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Szeletian culture


The Szeletian culture is an outgrowth of the Mousterian, similar to the Châtelperronian, an industry with elements of both the Mousterian and the Aurignacian, and is contemporaneous with the Aurignacian. An archaeological culture of the early Upper Palaeolithic (circa 38 000 BP - 28 000 BP.). The Szeletian culture was widespread in what is now Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and southwestern Poland, and its influence can also be seen at a number of places in Romania and Bulgaria. Named after the Szeleta cave in the Bükk mountain massif in northern Hungary, the Szeletian culture developed mainly from the local Mousterian culture and for a time was contemporaneous with the Aurignacian culture. It was succeeded by the Gravettian cultures. The Szeletian culture is characterized by leaf-shaped, bifacially flaked flint spearheads, Mousterian side-scrapers, and vestiges of the Levalloisian flaking technique.
Text above: Adapted from Wikipedia and The Free Dictionary



szleta cave

Szeleta Cave

Photo: Czina Tivadar's webpage, transferred from hu.wikipedia by Czina Tivadar. Original uploader was Szenti Tamás at hu.wikipedia
Permission: CC-BY-SA-3.0.


szeleta cave plan location



Location of Szeleta Cave.

Photo: Lengyel et al. (2009)




szeleta cave plan excavations



Plan of Szeleta Cave (modified after Kadić 1916)

Photo: Lengyel et al. (2009)






The continuous Szeletian settlement occupied the whole of Moravia, Western Slovakia, the southern parts of Poland, and the northern parts of Hungary. The considerably extensive area of Szeletian sites, sometimes covering up to several square kilometres, suggests repeated returns of groups to their previous settlements, but not to the same spots.

Text above: Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic

blades blades
At Szeleta Cave in the Bukových (Bükk, Beech) Mountains, leaf shaped spear heads have been found. In Slovakia, Szeletien locally excludes the Aurignacien, although the Carpathians were alternately visited by hunters of both cultures.

( note that these laurel leaf spear heads are usually indicative of the Solutrean culture, not the Aurignacian - Don )

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Facsimile, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




Jezeřany I

scrapers
Jezeřany and Szeleta Cave location map.

Photo: Nerudová and Neruda (2017)




scrapers scrapers


Jezeřany I, racloirs, side scrapers.

Stations in the vicinity of Bobravy used flint from Krumlovsky forest, together with rocks from Stránské skály (Levallois technique). The Orechov II station is in excellent contact with the Hungarian Szeletien: Zuherski radiolarite and rhyolite from the Bukovych Mountains were used.

( Stránské skály is a rock formation located in the northernmost part of the Brno-Slatina district of Brno - Don )

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




scrapers
Jezeřany I, racloir, side scraper.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




scrapers
Jezeřany I, racloirs, side scrapers.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




scrapers
Jezeřany I, racloirs, side scrapers.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic






tools
Jezeřany II, scrapers

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




tools tools


tools
Szeletian Cores from Vedrovice IV, close by Jezeřany I and II.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Original, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




The Ondratice site cluster and nearby sites

Ondratice Map
Map of the eastern part of the Czech Republic, the area known as Moravia-Silesia, including Brno. To the west is Bohemia, including Prague.

1 Ondratice site cluster (Želeč, Ondratice, Drysice).

2 Bobrava river valley site cluster (Ořechov, Želešice).

3 Mohelno site cluster (Mohelno).

Map: P. Jansa / O. Mlejnek with use of Grass GIS).
Source and text: Mlejnek and Škrdla (2012)




points
Points.

Significant settlement areas of the Szeletian culture were found at Ondratice, Drysice, Otaslavice and Vinencova.

Judging by the predominance of imported flint, advances in the technology used, and the speculative typological spectrum, it is obvious that they belong to the younger phases of this culture.

At Ondratice I, there are abundant spearpoints with a partial flat retouch. ( The points shown here may be the ones referred to - Don )

The Hungarian radiolarites and rhyolites prove the connections with the territory of Hungary.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




points points


points
The extent to which quartz is used in the local area is not known, since older stratigraphic observations are contradictory and can not be verified at present.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




Míškovice type

The Míškovice type industry has elements of the Szeletien and Aurignacian, typical for the area east of the Morava River and southeast of the Chřiby massif. Imported flint prevails among raw materials.

At a large station on the hill Křemenná near Míškovice there are very colourful raw materials of distant origin, such as Swieciechów silicite from the Świętokrzyskie Mountains in central Poland, obsidian (volcanic glass) from eastern Slovakia, Hungarian radiolarites, central Slovak limnosilicites, etc.

points
A specialty of the large Lhota u Lipnika (Míkovice type) is triangular leaf points, close to the Eastern European type of Streletskaya-Sungir.

Artist: Unknown
Rephotography: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




points
The most typical artefact was leaf shaped points, which due to careful processing, aesthetic shape, and functionality of the weapon became a prestigious article, disseminated beyond the framework of the Szeletien.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




sidescrapers
In the Szeletian culture, Mid-Palaeolithic-type tools persist, such as these sidescrapers and hand axes ( klínky ).

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




core
Discoid core puzzle from Moravský Krumlov IV, laboriously fitted together

( These exercises give a valuable insight into the way the tools were made - Don )

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




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The tools from the large archaeological site on the hill Křemenná (314 m) to the southwest of Míškovice are made of varied, brightly coloured, mostly imported raw materials.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




dsc00956no6sm dsc00958no6csm


dsc00957no6bsm
Sites in the vicinity of Dubice in the Hornomoravský úval can be assigned to the Jerzmanowician. It is a cultural group close to the Szeletian, but with a predominance of one-sided leaf points and a larger number of blades. It forms part of a large but very sparse network sites traceable through southern Poland, Germany and Belgium to England.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




dsc00959no5sm
In Pavlovich near Přerov local flint was processed.

Photo: Don Hitchcock 2018
Source and text: Originals, Anthropos Pavilion/Moravian Museum, Brno, Czech Republic




References

  1. Lengyel, G., Szolyák P., Pacher M., 2009: Szeleta cave earliest occupation reconsidered, Praehistoria, 9 10, 9-20
  2. Mlejnek O., Škrdla P., 2012: Ondratice I/Želeč – An Early Upper Palaeolithic Site in Central Moravia, Archäologisches Korrespondenzblatt, 42 · 2012 295
  3. Nerudová Z., Neruda P., 2017: Technology of Moravian Early Szeletian leaf point shaping: A case study of refittings from Moravský Krumlov IV open-air site (Czech Republic), Quaternary International, Volume 428, Part A, 15 January 2017, Pages 91-108

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This page last updated: Saturday, 29th May 2021 16:11


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My background

Some people have expressed interest in knowing a little bit about me. For those people, here is a potted biography:

I live in New South Wales, Australia, and I am a retired high school mathematics/science teacher.

The Donsmaps site is totally independent of any other influence. I work on it for my own pleasure, and finance it myself. I started before there was an internet, when I thought I could do a better job of the small map on the end papers of Jean Auel's wonderful book, Valley of the Horses, by adding detail and contour lines, and making a larger version. I have always loved maps since I was a young boy.

I had just bought a black and white 'fat Mac' with a whopping 512 kB of memory (!), and no hard disk. With a program called 'Super Paint' and a lot of double work (hand tracing first the maps of Europe from atlases, then scanning the images on the tracing paper, then merging the scanned images together, then tracing these digital scans on the computer screen), I made my own black and white map.

Then the internet came along, the terms of my internet access gave me space for a small website, and Don's Maps started. I got much better computers and software over the years, Adobe Photoshop and Illustrator for example, and my maps became colourised and had more detail. I did a lot of maps of the travels of Ayla from Jean Auel's books, and I gradually included other pages with more and more photos available from the web, and scanned from books or from scientific papers, since I was not happy with the quality generally available. I became very interested in the Venus figurines, and set out to make a complete record of the ice age ones. Along the way I got interested in archaeology for its own sake.

In 2008 my wife and I went to Europe, and when we arrived in Frankfurt at sunrise after the 24 hour plane trip from Sydney, while my wife left on her own tour with her sister, they visited relatives in Germany and Austria, I went off by myself on the train to Paris. Later that afternoon I took a train to Brive-la-Gaillarde, found a hotel and caught up on lost sleep. The next morning I hired a car, and over the next four weeks visited and photographed many of the original archaeological sites in the south of France, as well as many archaeological museums. It was a wonderful experience. My wife and I met up again later in the Black Forest, and cycled down the Danube from its source to Budapest, camping most of the way, a wonderful trip, collecting many photos, including a visit to Dolni Vestonice in the Czech Republic, as well as visiting the Vienna natural history museum. Jean Auel fans will realise the significance of that trip!

Luckily I speak French, the trips to France would have been difficult or impossible otherwise. No one outside large cities speaks English (or they refuse to). I was travelling independently, not as part of a tour group. I never knew where I was going to be the next night, and I camped nearly everywhere, except for large cities. I am a very experienced bushwalker (hiker) and have the required equipment - a one-man ultra lightweight tent, sleeping bag, stove, raincoat, and so on, all of which I make myself for use here when I go bushwalking, especially down the beautiful gorges east of Armidale, though for Europe I use a commercial two person lightweight tent, since weight is not so much of a problem when cycling or using a car, and in any case my wife was with me when cycling, once along the Donau from its source to Budapest in 2008, and again from Amsterdam to Copenhagen and then up the Rhine from Köln to the Black Forest in 2014, both of which were memorable and wonderful trips.

In 2012 we went to Canada for a wedding and to visit old friends, and I took the opportunity to visit the wonderful Museum of Anthropology at the University of British Columbia, where I took many photographs of the items on exhibit, particularly of the superb display of artefacts of the First Nations of the Pacific Northwest.

In 2014 my wife and I did another European cycling tour, from Amsterdam to Copenhagen, then from Cologne up the Rhine to the Black Forest, camping most of the way in each case, and taking many useful photos in museums along the way, including the museums at Leiden, Netherlands, and Roskilde in Denmark, and the National Museum in Copenhagen. Again, I later hired a car and did more photography and visited many more sites in France.

In 2015 I made a lone visit to all the major museums in western Europe by public transport, mostly by train, and that went very well. I had learned a lot of German while travelling with my wife, who is a fluent speaker of the language, and of all the European countries, Germany is my favourite. I feel comfortable there. I love the people, the food, and the beer. Germans are gemütlich, I have many friends there now.

I repeated the visit to western Europe in 2018, to fill in some gaps of museums I had not visited the first time, because they were either closed for renovation the first time (such as the Musée de l'Homme in Paris) or because I ran out of time, or because I wanted to fill in some gaps from major museums such as the British Museum, the Berlin Museum, München, the Louvre, the Petrie and Natural History Museums in London, the Vienna Natural History Museum, the important museum in Brno, and museums in northern Germany. It takes at least two visits, preferably three, to thoroughly explore the items on display in a major museum.

I spend a lot of time on the site, typically at least a few hours a day, often more. I do a lot of translation of original papers not available in English, a time consuming but I believe a valuable task. People and fate have been very generous to me, and it is good to give back a very small part of what I have been given. With the help of online translation apps and use of online dictionaries there are few languages I cannot translate, though I find Czech a challenge!

I will never be able to put up all the photos I have taken, each photo needs a lot of research, typically, to put it in context on the site. I do not have enough time left, life is short and death is long, but I am going to give it a good shot!

Life has been kind to me, I want for nothing, and am in good health. Not many in the world are as lucky as I am, and I am grateful for my good fortune.

My best wishes to all who read and enjoy the pages of my site.



May the road rise up to meet you.
May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face;
And may rain on a tin roof lull you to sleep at night.


Webmaster: Don Hitchcock

Email: don@donsmaps.com



Website last updated Monday 21 October 2024