Leaf Point from Moravany nad Váhom-Dlhá

This is a Leaf Point from Moravany nad Váhom-Dlhá (4,5×2,5×07 cm).

Paleolithic findings at Moravany were first considered in 1931, when two interested collectors, V. Vlk and H. Sonntag, recovered patinated flint artifacts from the ploughed fiels along the Vah valley. Lothar Zotz, who worked in Breslau at this time, visited some of the sites together with Vlk since 1935 . Zotz came back in 1940, at this time allready professor of prehistory at the German Karls-University in Prague, and excavated several sites until 1943. The main results of his research can be summarized as following: In Moravany there are sites from various Upper Paleolithic technocomplexes. Zotz was the first, who described an earlier phase at Moravany nad Váhom-Dlhá with typical leafpoints and the  richer findings from a late Gravettian with shouldered points. Zotz also reconstructed the chaine operatoire, which started either from a broad triangular flake, but also from small triangular „bifaces“

 In 1946 Karel Absolon made excavations at Dlhá, and prepared drawing of artifacts for a later publication. Bárta’s revisory excavations in the 1960ies were more metricoulos than those of his forrunners, as he did not only collect leaf points, but also cores, flakes and blades. The most important class of retouched tools were leaf points with either flat retouch or partial flat retouch, including semi-finished points and fragments of points. As allready mentioned by Zotz, they were mostly made of local raw materials, such as (black to reddish) radiolarites, quartz and silicificated sandstone. Imported raw materials, obsidian and limnosilicite, were less frequent. „Atypical“ End-scrapers, side-scrapers, burins and combined tools were rare and non-diagnostic. The workshop character of the site was documented by the presence of semi finished products and debitage.

The leafpoints from Dlhá are unique and can not be easily integrated into the „Szeletian“ concept sensu strictu as a ”transitional” technocomplex . So far, in Europe,diagnostic triangular Moravany-Dlhá points are only known from the Moravany vincinity, from Vlčkovice in Western Slowakia and from isolated stray finds at Miscolc (Hungary) and at Brudersdorf (Austria). Their incorporation into an interstadial soil at Dlhá, first demonstrated by Lais in the 1937, indicates an Interstadial before or after the Pavlovian , which at Moravany nad Váhom is always incorporated in the pure loess. Zotz`s documentation and much of the archaeological findings (about 200 leaf points!) were lost when the German troops  were kicked out from Prague in 1945.

At Vlčkovice a triangular leaf point was found together with arched backed blades in an interstadial soil, dated to the Arcy-Denekamp episode (32-28 ka BP) and topped by a Gravettian industry in the upper parts of this soil. On the other hand at Trencianské Bohuslavice elaborated elongated leaf points have been clearly documented in a „Willendorf-Kostenki“ context at 19 ka BP.

Absolons drawings: