Hučivá Cave: a Magdalenian hunting camp in the Tatra Mountains

Abstract This article discusses the objectives of the Stone Age Man in Caves of the Tatra Mountains project, which aims to explain the mysterious absence of evidence for the Palaeolithic in the Tatra Mountains of Eastern Europe. We present preliminary work from Hučivá Cave, which demonstrates clear traces of Magdalenian settlement within this region.


Introduction
Until now, evidence for prehistoric settlement in the alpine region of the Carpathians was almost non-existent. All attempts to identify traces of Palaeolithic settlement in the caves of the Tatra Mountains at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century were unsuccessful (Jura 1955). This state of uncertainty ended with the discovery of unquestionable evidence for Magdalenian settlement, which was obtained recently from the first surveys of Hucǐvá Cave in the Belianske Tatras, Slovakia (49°13 ′ 14.8 ′′ N, 20°1 8 ′ 37.2 ′′ E) (Soják & Valde-Nowak 2021) (Figure 1). This especially inspiring discovery was preceded by tentative signs of Magdalenian settlement within the Tatra Mountains (Valde-Nowak et al. 2017).

Methodological remarks and stratigraphy
Sediment within Hucǐvá Cave was excavated in arbitrary 50mm layers, maintaining a grid of 1m 2 , which formed the basic unit of excavation. The initial excavation consisted of crosssectioning and expanding significantly an illegally excavated trench that had been previously dug in the chamber by speleologists. Our new trench discovered 1.4m of stratigraphy overlying the chamber floor. Six main layers of clay-rubble were observed within this stratigraphy;  the deepest layer (VI) was divided into sublayers, one of which (VIc) documents the remains of a fireplace (Figure 2). Complete and thorough wet sieving of cave sediments, using sieves with a clearance of <1mm, allowed faunal and archaeobotanical remains to be gathered from all strata.

Archaeological artefacts
To date, 385 stone artefacts have been discovered, as well as a bone needle preserved in two fragments (Figure 3:12). Many artefacts were made of radiolarite, but there are other raw materials, such as various flints and limnosilicite. The most characteristic tools were shouldered points, as well as examples similar to the massive Creswell and Cheddar-like forms (Bohmers 1956;Stapert 1985;Maier 2015). There were also perforators, including a badly worn specimen with a twisted Zinken-type curved tip. A high degree of en éperon preparation was notable throughout the assemblage. Five lumps of what have initially been identified as ochre were also collected.

Archaeozoological analysis
The Magdalenian layers produced sparse bones and teeth from approximately 20 small and large mammal species, as well as from a few species of birds. Among the large mammals that could be hunted, ungulates predominate. Alpine ibex (Capra ibex) was represented by fragments of two mandibles belonging to two different individuals. The species affiliation was confirmed by analysis of the mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) obtained from the specimens. Currently, this species does not occur in the Tatra Mountains, and this is the first confirmation of its past occurrence in the western Carpathians. The presence of another mountain species of chamois (Rupicapra rupicapra), as well as deer (Cervus elaphus) and wild horse (Equus ferus), has also been confirmed. Among predators, most of the remains belonged to brown bear (Ursus arctos). More than a dozen bones belonging to different species have traces of cut marks, cracking for marrow extraction and smoothing with stone tools.

Main issues and outlook
The artefact assemblage obtained from Hucǐvá Cave, dating to the thirteenth millennium cal BC, is unique due to the lithic forms present-namely shouldered points, which are rarely found in the Magdalenian of Central Europe. They are more clearly present in the Swiss record, where they stand out in techno-assemblage E (Leesch et al. 2012;Nielsen 2016), and in Germany, for example at Petersfels and Etzdorf (Pasda 2018;Maier et al. 2020).
These artefacts are also very rare in the Polish Magdalenian (Burdukiewicz et al. 2013;Cyrek et al. 2020). What draws our attention is the location of Hucǐvá Cave on the border of the European Magdalenian range (Maier 2015;Maier et al. 2020), near to the zone penetrated by the Epigravettian, which was, to some extent, contemporaneous with the Magdalenian. The relationship between those two cultures is still unclear (Wisńiewski et al. 2017;Lengyel et al. 2021). The location of this Palaeolithic hunting camp, near the border of the Last Glacial Maximum glacier (Zasadni & Kłapyta 2014;Makos 2015), would almost certainly have affected the availability of game animals (Horácěk et al. 2015). The results of the Hucǐvá Cave research project open a wider perspective for the discussion of these issues.