The Szeleta Culture is a transitional

archaeological culture An archaeological culture is a recurring assemblage of types of artifacts, buildings and monuments from a specific period and region that may constitute the material culture remains of a particular past human society. The connection between thes ...

between the Middle Paleolithic and the

Upper Palaeolithic The Upper Paleolithic (or Upper Palaeolithic) is the third and last subdivision of the Paleolithic or Old Stone Age. Very broadly, it dates to between 50,000 and 12,000 years ago (the beginning of the Holocene), according to some theories coin ...

, found in

Austria Austria, , bar, Östareich officially the Republic of Austria, is a country in the southern part of Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine states, one of which is the capital, Vienna, the most populous ...

Moravia Moravia ( , also , ; cs, Morava ; german: link=yes, Mähren ; pl, Morawy ; szl, Morawa; la, Moravia) is a historical region in the east of the Czech Republic and one of three historical Czech lands, with Bohemia and Czech Silesia. The m ...

, northern

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia a ...

, and southern

Poland Poland, officially the Republic of Poland, is a country in Central Europe. It is divided into 16 administrative provinces called voivodeships, covering an area of . Poland has a population of over 38 million and is the fifth-most populous ...

. It is dated 41,000 to 37,000 years before the present ( BP), and is named after Szeleta Cave in the

Bükk Mountains The Bükk Mountains () are a section of the North Hungarian Mountains of the Inner Western Carpathians. Much of the area is included in the Bükk National Park. Geography Although Kékes, the highest point in Hungary, is not here but in the n ...

, part of the

North Hungarian Mountains The North Hungarian Mountains ( hu, Északi-középhegység), sometimes also referred to as the Northeast Hungarian Mountains, Northeast Mountains, North Hungarian Highlands, North Hungarian Mid-Mountains or North Hungarian Range, is the norther ...

. It was preceded by the

Bohunician Bohunician industry was a paleolithic archeological industry in South-Central and Eastern Europe. The artifacts assigned to this culture are dated between roughly 48,000 and 40,000 years ago. They were found at the type site of Brno-Bohunice, S ...

(48,000–40,000 BP), and is roughly contemporary with the Aurignacian (43,000–26,000 BP) in France, and the

Uluzzian The Uluzzian Culture is a transitional archaeological culture between the Middle paleolithic and the Upper Paleolithic, found in Italy and Greece. A team led by archaeological scientist Katerina Douka has dated the Uluzzian as lasting from s ...

(45,000–37,000 BP) in Italy. It was succeeded by the

Gravettian The Gravettian was an archaeological industry of the European Upper Paleolithic that succeeded the Aurignacian circa 33,000 years BP. It is archaeologically the last European culture many consider unified, and had mostly disappeared by ...

(33,000–21,000 BP). The initial excavation of the Szeletian cave was carried out from 1906 to 1913 by Ottocar Kadić. The idea of a distinctive Szeletian culture was advocated by the Czechoslovak archaeologist František Prošek (1922–1958). Kultura szelecka zasięg

Neanderthals or modern humans

It has been called the most original and also the most aboriginal Upper Palaeolithic culture in Central Europe. The findings are often interpreted in terms of the contemporaneity of Neandertal and modern man, "as the product of acculturation at the boundary of Middle and Upper Paleolithic." However, the absence of human remains makes it impossible to attribute the culture to

Neanderthal Neanderthals (, also ''Homo neanderthalensis'' and erroneously ''Homo sapiens neanderthalensis''), also written as Neandertals, are an extinct species or subspecies of archaic humans who lived in Eurasia until about 40,000 years ago. While th ...

s or modern humans.

Lithic industry

The lithic industry is characterized by: * Bifacial foliated points and sidescrapers * Prismatic and discoid

debitage In archaeology, debitage is all the material produced during the process of lithic reduction – the production of stone tools and weapons by knapping stone. This assemblage may include the different kinds of lithic flakes and lithic blades, bu ...

* Presence of

Micoquien The Micoquien is an early middle paleolithic industry, that is found in the Eemian and in an early episode of the Würm glaciation (about 130,000 to 60,000 BCE). The Micoquien is distinguished technologically by the appearance of distinctly as ...

hand axes Later assemblages contain endscrapers and retouched blades.

Sites

In addition to the Szeletian cave in Hungary, assemblages have been found in Dzierzyslaw and Lubotyń (Poland), at

Čertova Pec Čertova pec ( en, Devil's furnace) is a small karst cave in the Považský Inovec mountains of Slovakia. It is located near Radošina, in the Nitra Region. As well as being a modern recreational site, the cave is known to have yielded material ...

in Slovakia, and at Pod Hradem (Moravia).

References

External links

{{Authority control Industries (archaeology) Upper Paleolithic cultures of Europe Archaeological cultures in Hungary Archaeology of Central Europe Peopling of Europe Archaeology of the Czech Republic Archaeology of Eastern Europe