The origin of chert in the Aurignacian of Vogelherd Cave investigated by infrared spectroscopy

Benjamin Schürch; Stefan Wettengl; Simon Fröhle; Nicholas Conard; Patrick Schmidt

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0272988

The origin of chert in the Aurignacian of Vogelherd Cave investigated by infrared spectroscopy

PLoS One. 2022 Aug 17;17(8):e0272988. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0272988. eCollection 2022.

Authors

Benjamin Schürch¹, Stefan Wettengl¹, Simon Fröhle¹, Nicholas Conard^{1

2}, Patrick Schmidt^{1

3}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology, Institute of Prehistory, Early History and Medieval Archeology, University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.
² Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Paleoenvironment, University of Tübingen, Tubingen, Germany.
³ Applied Mineralogy, Department of Geosciences, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Tübingen, Germany.

Abstract

The analyses of raw material provenance offers the possibility of tracing short and long-distance raw material transport. So far, most studies of raw material of flint and chert in Europe have been based on macroscopic analyses. We apply infrared spectroscopy to Aurignacian assemblages from Vogelherd cave and to the Magdalenian site Randecker Maar in southwestern Germany. We compare raw material samples from three chert-bearing areas in Germany with archaeological samples from Vogelherd. Our results show that infrared spectroscopy can distinguish between different raw materials. Our archaeological samples from Vogelherd correspond to the sampled geological cherts in terms of their spectral signature. Our comparison of reference samples and archaeological samples highlights problems in commonly used macroscopic identifications of chert raw materials.

Publication types

Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

MeSH terms

Archaeology*
Caves
Fossils*
Geology
Spectrophotometry, Infrared

Grants and funding

The author(s) disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article: This work was supported by the Förderverein Eiszeitkunst, Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Palaeoenvironment, University of Tübingen and the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) (grant number SCHM 3275/3–1). We acknowledge support by Open Access Publishing Fund of University of Tübingen. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.