In use 38,000 years ago: three chisels made of mammoth ivory from the famous “Hohle Fels” site provide insights into the tool technology of the Paleolithic ivory workshop on the edge of the Swabian Jura. The team of archaeologists who are researching the World Heritage Site has now presented the three tools discovered together to the public and has chosen them as the find of the year 2019.
The karst cave Hohler Fels has been a gold mine of archeology since the 19th century – it is one of the most important archaeological sites of the Early Paleolithic in Central Europe. The Hohle Fels apparently housed a kind of ivory workshop: Large amounts of chips and splinters from mammoth tusks and carvings such as the famous “Venus vom Hohle Fels” were recovered there. In recent years, archaeologists led by Nicholas Conard from the University of Tübingen have discovered other fascinating artifacts, such as flutes or a perforated rod that was used to make ropes.
A tool set from the Paleolithic
Three tools discovered last year could now shed more light on how people went about making their artifacts 38,000 years ago, the scientists say. “In the past few years, we have occasionally identified objects as tools that were made from bone, antlers or ivory,” says Conard. But now the researchers uncovered three at once: “However, we have never discovered such a concentration of tools – it is a real tool set,” said the archaeologist.
As he and his colleagues report, the three conical, tapered rods made of mammoth ivory are between 14 and 22 centimeters long and up to four centimeters wide. According to the dating, they were made from the hardest components of mammoth tusks more than 38,000 years ago. As the detailed investigations showed, the rods have characteristic chipping and fraying at the ends, which stem from intensive use as a tool.
Probably multifunctional use
Ivory expert Sibylle Wolf from the Senckenberg Center SHEP in Tübingen examined the finds under a microscope and comes to the conclusion that they were probably used first as a point and later reworked as a chisel, wedge, pestle and striking tool. “The wear indicates that the tools were used with great force,” says Wolf. “It would be conceivable that on the one hand materials were split with the slim end and on the other hand that the thick end served as a striking tool or a kind of pestle, for example to shred other materials,” said the expert.
“We speak of chisels because of the characteristic shape of the finds,” says Conard. “It looks like they were used as multi-function tools to process different organic materials such as ivory, wood, bone or antlers.” The team announces which functions the tools have had to clarify further analyzes and experiments. “These finds could give us a better idea of the handicraft processes of the ice age and thus of how the ice age works of art were created,” says the director of the Prehistory Museum Blaubeuren Stefanie Kölbl. The three tools will now be exhibited there as “Find of the Year 2019” until early January 2021.
The museum illustrates the ice age life of hunters and gatherers on the edge of the Swabian Jura 40,000 years ago. The most prominent exhibit is the original of the “Venus vom Hohle Fels”. “The tools once again demonstrate to us what technical masterpieces people did at the time – without any electric saws, drills or milling machines,” says Kölbl.
Source: University of Tübingen