The Discovery of a Possible ‘Meat Cache’. Recent Excavations at the Upper Palaeolithic Open-air Site in Kammern-Grubgraben 2015–2020

The Lower Austrian site of Kammern-Grubgraben is one of the few stratigraphically recorded sites from the Last Glacial Maximum (LGM) that allows detailed insights into the life of glacial hunter-gatherer societies. Extensive and planned archaeological excavations took place for the first time between 1985 and 1994 under the direction of Friedrich Brandtner in cooperation with Anta Montet-White (1985– 1990) and Bohuslav Klíma (1993–1994), following earlier smaller, isolated findings and unqualified, largely undocumented excavations. After Brandtner’s death in 2000, the exceptionally rich find material remained largely unprocessed and barely published. It was not until 2011 to 2015 that the Institute for Oriental and European Archaeology (OREA, now: the Austrian Archaeological Institute – OeAI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (OeAW) succeeded in completely recording and inventorying the material in the course of a cooperation project with the Institutes for Prehistory and Early History of the University of Cologne and the Friedrich Alexander University Erlangen-Nuremberg, funded by the legal owner of the finds, the State of Lower Austria. Field research was resumed in 2015, when it became known that land consolidation and the relocation of an access road had begun in the area of the site without prior notification of the authorities. After initial prospections (profiles and percussion cores) by the Quaternary Archaeology research group (OREA/OeAI, OeAW) initiated and funded by the Federal Office for the Protection of Monuments (BDA), regular research activities subsidised by the State of Lower Austria were started in the form of annual oneto twomonth excavation campaigns. Once again, an exceptionally extensive inventory of finds including bones, knapped lithics and jewellery was documented and recovered, as well as stone finds unique for this period. This article presents the latest excavations and discusses the finding of a possible meat cache.