Combe Capelle

Combe Capelle (English: Mountain Chapel ) is a Paleolithic and Epipalaeolithic finding place in the valley of Couze, near the village of Mont Ferrand -du -Périgord and about 44 km from Perigueux, the capital of the department of Dordogne. In the area of Combe Capelle Fund are now four known neolithic sites: Roc de Combe- Capelle, Haut de Combe- Capelle (also "Shelter Peyrony " ), the Plateau de Combe- Capelle Bas and Ruffet.

In the following, the finding place Roc de Combe- Capelle is described which was made famous by the 1909 burial found a putative Cro -Magnons. In the year 2011 showed a radiocarbon dating that the funeral is much younger than previously thought and comes from the Holocene Mesolithic.

Fund history

Michel -Antoine Landesque discovered the locality Combe Capelle in 1885., The art dealer and prehistory researcher Otto Hauser led from 1909 excavations on the slopes of the river valley ( in the Abri " Roc de Combe Capelle "). He had specially rented for the terrain. His excavation team placed in the area under the roof rock layers from four archaeological cultures freely. From top to bottom they belonged to the Solutrean ( layer I), the " upper Aurignacian " ( layer II, in today's terminology Gravettian ), the middle ( layer III) and lower Aurignacian ( layer IV). The lower Aurignacienschicht is referred to by Hauser as Châtelperronian, then called synonymous ancien also Aurignacian. This layer was 30 cm, according to Hauser's powerful and delineated by a 15 cm thick, archaeologically sterile layer of layer III. In the footwall of layer IV, there were finds of the Mousterian ( M layer ), including the following situ rock.

On August 26, 1909, found by the excavation workers in the Aurignacian layer IV, the grave of a stool about 40 to 50 years old man. The following day, Hauser took the funeral for the first time they are buying. The salvage of the find was made on September 11, 1909 by Otto Hauser and teaching in Wroclaw anthropologist Hermann Klaatsch. At the funeral, there is a langschädligen modern humans (Homo sapiens) with an inclined forehead and long face. He is as tall as the typical Cro- Magnon man. Similarities were seen for the East-Central European " Brno race." The grave was north-south directed, addressed to the head in the north, the skull with an inclination of 50 ° to the west. In the hip, the skeleton lay on directly on the bedrock.

Fund whereabouts

Hauser sold the " man of Combe Capelle " together with the 1908 found in Le Moustier Neanderthal skeleton of a juvenile at the Royal Museum of Ethnology in Berlin. The museum building was destroyed in the Second World War, and the charred skeleton strong, as well as the equally outsourced skeleton of Le Moustier.

In the postwar period the skull of Combe Capelle was considered lost and was only rediscovered on 27 December 2001 in fragmented form in inventory work. It was fire debris from the Gropiusbau, mainly reflecting the associated flint artifacts from the funeral of Combe Capelle was suspected. Also, upper and lower jaw were then able to be found again on 8 January 2002 in a mislabeled box collection. The reconstructed skull was exhibited in 2003 at the Berlin Museum of Prehistory and Early History in Schloss Charlottenburg and is since 2009 part of the permanent exhibition at the New Museum.

Dating and controversies surrounding the finding

Despite the detailed anthropological investigation after the rediscovery of the skull, the question of the absolute age of the funeral for a long time remained open. Because skull and skeleton after recovery longer time were boiled in bone glue, led the radiocarbon dating of a skull fragment is not successful and further dating of the bones were considered hopeless. As recently as 2009 a molar was extracted at the Leibniz Laboratory, which had to be pulverized to obtain the collagen. Since the enamel provides a fairly good protection against the Knochenleimbehandlung, the probability was here to get the largest, undisturbed collagen. The result of the AMS direct dating was announced in February 2011 at a press conference and published shortly afterwards scientifically. Three raw data of about 8550 BP correspond to a calibrated age of about 7600-7700 BC It thus is no doubt that a man of Epipaläolithikums, so the post-glacial period.

This proves that the grave pit for the burial of the man of Combe Capelle was intrusive sunk into the lower layers, without this being detected by the excavation team in 1909. Otto Hauser himself had II and III reported in his notes a few days before finding the funeral of a local disappearance of layers, followed Gisela Asmus 1964 pointed to a critical revision of the finding. After the discovery of the tomb Hauser had emphasized, however, that an undisturbed, 15 cm thick sterile layer between the Chatelperron layer IV and the later Aurignacian layer III would be what Asmus however regarded as questionable. Also as a continuous undisturbed by Hauser was the overhanging layer I called from the Solutrean, so the terminus ante quem to have formed for the deepening of the grave pit. As it turns out after the direct dating of the tooth, these stratigraphic observation was inaccurate, since in an undisturbed Solutrean layer, the funeral would have at least the same must be old.

According to the article by G. Asmus and especially after the new dating of the tombs from the Abri Cro- Magnon into the Gravettian Gravettian was favored as the most likely dating of many archaeologists for Combe Capelle, for which the addition of the chain of snail shells would be very typical. In addition to the Abri Cro- Magnon snails jewelery was also found in the Austrian Gravettian find sites Langenlois and Grub Kranawetberg or in the grave I Brno. In the latter Parallel already pointed Klaatsch and Hauser. Jewelry snails but there are also in Epipalaeolithic southern France as well as in Mesolithic of Central Europe.

On the issue of grave goods

Among the numerous grave goods including a necklace of perforated sea snail Littorina littorea houses and more than ten shells of the species Helix nemoralis ( land snail ) and Nassa reticulata belongs ( also sea snail ). Since no dating of the snail shells is present, it is unclear whether the chain for epipaläolithischen funeral is to be counted or not. The snails are grouped on Photos situation during the excavation immediately to the head of the deceased, suggesting a classification as authentic grave goods. The custom of adding a number of jewelry worm is busy, for example, in about the same old skull burials in the Bavarian Ofnethöhle.

Handed down from the layer IV (Lower Aurignacian ) were, according to Hauser's continue: 600 faunal remains, 187 "good" artifacts (probably meant: devices) and about 1000 chips ( probably meant: haircuts and Absplisse ). As clarified since the dating, this initially considered to be grave goods Aurignacian artifacts are not related to the funeral in conjunction, but were at deepening of the grave pit in a random neighborhood. Such artifacts made ​​of flint from the lower layers of complex ( IV and M ) are, for example, a waisted blade scraper and graver, who have come to the funeral to the Berlin Museum. Hauser had mentioned that in layer IV, a considerable number of genuine Moustiertypen would have been found. Since the Mousterian layer ( M layer ) was right on the upcoming rock, it can either be a palimpsest horizon during mixing, as well as an inventory of Mousterian and Aurignacian types, as is the case in Châtelperronian. Recent research, however, is mostly based on a disturbance of the findings relationship.