A Herman Ottó Múzeum Évkönyve 45. (2006)

Ringer Arpád-Szolyák Péter—Kordos László-Regős József-Heinzlmann Kinga: A Herman Ottó-barlang és a Herman Ottó-kőfülke paleolit leletanyagának revíziós lehetőségei

REVISION POSSIBILITIES OF THE PALAEOLITHIC ASSEMBLAGES OF THE Herman OTTÓ CAVE AND THE Herman OTTÓ ROCK-SHELTER The Herman Ottó Cave and the Herman Ottó Rock-shelter are located between Alsó-Hámor and Felső-Hámor near Miskolc in the northeastern Bükk Mountains in northeast Hungary. Ottokár Kadic excavated these sites in 1915 and 1917. He found 17 layers in the cave and numbered them from bottom to top. The lower six layers (1-6) are of Pleistocene. The thickness of the sediment was 2.5 metres in average. The lithic assamblage came from layers 2, 3 and 5. Most of the 700 finds were found in layer 2. Faunái remains were alsó found in the layers. Ottokár Kadic excavated the rock-shelter in two seasons, in 1915, and in 1917. He found three layers: the lower one was Pleistocene, and the upper ones were Holocene layers. The thickness of the sediment was 2 metres in average. Only two atypical leaf-points were found together with Pleistocene faunái remains. In 1916, Kadic classified the finds as Protosolutrean. However, he indicated that the regular and irregular leaf-points made by rough technique were absent from the assemblage. In 1934, based on the fauna remains, the fine retouched blades and two perforated red deer teeth, he thought that the finds belonged to Aurignacian culture. Jenő HiUebrand pointed out somé knapped tools, which were similar to Protosolutrean finds of Szeleta Cave, but he supposed that the collection of the Herman Ottó Cave could be connected with the Aurignacian because of primitive leafpoints. According to Mária Mottl, it was Protoaurignacian assemblage. Miklós Gábori defined this industry as Aurignacian, which was contemporary with Evolved Szeletian, Vértes made a comparison between the assemblage of Herman Ottó Cave and the Chattelperronian on the reason of the presence of primitive blades, mousteroid forms and bladelets. After this, he thought that this industry was a sensu lato Perigordian, which developed from the local Mousterian. He alsó made statistical analyses built upon metrical data. He compared the assemblage of the Herman Ottó Cave with the Szeletian. He did not make this analyse with the Aurignacian. By his new results, Vértes thought that two assemblages mixed in the finds of Herman Ottó Cave: an older and a younger one. In his opinion, the former was younger than the Szeletian industries and the younger assemblage was parallel with the Cave Gravettian of the upper levels of GörömbölyTapolca and Diósgyőr-Tapolca caves. He thought that the problem of Ottó Herman Cave could be clear up if we excavate another site giving similar assemblage with modern methods. At the end of 1990s, Brian Adams revised the assemblages of Herman Ottó Cave and Herman Ottó Rock-shelter. He analysed technological and typological features, the raw materials and the density of the finds. He agreed with Kadic and HiUebrand, and defined the assemblage of the cave as an Upper Palaeolithic industry. He claimed that the Aurignacian and the Szeletian could not live at the same time in the region of the Bükk Mountains. Instead, he linked both to the same Aurignacian occupation. Árpád Ringer excavated an open-air site near Miskolc, where the Main Road number 3 divides towards Harsány in 1999. He thought that the assemblage of this site belonged to the culture of Herman Ottó Cave that was a special Aurignacian in the eastern region of the Bükk Mountains. During the year of 2005, we found originál sediments in the hall of the cave, but not in the rock-shelter. We took sediment samples from the rear of the hall (rock-cavity number 1) on 3

rd of December in 2005. One of these samples contained bones and boné fragments of Pleistocene animals. László Kordos identified the remains. He determined those as Upper Pleistocene boreal fauna and dated to between 35000 and 20000 BP. Building upon the results, we researched the rear of the hall with test trenches from 27

,h of March to 31

sl of March, and from 13

111 of September to 3

rd of October in 2006. During the excavations, we found more remains of those layers had been found by Kadic in 1915. We identified the layer 5 of Kadic in our squares number 2 and number 5. The remains of the layer were undisturbed and 30 cm thick in average. The other place, where we could detect originál sediment, is the northern wall of the rock-cavity number 1 in the rear of the hall. We identified layers 4, 5, 6, 9, 10 on the cave wall about 1 metres high. The layers were clearly separated from each other by their colours and their structures. Our reconstructed stratigraphic 22