Schürch Benjamin, Conard Nicholas J, Schmidt Patrick
Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, Institute of Prehistory, Early History and Medieval Archeology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Tubingen, Germany.
Sci Rep. 2025 Jan 14;15(1):1897. doi: 10.1038/s41598-024-84302-6.
Archaeologists can use the provenance of lithic raw materials to examine the movements, territories, and settlement dynamics of hunter-gatherers. Several studies have used macroscopic analyses to propose the long-distance transport of raw material during the Gravettian and the Magdalenian of the Swabian Jura in Central Europe. Until now hypotheses about raw material transport in this region were not based on reproducible analyses. This study aims to test some of the hypotheses about the origins of lithic raw materials during the Gravettian and Magdalenian, using infrared spectroscopic measurements. These analyses are based on differences and similarities in the mineralogy and crystallography of rocks. Using this method, we test for long-distance raw-material transport between the sites of the Swabian Jura and the Freiburg basin, 200 km to the south-west, and the region of the Altmühl Valley, 150 km to the north-east. For this, we created a reference database of 114 lithic raw material outcrops from Southern Germany and compared these specimens with artifacts from eleven archeological sites. Our study reconstructs the raw-material procurement and transport during the Gravettian and Magdalenian and reveals settlement patterns and territories that span over more than 300 km in Central Germany.
考古学家可以利用石器原材料的出处来研究狩猎采集者的迁徙、活动区域和聚落动态。几项研究通过宏观分析提出，在中欧施瓦本汝拉地区的格拉维特文化期和马格德林文化期存在原材料的远距离运输。到目前为止，关于该地区原材料运输的假设并非基于可重复的分析。本研究旨在利用红外光谱测量来检验一些关于格拉维特文化期和马格德林文化期石器原材料来源的假设。这些分析基于岩石矿物学和晶体学的异同。利用这种方法，我们测试了施瓦本汝拉地区与西南方向200公里处的弗莱堡盆地以及东北方向150公里处的阿尔特米尔河谷地区之间的原材料远距离运输情况。为此，我们创建了一个包含德国南部114个石器原材料露头的参考数据库，并将这些标本与来自11个考古遗址的文物进行了比较。我们的研究重建了格拉维特文化期和马格德林文化期的原材料采购和运输情况，并揭示了德国中部跨度超过300公里的聚落模式和活动区域。
