Search

Since 2005, annual excavation campaigns have been conducted at the open air site of Krems-Wachtberg in eastern Austria. This paper provides an overview of the preliminary archaeological results, including a presentation of the site's Upper Palaeolithic features and find inventories, as well as a discussion of its position within the Gravettian of the Middle Danube region. The site is characterized by a well-developed occupation layer with associated features like hearths and burials. From a local perspective, the station is part of an extensive Gravettian settlement cluster on the Wachtberg promontory. Beyond that, more far-ranging connections can be established to sites of the older Gravettian forming the regional group of the Pavlovian. These analogies apply to topographic position and economic factors, as well as to technological and typological criteria of the lithic inventories. Furthermore, parallels in burial rituals and art are evident. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since 2005, detailed archaeological investigations have been carried out at the Upper Palaeolithic site of Krems-Wachtberg in eastern Austria where a well-preserved Gravettian find layer is embedded in an 8 m high Late Pleistocene loess sequence. The excavations are accompanied by interdisciplinary sampling strategies applied on the main profiles' entire sediment series as well as on selected locations within the archaeological context. The latter include both evident anthropogenic structures, an in situ occupation surface with hearths and burials, and periglacial features that together determine the morphology and explain the formation of the main Gravettian find horizon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The classic Upper Palaeolithic location of the Wachtberg in Krems (eastern Austria) features a multitude of exposures in a limited area of about 50,000 m 2 . In addition to Gravettian sites which have been investigated in detail in the course of recent years using modern methods, there are the records of old excavations, several documented sections, as well as a considerable number of core samples displaying heterogeneous documentation standards. This paper provides an overview of these different sources of information and aims at synthesizing the data for a comprehensive understanding of the local loess sedimentation and Palaeolithic occupation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]