Fig 1.
Map of SW Germany with selected Paleolithic sites. Central sites of the study in red, sites mentioned in the text in orange color. Background map: (https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.3460301; © ROCEEH/ University of Tübingen; [36]).
Fig 2.
Profiles (top) and plan (bottom) of the Aurignacian horizons IV and V depicted in light blue (AH IV) and darker blue (AH V) (profiles and plan modified after Riek 1934).
Table 1.
Vogelherd. Numbers of lithic artifacts and tools from the different analysts of Vogelherd.
Table 2.
Analyzed attributes of the Vogelherd assemblage (p/a = presence/absence; m = measurement; d = description, n = number of the attribute).
Table 3.
Vogelherd. Raw materials of all lithic artifacts of AH IV-V.
Table 4.
Vogelherd. Phase of Chaîne opératoire of all lithic artifacts of AH IV-V (Phase 0 = debris and unmodified river gravels; Phase I = Configuration flakes with higher cortex coverage; Phase II = mainly unmodified blades and bladelets; Phase III = Configuration flakes with lower cortex coverage; Phase IV = Cores; Phase V = Formal tools).
Table 5.
Vogelherd. Cortex coverage of all lithic artifacts of AH IV-V.
Table 6.
Vogelherd. Preservation of all lithic artifacts of AH IV-V.
Table 7.
Vogelherd. Simplified overview of the tool types of AH IV-V. Detailed overview of tool types can be found in the supplementary (S1 Table).
Table 8.
Vogelherd. Raw material of cores of AH IV-V.
Table 9.
Vogelherd. Matrices used for cores of AH IV-V.
Table 10.
Vogelherd. Core types of AH IV-V (* These cores can be a combination of tool and core, 35 of the 400).
Fig 3.
Minimal raw material unit JH1d. The 48 artifacts and refits are used to reconstruct the reduction process (Photos and drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 4.
Minimal raw material unit JH1w. The 80 artifacts and seven refits are used to reconstruct the reduction process (Photos and drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 5.
Minimal raw material unit JH1m. The 27 artifacts and refits are used to reconstruct the reduction process (Photos and drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 6.
Cores of raw material unit JH1a: 1-3, 5, 8 semi-circumferential cores; 6-7. multi-platform cores; 5. wide-faced flat core; 9-21. carinated cores (Photos: B. Schürch).
Table 11.
Vogelherd. Carinated cores broken down by type and carinated core ends. The n of the carinated core ends is higher than for the core types.
Fig 7.
1-2. Busked burins; 3. Nosed end-scraper; 4. Carinated end-scraper on core tablet; 5-8. Carinated end-scrapers with one or two carinated ends. 2, 5-8 Jurassic chert; 1, 3-4 Brown Jurassic chert (Photos: B. Schürch; Drawings: 1,2,5,6 modified after Hahn 1977; 3-4,7-8 B. Schürch).
Table 12.
Vogelherd. Blanks of carinated pieces.
Fig 8.
Preforms of carinated end-scrapers. 1. Preform of a double ended carinated end-scraper with remnant of a crest (dorsal) and several impact rings on the ventral face; 2. Preform of a double ended carinated end-scraper with several hinges (dorsal) and platform preparation; 1-2. Jurassic chert (Photo & drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 9.
Examples of refitted carinated pieces and bladelets (Photos: B. Schürch).
Fig 10.
Truncated-faceted cores. 1. Truncated-faceted core (dorsal) with a Vachon burin like end, 2. Combination of burin on break and truncated-faceted core, 3. Combination of pointed blade and truncated-faceted core, 4. Combination of busked burin and truncated-faceted core, 5. Combination of end-scraper and truncated-faceted core, 6. Combination of truncated-faceted core and burin, 7-8. Combination of carinated piece and truncated-faceted core. 1-3,5-8 Jurassic chert (1-3 from JH1a); 4. Brown Jurassic chert (Photos: B. Schürch; Drawings: 4, 5 and 7 modified after Hahn 1977; 1-3, 6 and 8: B. Schürch).
Fig 11.
Working stage analysis of a truncated-faceted core with a broken end-scraper from Jurassic chert. Besides the bladelets produced on the dorsal at least four bladelets were produced on the truncation comparable to a carinated burin (Photo & drawing: B. Schürch).
Fig 12.
Prepared limestone cores. 1. Prepared core with crest and showing previous removals of large flakes. 2. Core with a partially prepared crest and two hinges that stopped the reduction. 3. Core with a prepared crest and several hinges of failed blade production (Photo & drawing: B. Schürch).
Table 13.
Vogelherd. Lithic raw material of hammerstones and retouchers.
Table 14.
Vogelherd. Overview of metric core attributes with and without carinated pieces and truncated-faceted cores.
Table 15.
Vogelherd. Overview of metric core attributes for the most important core types.
Table 16.
Vogelherd. Comparison of length and width of complete blades & bladelets, negatives on cores and length of core reduction faces. Width of complete blades & bladelets and negatives on cores. The width of core reduction faces is marked in gray because it is not comparable to the other values.
Fig 13.
Vogelherd. Hammerstone and retouchers.
1. Limestone hammer stone, 2. Retoucher from undetermined river pebble; 3. Quartz hammer stone (Photo: B. Schürch).
Fig 14.
Length of the core reduction face, blades & bladelets and negatives on cores together.
Table 17.
Vogelherd. The size of completely preserved crested blades and core tablets.
Table 18.
Geißenklösterle. Cores, carinated pieces and thick nosed end-scraper measurements from Hahn 1988.
Fig 15.
1. Refits of unit A1, semi-circumferential reduction is visible from the top view mostly from AH III. 2. Semi-circumferential core with a crested back from AH IId (part of AH III). 3. Nosed end-scraper with refitted flakes from AH II and III. 4. Truncated-faceted core from AH IIb. 5. Carinated end-scraper/truncated-faceted core from AH IIb. 1. Radiolarite, 2-5. Jurassic chert (Drawings: 1 and 3-5 after Hahn 1988; 2 S. Schray).
Table 19.
Lithic raw materials and shells of IV and V of Vogelherd and their implications for land use in the Aurignacian.
Fig 16.
Vogelherd. Working stage analysis of a flake modified into a prepared core with a crest and a crested back (Photo & drawing: B. Schürch).
Fig 17.
Different variants of prepared cores.
Configuration of crested back/side and core plunge can occur for all variants: 1. Crest is prepared on the lateral of the core. 2. Crest is prepared between the narrow and wide surface of the core. 3. Convexity is prepared between the narrow and wide surface of the core. Top view shows the hypothetical reduction of the cores.
Fig 18.
Prepared cores with a prepared crest and a prepared crested back.
Crested backs are marked with the > 90° angle to show that they cannot be used to initialize reduction. Crests and prepared convexities are marked to show where the reduction was attempted to initialize or was initialized. For 1 the crested overshot blade stopped the reduction; for 2 the crest could not bring the reduction angle under 90°; for 3 and 4 hinges stopped the reduction (Photo & drawing: B. Schürch).
Fig 19.
Vogelherd. Cores with striking errors.
1. Wide-faced flat core with crested back. After the reduction of two blades, the next removals could not remove the hinges between the wide and narrow surface of the core. 2. Narrow-sided core on large flake with crested back. After a hinge the core was turned 180°, but the hinge could not be removed from the new platform. 3. Semi-circumferential core, with crest between the narrow and wide surface. Removals could not remove hinges between narrow and wide surface. Several incipient cracks on the wide face show that the crest could not be re-prepared. 4. Semi-circumferential core with two hinges between narrow and wide face. 5. Semi-circumferential core with crested back, after a hinge between the narrow and wide face the core was turned 180°, but the hinge could not be removed. 6. Narrow-sided core, after several hinges between the wide and narrow surface, it was tried to re-configure the crest between the narrow-surface and the core back. Several incipient cracks near the crest show that this was not successful. 7. Semi-circumferential core with crested back. After the semi-circumferential reduction, a new crest was configured. This was not successful. 1-7 Jurassic chert (Photos & drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 20.
Refits that show the preparation of the reduction face by the removal of a large flake. 1. Jurassic chert, 2-3. Radiolarite (Photos & drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 21.
Multi-platform cores: 1. Refitted core. After a semi-circumferential reduction the core was turned 90° and a second reduction surface was utilized at the core plunge. 2. After a semi-circumferential reduction, the core was turned 90° and the former core back was utilized to produce small blades and bladelets. 1-2. Jurassic chert (Photos & drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 22.
The two generations recognizable at Vogelherd.
Left side: First Generation of cores often showing a gradual decrease in size of the cores. Right side: Second Generation of cores, here carinated pieces and truncated-faceted cores are more common.
Fig 23.
Vogelherd. Cores with platform configuration.
1. Refit 45: Semi-circumferential bladelet/blade core with crested back and negative of a partial removal/configuration of the reduction face, refitted with two core tablets. 2. Refit 129: Semi-circumferential bladelet core with refitted core tablet. 3. Refit 34: Four refitted core tablets. 1, 2. Jurassic chert; 3. Brown Jurassic chert (Photos & drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 24.
1-3 Dufour bladelets; 4-5, 9-15 retouched bladelets; 6-7, 16-17 retouched burin spalls; 8 Font-Yves bladelets; 18-27 bladelets from carinated end-scrapers; 29-32 configuration flakes from carinated end-scrapers; 33-36 straight bladelets from non-carinated pieces; 37-40 burin spalls. 2-17, 22-23, 31, 34-40 Jurassic chert; 1, 18-21, 24-25, 33 brown Jurassic chert (Photos: B. Schürch; Drawings: 1-2, 4-40. B. Schürch; 3 modified after Hahn 1977).
Fig 25.
Overlap of different burin types and narrow-sided cores depending on definition and the functional aspect.
1. Narrow sided core with a carinated end on the core base (refit 103; core AH:V 113 (1620); flake: backdirt collection Seeberger ID:(11147), 2. Small narrow-sided core (AH:IV ID:2893 (3231)), 3. Busked burin (GH:HL/KS Sq:65/62 ID:24), 4. Truncated burin with two refitted burin spalls (refit 27; burin AH:unknown ID:(11525); burin spall AH:IV −2 ID:3914 (5413); burin spall AH:IV ID:865 (5409). 1-4 Jurassic chert (Photos & drawings: B. Schürch).
Fig 26.
Aurignacian sites and the long-distance raw material connections of Vogelherd (raw materials: black = Jurassic chert; red = Radiolarite and other river gravels; purple = Keuper chert from river gravels; orange = Tertiary chert from the Randecker Maar; blue = Muschelkalk chert from the Neckar; outcrop data from: this paper; Burkert 2001; Schürch et al. 2022; basemap: © European Union, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service 2020, European Environment Agency (EEA)“, f.ex. in 2018: “© European Union, Copernicus Land Monitoring Service 2018, European Environment Agency (EEA)” with funding by the European Union).
Fig 27.
Refit sequences of two cores of low-quality raw material. 1 Brown Jurassic chert, 2 Radiolarite (Photos & drawings: B. Schürch).