Uncommon depictions of Stone Age web fishing have surfaced on engraved stones because of an imaging method that provides magnification a digital enhance.
Beforehand unnoticed traces etched into eight stones discovered at Gönnersdorf, a roughly 16,000-year-old German web site, type scenes of fish caught in giant nets, researchers report November 6 in PLOS ONE.
The newly unveiled engravings “mark Gönnersdorf as the one recognized Higher Paleolithic web site in Europe, and presumably worldwide, that visually represents net-fishing practices,” says archaeologist Jérôme Robitaille of Monrepos Archaeological Analysis Heart and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution in Neuwied, Germany.
Excavations on the German web site from 1968 to 1976 uncovered animal bones, headless feminine collectible figurines and a spread of different artifacts. For the brand new research, Robitaille and colleagues examined about 400 engraved stones, or plaquettes, from Gönnersdorf utilizing reflectance transformation imaging, or RTI. This method let the researchers manipulate mild and shadow on digital variations of engraved surfaces, revealing particulars that had evaded normal magnification research.
Earlier research had recognized easy representations of fish with forked tails on 4 plaquettes. RTI confirmed that a kind of 4 features a grid of cross-hatched traces, most likely portraying a web, which encompass the watery prey, Robitaille says. One other seven plaquettes examined with RTI have related net-and-fish scenes.
That interpretation of the engravings is in line with different Gönnersdorf finds, which embrace fish bones and indicators of textile manufacturing, together with attainable weaving implements. A number of different Higher Paleolithic websites — which, generally, date to between round 40,000 and 12,000 years in the past — additionally comprise remnants of textiles, baskets and cord (SN: 5/6/95; SN: 9/10/09).
Nets require a gaggle effort to arrange and function, particularly when concentrating on giant numbers of migrating fish in rivers, the scientists say. Gönnersdorf, positioned on the financial institution of the Rhine River, served as a seasonal gathering spot for hunter-gatherer teams able to conducting such outings.
