Hunting mammoths in the southern Black Forest
An emergency excavation in Tübingen on the living conditions of Neanderthals brought to light numerous bone finds between 50,000 and 100,000 years old. At the end of last week, after two and a half months, an emergency excavation carried out by the prehistoric department of the University of Tübingen (Head: Prof. Nicholas Conard) in cooperation with the Landesdenkmalamt Freiburg (Head: Rolf Dehn) came to an end.
In a limestone quarry near Bollschweil south of Freiburg, which is quarried by a cement works, the international team of archaeologists from Tübingen found and recovered numerous animal bones from the last Ice Age, the age of which is initially estimated at 50,000 to 100,000 years. The bones come from mammoths, woolly rhinos, horses, large cattle and some small animals.
Since at least five stone tools clearly identified as artifacts were found, a connection with the targeted hunting of the animals by the Neanderthals who lived in this area at the time is likely. A detailed examination of the bone finds in the archaeozoological laboratories of the University of Tübingen will clarify this question. This would be the first evidence of mammoth hunting by Neanderthals in southern Germany. At the same time, the project will provide new insights into the adaptability of Neanderthals to the difficult living conditions that prevailed in the so-called mammoth steppe during the last ice age, when the Alpine glaciers on the Upper Rhine stretched as far as Schaffhausen.
The excavation was funded by the German Research Foundation as part of the Geoscientific Collaborative Research Center 275, which deals with the connections between climate and environment in the history of the earth. The site was discovered by two hobby archaeologists (Rudolf Ritz from Weil am Rhein and Emil Blattmann from Freiburg). In order to continue the mining work in the quarry, the excavation site is expected to be blasted at the beginning of next year. The Tübingen archaeologists emphasize that they received valuable support during their excavation from the Koch company, which operates the cement works in Bollschweil.
