Neandertaler? 15 m tiefer bitte!

Die neandertalerzeitlichen Steinartefakte der Fundstellen Gildehaus 31 und 33 im Landkreis Grafschaft Bentheim (Niedersachsen)

Abstract

Only very few sites of the Middle Palaeolithic are hitherto known from the West of Lower Saxony. Moreover, they each yielded only few or an individual artefact from the surface. In the neighbouring Netherlands, the situation is quite different: Here, our understanding of the Middle Palaeolithic during the Weichselian glacial is much more concrete due to the creation of inventories of older sites as well as systematic field surveys.
In the very Southwest of Lower Saxony, this picture has been augmented by finds of two voluntary collectors from two sites of wet sand mining. Faunal remains of 51 mostly glacial species and 64 artefacts were recovered over a period of c. 18 years. The silexes tend to date to the late Middle Palaeolithic. Among them there are – apart from flakes for preparation and target flakes of the Levallois technique – various implements with simply worked edges, a leaf-shaped scraper and a small Keilmesser.
The geological conditions at the sites, the composition of the artefacts and the faunal remains as well as the four radiocarbon datings suggest that the sites from Gildehaus are contemporary with the known Middle Palaeolithic sites Salzgitter-Lebenstedt and Lichtenberg in the East of Lower Saxony.