KSPA

KSPA

Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie

Hannah Parow-Souchon

The Wadi Sabra (Jordan)

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 11, 2020.

After “Pleistocene Archaeology of the Petra Area in Jordan” [KSPA 5] this is the 2nd book by the DFG research project CRC 806 “Our Way to Europe” - B1. The author, who participated in relevant field campaigns for many years, presents the first contextual and integrative account of the deep history of early occupation of now barren and overgrazed Wadi Sabra in SW-Jordan, where a once rich, green, and fertile landscape full of game provided many benefits to hunters. The study is concerned with creating an environmental reconstruction and a model of settlement dynamics for Wadi Sabra and an understanding of its great attraction. The text is tripartite, with part I explaining the research concept, part II presenting the material from 4 sites including detailed technical analyses and a cohesive cultural-historical interpretation of the local development, and part III broadening this picture to the Southern Levant in an attempt to reconstruct settlement patterns and mobility from all available inventories in a diachronic perspective. What was found was a stable residential mobility system with a highly diverse technology and typology in the Upper Palaeolithic which was only homogenised in the Epipalaeolithic.

Silviane Scharl

Innovation Transfer in Prehistoric Societies.

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 10, 2019.

The topic of “innovation transfer” has gained major significance in the past decades. The present study explores conditions, mechanisms and patterns of the distribution of such processes, which are compiled by means of three examples, namely the technical innovation of copper metallurgy in Europe, the economic innovation of food production in northern Europe, and the spiritual-ritual innovation of Middle Neolithic circular earthworks. The examples demonstrate that some innovations came to a limited halt at “temporal boundary zones”. With regard to history of research, there are two approaches, a neo-evolutionary one with a focus on long-term development and supra-regional processes and another one starting from social and cultural factors and stressing the individual. The book demonstrates the significance of social networks and the importance of the transformation potential of an innovation as well as the presence of recurrent patterns. On the one hand, economic and social conditions on either side of a border tend to assimilate to each other, on the other hand expansion was always connected to phases of growth, diversity, flexibility, and high resilience [so-called r-phase].

Jürgen Richter (Ed.)

111 years of Prehistoric Archaeology in Cologne

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 9, 2018.

On 30th July 2018, the 111th anniversary of Prehistoric Archaeology in Cologne will be celebrated. It emerged from a German Congress of Prehistorians assembled in 1907 and included an urban Museum of Prehistory that was destroyed in 1943. The remnants of the collections were integrated into the Römisch-Germanisches Museum, where they will become more visible again in the near future, when the section on prehistory will have been enlarged after the current refurbishment. The 33 papers of the festschrift recall the forgotten Museum of Prehistory and the great commitment to it by citizens of Cologne, including leading Jewish families, as well as Prehistoric Archaeology as a subject at Cologne University plus the connected laboratories. There are also contributions on important findsites with a spatial or personal relationship with Cologne, amongst them sites of the Early and Middle Stone Ages, an Early Iron Age barrow cemetery, caves, the Rhenish brown coal field, rock art, human footprints, flint mining, Linear Pottery settlements or the sanctuary of Reitia at Este, papers on landscape archaeology, experimental archaeology, and ethnological studies in Africa and the Himalayas.

Silviane Scharl & Birgit Gehlen

Mobility in Prehistoric Sedentary Societies. Papers of the CRC 806 Workshop in Cologne 26-27 June 2015.

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 8, 2017.

These conference proceedings contain a foreword [Richter], an introduction [Scharl], and 13 papers. These deal with mobility and innovation transfer [Scharl], mobility and networking amongst foragers and farmers at the Neolithic transition in Western Central Europe [Gehlen et al.], mobility in the Linear Pottery of Brandenburg [Ismail-Weber] and in the Late Linear Pottery [Balkowski], the organisation and logistics of Linear Pottery settlements [Strien], group affiliation and mobility in the Linear Pottery Culture [Strien], mobility in the settlement system of the Michelsberg Culture in Southern Germany [Seidel], the evidence for faunal mobility on the basis of strontium isotope analyses [Gerling / Lewis], mobility and social dynamics in the Urnfield Culture of Bavaria and Northern Tyrol [Reuß / Metzner-Nebelsick], individual mobility in the Early Iron Age between the Black Forest and the Mediterranean [Koch], the migration history of the Early Medieval settlement community at Wenigumstadt, distr. Aschaffenburg, according to archaeological and anthropological indicators [Stauch], assessing hard-to-analyse herdsmen [Kaiser], and mobility in the Nile valley in Ancient Egypt [Köpp-Junk et al.].

Lee Claire

Culture change and continuity in the Eastern Mediterranean during Rapid Climate Change. Assessing the vulnerability of Late Neolithic communities to a “Little Ice Age” in the seventh millennium cal B.C.

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 7, 2016.

As we now know, the 8.2 calBp event is embedded within a much longer interval of Rapid Climate Change (RCC) which began at 8.6 ka calBP and lasted for some six centuries. Lee Clare has collected an extensive pool of data, thus contributing to a better understanding of underlying social and biophysical causes and consequences of this particular (RCC) climate event. For the first time he has developed a broad, comprehensive scenario which summarises historical developments preceding, accompanying and following the climate event in question for Anatolia and the Levant. it follows that the 7^th millennium calBC appears now as an age of crisis, instability and demographic fluctuation, yet at the same time also as an age of unprecedented cultural creativity and innovation.

Inga Kretschmer

Demographische Untersuchungen zu Bevölkerungsdichten, Mobilität und Landnutzungsmustern im späten Jungpaläolithikum

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 6, 2015.

Im späten Jungpaläolithikum spielte sich eine der größten demographischen Umwälzungen des Eiszeitalters ab: die Wiederbesiedlung Mitteleuropas durch das Magdalénien. Während des letztglazialen Kältemaximums vor 20.000 Jahren hatte sich Mitteleuropa weitgehend entvölkert. Nur ganz wenige Fundplätze sind aus dieser Zeit nördlich der Alpen bekannt. Die Menschen müssen diese Zeit in Refugien überlebt haben, die wohl in Westeuropa und teilweise auch in Südosteuropa gelegen haben dürften. Einige tausend Jahre später erstreckt sich die kulturelle Einheit des Magdalénien über ganz West- und Mitteleuropa und ist durch weit mehr als 1500 Fundplätze bezeugt. Inga Kretschmer gelingt es zum ersten mal, diese Entwicklung detailliert nachzuzeichnen und die dazu gehörigen Bevölkerungsgrößen abzuschätzen. Zugleich ist mit den umfangreichen Katalogen und dem vielfältigen Kartenmaterial ein einzigartiges Standardwerk über das gesamte Magdalénien entstanden.

Daniel Schyle & Jürgen Richter (eds.)

Pleistocene Archaeology of the Petra Area in Jordan

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 5, 2015.

Since 2009, annual field campaigns led a multidisciplinary “CRC 806” team from Cologne and Aachen to the Wadi Sabra, south of the Nabataean capital of Petra in the Kingdom of Jordan. At the Wadi Sabra, the team found long sediment records covering the transition from the Middle Palaeolithic to the Upper Palaeolithic and the whole of the Upper Palaeolithic era. The present volume compiles all excavation reports from the first project phase (2009–2013) thus focusing on the descriptive presentation of the excavation plans, sections, lithic assemblages, and faunal inventories. Complementary information about the geological setting, the sedimentation history and its interpretation in terms of climate history is also given.

Thomas C. Hauck

The Mousterian Sequence of Hummal (Syria)

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 4, 2013.

A sequence of more than 60 Palaeolithic cultural layers makes the site of Hummal in the arid steppe region of El Kowm [Central Syria], that has been investigated since 2002, a very important site. Since about one million years ago, humans repeatedly occupied the area of the spring during a range of environmental conditions. This study deals with the upper most part of a sequence of more than 30 Mousterian strata. While organic remains such as animal bones are badly preserved and therefore rare, the stone artefacts provide rich material for a techno-typological analysis. Herds of grazing wild animals such as horses, gazelles, ostriches, and camels gathered at the waterhole in the course of their annual migrations and were hunted by humans. Additionally, the site had ready access to high-quality flint. The presence, absence, relative frequency, and size of certain artefact types such as cores, cortical flakes, and tools allow the reconstruction of different supply strategies. For obtaining standardised blanks, two variants of the Levallois method were applied. They served for the production of different tools in the course of time.

Yuri E. Demidenko & Thorsten Uthmeier (ed.)

Kiik-Koba Grotto, Crimea [Ukraine]. Re-Analysis of a Key Site of the Crimean Micoquian

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 3, 2013.

This book is an offshoot of the international Ukrainian-German research programme on “Functional variability in the Late Middle Palaeolithic of Crimea Peninsula, Ukraine” undertaken by the Crimean branch of the Ukrainian Academy of Science and the University of Cologne. This volume presents one of several complexes from earlier excavations now re-analysed for publication. Kiik-Koba Grotto is famous for its Neanderthal burials published with special attention to Neanderthal hands in G. A. Bonch-Osmolowski’s excavation report. The present volume contains preface, introduction and eight chapters. It starts with an appreciation of Bonch-Osmolowski, the history of investigations, and new analytic approaches to the Kiik-Koba Micoquian flint artefacts. Next are techno-typological data and reduction models of the Micoquian flint artefacts from layer IV. Chapter V deals with the original assemblage of this layer and the Crimean Micoquian in general. Attention is also paid to bone retouchers from the upper layer of Kiik-Koba Grotto and to the zooarchaeological analysis of the large mammalian fauna from layer IV. Ultimately there is an overview of the re-analyses of Micoquian layer IV at Kiik-Koba Grotto.

Jürgen Richter (ed.)

Rietberg und Salzkotten-Thüle. Anfang und Ende der Federmessergruppen in Westfalen

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Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie 2, 2012.

The sites of Rietberg in a bend of the River Ems and Salzkotten-Thüle west of Paderborn represent the earliest and latest phases of the Federmesser Culture [Azilian] in Westphalia. Rietberg sites 1, 2, and 5 were excavated in 1974 and 1999-2000 and dated into the early Allerød around 14,000 calBP. No. 1 was the camp of a group of hunters and included a possible dwelling, no. 2 contained a small concentration of artefacts which had been produced during a short stay for the repair of hunting weapons. Camp site no. 5 consisted of several diffuse concentrations of artefacts in connection with pits for processing food. Salzkotten-Thüle was discovered in 2001 and had one main concentration of artefacts that might have represented a dwelling, as well as a smaller accumulation of finds that had to do with several hearths. There is evidence for the dismembering of animals and working of hides. The place is considered a “residential camp” of a highly mobile group of hunters and foragers of the middle or late Allerød before 13,800 calBC. On selected finds of both sites micro-wear analyses were carried out, to the result of hide and wood working and use as projectiles.

UNIVERSITÄT ZU KÖLN

Philosophische FakultätForschungsstelle Altsteinzeit (FAST)

Kölner Studien zur Prähistorischen Archäologie

The Wadi Sabra (Jordan)

Innovation Transfer in Prehistoric Societies.

111 years of Prehistoric Archaeology in Cologne

Mobility in Prehistoric Sedentary Societies. Papers of the CRC 806 Workshop in Cologne 26-27 June 2015.

Culture change and continuity in the Eastern Mediterranean during Rapid Climate Change. Assessing the vulnerability of Late Neolithic communities to a “Little Ice Age” in the seventh millennium cal B.C.

Demographische Untersuchungen zu Bevölkerungsdichten, Mobilität und Landnutzungsmustern im späten Jungpaläolithikum

Pleistocene Archaeology of the Petra Area in Jordan

The Mousterian Sequence of Hummal (Syria)

Kiik-Koba Grotto, Crimea [Ukraine]. Re-Analysis of a Key Site of the Crimean Micoquian

Rietberg und Salzkotten-Thüle. Anfang und Ende der Federmessergruppen in Westfalen