Catalog of Principal Sites
Appendix A Catalog of Principal Sites BALCAROVA CAVE (OSTROV U MACOCHY, FIGURE 7.1, NUMBER 24) The most important Magdalenian cave site of the Suchy zleb valley (northern part ofthe Moravian karst), opens onto the valley by an imposing 5.7-m-high entrance, at the altitude of 460 m above sea level. The excavation was carried out rather carefully by Knies (1900, 1901b), who sieved the whole volume of excavated sediments to get a large number of microfauna! remains. Knies observed four accumulations of finds clustered around dark charcoal lenses, interpreted by him to be hearths. Apart from the microfauna, he recorded a large number of birds (about 12,000 bones) and a higher representation of polar fox (Musil, 1958). The composition of the other game, dominated by reindeer and hare and accompanied by cave bear, mammoth, hyena, rhinoceros, horse, aurochs, wolf, and beaver, led to the assumption of a relatively earlier Magdalenian date compared to the dates of the other caves. The lithic industry is composed of the four main groups: endscrapers, burins (and their combinations), various backed blades, and borers (Valoch, 1960c). The exceptional pointed backed blades may, together with some short endscrapers, represent a Late Paleolithic compo nent. The bone industry is represented by awls and fragments of sagaies, some of them decorated (in a zigzag-pattern with short double lines). At a depth of 0.3 m in the "diluvial clay," next to hearth 2, Knies recorded a fragment of human mandible and, by hearth 3, two human incisors. Later literature threw doubts on the Pleistocene age of these finds; it should be recalled, however, that similar conclusions were made at that time even about Mladec and Pfedmosti.
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