7,500-year-old deer headdress discovered in Germany shows hunter-gatherers shared sacred objects and ideas with the region’s first farmers

Deer headdresses unearthed at an archaeological site in Germany reveal that Stone Age hunter-gatherers shared sacred objects, tools and ideas with farming communities some 7,500 years ago, a new study reveals.

The ancient farming village near Eilsleben, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) east of Hannover in northern Germany, was “a kind of outpost” for some of Europe’s first farmers, the study’s lead author Laura Dietrich, an archaeologist at Germany’s Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg, told Live Science.

The site was discovered in the 1970s and has undergone extensive excavations since then. Recent geomagnetic analysis reveals that it was nearly 20 acres (8 hectares) in area and may have been the largest settlement in the area at the time.

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Deitrich said the villagers belong to the Neolithic, or Neolithic, LBK culture, which migrated from the Aegean region and Anatolia, now Turkey, to central Europe by 7,500 years ago. (This culture was named for its unique pottery. LBK or “Linearbandkeramik” in German means “linear striped pottery.”)

The earliest stages of the ancient village belonged to the first generation of these Neolithic farmers, and the site still has archaeological evidence of their distinctive dwellings, Dietrich said. However, “there are also a lot of Mesolithic items.” [Middle Stone Age] This indicates that the villagers were interacting with hunter-gatherers who were already living in the area.

technology transfer

This headdress, made from the skull and antlers of an adult roe deer (Capreolus capreolus), may be the most impressive yet found at the site. But it is clearly Mesolithic, not Neolithic, the researchers report, in their study published in the January issue of the journal Kodai.

Similar deer headdresses have been found at Mesolithic sites up to 11,000 years old, including more than 30 headpieces excavated at the Star Carr site in northern England.

In Eilsleben, Dietrich said the headdress appears to have been part of a “technology transfer” between Mesolithic hunter-gatherers and Neolithic villagers.

Archaeologists also found tools made from antlers and antler fragments at the site. These materials are not normally used by the people of LBK. However, Neolithic villagers likely imitated the habits of hunter-gatherers and made horn tools.

Dietrich said the remains of the ramparts and ditch indicate the village was fortified against attack, but it is not clear who attacked.

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“It was a paradoxical relationship,” she says. “The Neolithic fortress says ‘we live here’, but this settlement retains many elements of Mesolithic hunter-gatherers, which is amazing.”

ancient europe

The genetic traces of the Neolithic peoples of the Aegean and Anatolia, whose descendants formed the LBK culture, can still be seen in the genomes of many modern Europeans.

The other two major genetic ancestors of modern Europeans are the Mesolithic wave of hunter-gatherers about 14,000 years ago. and the later Yamnayans (‘Indo-Europeans’) from the Pontic-Caspian steppes, Bronze Age nomads who competed for their herds of horses, cattle, sheep, and goats.

Scientists believe that Neolithic people first introduced agriculture to Europe. This important technology was heartily imitated by those who already lived there and by those who came later.

However, it is still not clear how they interacted with the Mesolithic people who already lived there. “The relationship between early farmers and hunter-gatherers may have been very complex, but we are only now beginning to understand it,” Dietrich says.

Genetic studies so far have found little evidence of interbreeding between the two ancient groups, she said. But the village near Eilsleben appears to have been a place of exchange “not only with material artifacts, but also with symbolic meaning,” Deitrich said.

Stone Age Quiz: What do you know about the Paleolithic, Mesolithic and Neolithic periods?