By Bernhard Kirschner
Around 7,500 years ago, the first farmers from the Middle East and Anatolia migrated via southeastern Europe to the region around Tübingen. There they encountered hunters and gatherers from the Middle Stone Age. Were there contacts between them, and if so, how did these take place? How did the transition from the Middle to the Neolithic Age occur? Archaeologists from the University of Tübingen and the Baden-Württemberg State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments are trying to find out. Over the next three years, they will evaluate the numerous traces of settlements left by the immigrant farmers in the Ammer Valley near Tübingen and excavate the campsites of the native hunters and gatherers. The researchers have received 750,000 euros from the German Research Foundation for this project.
A richly endowed secondary camp in Schönbuch
Centimeter by centimeter, the young archaeologist works her way into the soil with a small trowel in the pit, which is only a few square meters in size and 30 centimeters deep. And promptly, she uncovers two tiny stone artifacts that are barely visible to the naked eye. These are so-called microliths made of Jura hornstone, which Stone Age hunters probably used as projectiles for their arrows, explains Dennis Batz, who is leading the excavation on site. With a small team, he is digging for traces of the last Stone Age hunters and gatherers at three locations in the middle of the forest in Schönbuch near Tübingen. At the end of the nine-week excavation campaign, more than 300 stone artifacts, mainly production waste, were recovered.
Hunting and tool making
Project manager Jörg Bofinger from the State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments is visibly satisfied with the findings during a visit. It is probably a secondary camp that hunters may have used for thousands of years to make tools and hunt. Bofinger is certain that the peninsula-like high plateau is ideal for observing the wild animals that lived in the park-like landscape. At the end of the Ice Age in Central Europe around 11,700 years ago, the landscape changed fundamentally – from a steppe to a forest. Instead of reindeer herds, there were now aurochs, deer, and wild boars. And lots of hazelnut bushes on the fertile soil, which people lived off at that time. Unfortunately, no hazelnut shells have been preserved, nor have bones and charcoal from fire pits, Bofinger regrets: „We are missing a meter of soil. It has been eroded away.”
So all that remains are the stone tools. The scrapers, knives, and projectiles date from the early Mesolithic period, as their triangular shape reveals. Bofinger had hoped to find artifacts from the late phase, i.e., from the period around 7,000 to 5,500 BC. After that, the traces of hunter-gatherer societies are lost, just at the time when the first farmers appear in southwestern Germany and people’s way of life changes fundamentally: they become sedentary, keep livestock, and plant crops.
Emigrated or integrated?
But where did the hunters and gatherers go? Yvonne Tafelmaier from the State Office for the Preservation of Historical Monuments cannot rule out the possibility that some were displaced. However, she does not believe that the first farmers moved into an empty area. The project manager is a specialist in Stone Age hunter-gatherer societies and is evaluating the finds from Schönbuch in Tübingen. Archaeologists have identified a change in the technology used to manufacture stone tools in the 7th millennium BC. The shapes are no longer triangular but square, resembling a trapezoid, and are more finely crafted. Tafelmaier suspects that a change was already underway long before people settled down. People are becoming more open to innovation. It is conceivable that there were contacts with „more advanced” groups before the first farmers migrated. Where the impetus came from is still unclear.
Jura hornstone from the Swabian Alb
Evidence of an exchange therefore remains difficult to find. The tool shapes of the two population groups are similar. The material is also the same. It is Jura hornstone from the Swabian Alb, which is very hard and easy to work with. But how would the immigrant farmers know where to find it? The local hunters and gatherers know the best mining sites. Tafelmaier therefore considers contact to be plausible.
DNA analyses of the skeletons from the graves of the Neolithic settlements in the Ammer Valley near Tübingen could also help. Traces of hunter-gatherer DNA may be found. Unfortunately, however, there are hardly any bones from the nomadic people. So far, archaeologists have found very few burial sites.
The search in Schönbuch continues
It is possible that the evaluation of the numerous finds in the farming settlements will provide a decisive clue after all. Intensive excavations in the Ammer Valley have been ongoing since 2017 and are now to be examined even more closely. Or perhaps there will be a lucky find next year when another site is excavated in Schönbuch, a few kilometers away from this year’s excavation site. So it remains exciting to see how the immigrant farmers and native hunters between the Black Forest and the Swabian Alb got along with each other 7,500 years ago.
Further information can be found at:
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