The structure of the cave, stratigraphy, and depositional context

Abstract

The Mladeč Cave system is located in the Devonian limestones of the Konice-Mladeč formation, inside the Třesín Hill (343 m a.s.l.), dominating the Upper Moravian Plain. Previously known as "Bočkova díra" in Czech or "Fürst Johanns-Höhle" in German, this multi-floor karstic system, with mean elevations around 250 m a.s.l., includes two major human fossil sites: Mladeč Ib and Mladeč II, and a possible site Ia (Table 1; Szombathy, 1882, 1904, 1925; Maška, 1905; Knies, 1906; Bayer, 1925; Smyčka, 1922; Skutil, 1938; Jelínek, 1983, 1987; Oliva, 1989, 1993; Valoch, 1993; Svoboda, 2000, 2001, 2002). Other Upper Paleolithic sites at the Třesín Hill include a smaller "Podkova" (Horseshoe) Cave (Mladeč III; Skutil, 1938; Svoboda, 2002), located at 270 m a.s.l. in the northern slope, and an open-air site "Plavatisko" on the top plateau (Valoch, 1981; Oliva, 1996). Typically, the limestone is penetrated by vertical fissures and chimneys interconnecting the horizontal cavities and providing more or less direct access to the surface. In order to address the depositional context of the human fossils, two lines of evidence are combined: the original records of early excavators and witnesses, and the revision of the actual topographic situation inside the cave. Nevertheless, several issues remain unresolved, not the least of which is the question of whether the Upper Paleolithic people frequented the interior of the cave, or whether their remains fell in through the chimneys. Furthermore, there are several questions related to: the original entrance, the hearths, and finally, possible rock art. The interpretation of Upper Paleolithic burials is widely influenced by both the personal experience of the excavators and available analogies. Naturally, these viewpoints have altered with the advancement of European Paleolithic research during the last century. As the majority of Upper Paleolithic burials discovered earlier in caves of Italy and France (e.g., Grimaldi, Cro-Magnon) were situated in regularly frequented and settled sites, the first interpretations of Mladeč automatically sought an analogous explanation. Elsewhere in Europe, however, a more specialized type - the funeral cave - was repeatedly encountered, as at Cussac where the human skeletal remains were associated with parietal art on the walls (Ajoulat et al., 2001), or at Paviland where a burial was located in a scarcely settled cave on the western periphery of the Upper Paleolithic world (Aldhouse-Green, 2000). In 1950, a funeral cave was discovered in the Zlatý kůň Hill at Koněprusy in the Bohemian karst (Prošek et al., 1952), and it has been used as another type of analogy for Mladeč (Jelinek, 1987; Svoboda, 2000). © 2006 Springer-Verlag/Wien. All rights are reserved.