Benjamin SCHÜRCH

Title

Reassessing the cultural stratigraphy of Vogelherd Cave

Co-supervisors

Prof. N. CONARD (University of Tübingen)

Summary

Vogelherd Cave, originally excavated by Riek in 1931 and re-excavated by Conard between 2005-2012 and 2022-2023, is known for its extraordinarily rich Aurignacian deposits. The site, however, produced abundant material from the Middle Paleolithic as well as from the Gravettian and Magdalenian. This PhD thesis assesses the stratigraphic sequence from Riek’s excavation and examines the materials recovered during the excavation in Riek’s backdirt to revise our understanding of the Middle and Upper Paleolithic occupation of the site. The 1931 excavation reflected the standards of that era, but it comes as no surprise that the documentation from an excavation that emptied the cave in only 12 weeks left many questions unanswered. The re-excavation of the backdirt, led to the recovery of vast amounts of archaeological material that Riek’s team overlooked, but these finds lack high quality contextual information. This PhD thesis engages with the strengths and weaknesses of the finds recovered from these periods of fieldwork at Vogelherd to revise and improve our interpretation of that nature of the Paleolithic site use. As part of this work, raw material, use-wear, and technological analyses will be carried out. These will be applied to both the lithic assemblages and the mollusks of the site.