorphology sample under plane-polarized light

Geoarchaeology at Hohle Fels

The geoarchaeological work conducted at Hohle Fels has shed light not only on the depositional and post-depositional processes that led to the formation of the deposits but also provided important insights into the human occupation of the cave. Investigations by Goldberg (2003) and Miller (2015) focused on the site formation processes that characterized the cave and developed a depositional model of the site. However, this model did not explain the erosional contact observed between the Gravettian and Magdalenian layers.

As part of his PhD thesis, Alvise Barbieri (et al. 2018, 2021) showed that landscape formation in the Ach Valley during the Pleistocene and Holocene included stages of soil formation, slope denudation, river valley incision, and floodplain aggradation, which led to the erosion of archaeological deposits within the caves. In parallel, the research team also analyzed the anthropogenic nature of the deposits.

In 2003, Schiegl and colleagues performed a micro-contextual analysis of GH 3cf (a Gravettian layer rich in burnt bone fragments), attributing this layer to intentional dumping from multiple hearths. Further analyses by Miller (2015) and Marcazzan (2022) focused on other combustion features, revealing that dumping practices at Hohle Fels were part of a broader cultural and behavioral system aimed at maintaining hygiene and upkeep within the site. This recent work comprised a significant portion of a PhD thesis on the topic of Middle and Upper Paleolithic combustion that was completed by Diana Marcazzan in 2022.

Publications

  • Goldberg P, Schiegl S, Meligne K, et al (2003) Micromorphology and site formation at Hohle Fels cave, Schwabian Jura, Germany. Eiszeitalter und Gegenwart 53:1–25.
  • Schiegl S, Goldberg P, Pfretzschner H-U, Conard NJ (2003) Paleolithic burnt bone horizons from the Swabian Jura: Distinguishing betweenin situ fireplaces and dumping areas. Geoarchaeology 18:541–565. https://doi.org/10.1002/gea.10080

 

  • Miller CE (2015) A tale of two Swabian caves: Geoarchaeological investigations at hohle fels and geißenklösterle. Kerns Verlag, Tübingen, Germany.
  • Barbieri A, Bachofer F, Schmaltz EM, et al (2021) Interpreting gaps: A geoarchaeological point of view on the Gravettian record of Ach and Lone valleys (Swabian Jura, SW Germany). J Archaeol Sci 127:105335. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jas.2021.105335
  • Marcazzan D, Miller CE, Conard NJ. Burning, dumping and site-use during the Middle and Upper Palaeolithic at Hohle Fels Cave, SW Germany. Archaeol Anthropol Sci 14, 178 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12520-022-01647-7