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2022-03-22 16:50:49   •   ID: 2315

The IUP at Ondratice / Central Moravia

Figure 1
Figure 2
Figure 3
Ondratice is a village and municipality in Prostějov District in the Olomouc Region of the Czech Republic.

Figure 1 and 2 display a classic Bohunician elongated "Levallois" point from Ondratice, coming from the original ownership of Josef Szombathy, who founded the Department of Prehistory at the Naturhistorisches Museum (NHM), Vienna in 1882.

Figure 1 and 2 show the ventral and dorsal side, while the facetted base is displayed in Figure 3.

The rich finds from Ondratice were picked up in large quantities both by enthusiastic laymans and Professionals since the early twentieth century. For decennia it was impossible to achieve a valid stratigraphy of the large area.

The irreversibly mixed lithics played an eminent role in early Czech research, especially promoted by Karel Absolon, who reconstructed quite adventurous "cultures" from undiagnostic artifacts and geofacts, like his infamous "Primitive Aurignacian with Gigantholiths".

At such moments it is painful to realize that there were practically no trained prehistorians in Moravia before 1945.

Nevertheless, the find area remains of importance. Both Middle Paleolithic finds, a quarzite Aurignacian, a Bohunician and several Leaf Point cultures (at least a Szeletan and maybe a Jerzmanowician) can be typologically reconstructed.

In sum the industry from Ondratice remains a heterogeneous conglomerate of different technocomplexes of several different Paleolithic periods on the basis of technological (and typological) analysis.

It took more than 100 years of research until stratified remains of a "Short Term Camp" were discovered, which contained among other items a leaf point that could be dated to >43 k.a. (Mlejnek et al. 2016).

Svoboda in 1980 described a clear Bohunician from quartzite raw material, very similar to the piece shown in this post and outside the "classic" area around Brno. While mostly fragmented and unretouched Levallois Points are common, Cores that could help for the reconstruction of the operational sequence are widely missing.

It remains fascinating that a diagnostic tool of the Initial Upper Paleolithic was found thousand of km from the Levant where possibly the IUP began around 50 k.a. BP- see: 2237 , suggesting extensive networking between these remote areas.

Ondratice is one of dozens of vast surface collections, where Leafpoints and the Bohunice technology s.s. occurred together.

These collections often originate from large sites located on significant positions in the landscape and may represent palimpsests resulting from sequential occupations by people with differing technocomplexes.

The presence of leaf points in a Bohunician or Bohunician like IUP context is exclusively known from Moravian sites, but neither from the North European Plain, the Urals nor from the Levant.

This issue has been discussed many times based on three different hypotheses (e.g. Tostevin and Škrdla 2006), self-explanatory called: the “Pedogenic”, “Sequential Occupation”, and “Landscape” hypotheses. Until now, non of these proposals can be rejected or has been proven (Mlejnek et al. 2016).

Suggested Readings:

K. Absolon: Otaslavice, Eine Neue, Grosse Palaeolithische Station In Mähren mit Quarzit-Aurignacien: Versuch einer Systematisch-Typologischen Bestimmung der Steinartefakte (C. Palaeoethnologische Serie Nr. 2 (4)); 1935

Absolon, K., 1936: Über Großformen des quarzitischen Aurignaciens der palaeolithischen Station Ondratice in Mahren. Typologie der s. g. „Gigantolithen“. Práce z Palaeolithickeho odděleni Moravského zemského musea 42, Brno.

Červinka, I.., 1915: Solutréen-Station bei Ondratitz-Zeltsch (Bezirk Wischau/Mähren). Nepublikovaný dopis uložený v Landesmuseum für Vorgeschichte Sachsen-Anhalt, Halle.

Maška, K.J., Obermaier, H., 1911: La station solutréenne de Ondratitz (Moravie). LAnthropologie 22, 1911, 403-412.

J Svoboda et al: Hunters between East and West: The Paleolithic of Moravia, 1996

L. Zotz: Altsteinzeitkunde Mitteleuropas. Stuttgart 1951



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