The landscape-archaeological Ullafelsen Project (Tyrol, Austria)

The early Mesolithic site at Ullafelsen is at the centre of a landscape-archaeological project on the Mesolithic in Tyrol (Austria). In this project, for the irst time in a subalpine open air site in Austria, mesolithic living loors were identiied and explored in great detail. The analysis of the natural sedimentation and soil-scientiic processes conirmed that Mesolithic people had manipulated the surface of the living loor, for instance to produce organic tar from birch bark through controlled, oxygen-reduced burning processes. Our C14 dating indicates that the use of subalpine sites in the Austrian Alps started as early as the early Preboreal. Analyses of the introduced cherts revealed that they originated from sometimes quite distant geological sources in Bavaria and in northern Italy. This is proof of people crossing the Alps even in the early Holocene and makes contacts between the southern alpine Sauveterrian and the southern German Beuronian technocomplexes highly likely.