Les structures d’occupation gravettiennes en Europe centrale : le cas de Grub/Kranawetberg, Autriche

Abstract

Grub/Kranawetberg, a multilayered Gravettian site in Lower Austria, is one of many Gravettian open-air sites of Central Europe. These sites are well-known since a long time for their settlement structures, but also rich lithic inventories as well as organic tools, personal adornments, and art objects (e.g., Pavlov, Dolní Vestonice). While old excavation and recording techniques do not allow a detailed intrasite spatial analysis of these sites, the ongoing fieldwork at Grub/Kranawetberg provides us with abundant and detailed information about spatial organization of a Gravettian open-air site in Central Europe. The site is excavated since 1993 and yielded four archaeological horizons with abundant finds (including numerous personal adornments) and some evident structures. The main focus of this paper is on the GIS-based methodology of intrasite spatial analysis, especially emphasizing the possibilities of recognizing formation processes, size-sorting and locating a possible dwelling. Application of various methods, among them piece-plotting, mapping of find quantities, application of kernel density estimates and ring and sector analysis, in the 1995 and 1996 excavation area showed latent structures which are interpreted as evidence for a dwelling in this area of the site. In the last part of the paper the evidence of Grub/Kranawetberg is discussed and compared with other European Gravettian sites.