»Elchjagd im Dachsteingebirge«

Online Lecture

Lecture Series »Neue Bioarchäologische Forschungen« (NeuBioArch)

»Elchjagd im Dachsteingebirge«

Robert Schumann | Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Heidelberg University
Kerstin Kowarik | Naturhistorisches Museum Wien (NHM)
Kerstin Pasda | Institut für Ur- und Frühgeschichte, Erlangen-Nürnberg University

The Northern Limestone Alps, especially the area around the Dachstein plateau, developed into an intensively used economic and interaction space in the Bronze Age. The culmination of this intensification of human presence in the Alps is certainly the salt mining in Hallstatt, which is established on a proto-industrial scale in the Bronze Age. In addition, extensive use of the high alpine pastures of the Dachstein plateau in the Bronze Age has been proved in the last three decades. Similarly, isolated finds suggest trail systems across the Dachstein plateau. While questions of subsistence of the Bronze and Iron Age communities in and around Hallstatt have been discussed for a long time, »wild« resources have so far played a marginal role with regard to this question, also because evidence of hunting has hardly been found so far.

This is the starting point for the research presented, which deals with elk bones from caves in the vicinity of the Dachstein plateau and provides evidence of Bronze Age elk hunting. The lecture will outline the archaeological-historical situation, present the archaeozoological analyses and results and give an outlook on future research.

In Cooperation with the Bioarchäologische Gesellschaft