The exceptional preservation at Schöningen together with a mixture of perseverance, hard work, and sheer luck led to the recovery of unique finds in an exceptional context.

The 1995 discovery of numerous wooden artefacts, most notably at least 10 carefully made spears together with the skeletons of at least 20 to 25 butchered horses, brought the debate about hunting versus scavenging among late archaic hominins and analogous arguments about the purportedly primitive behaviour of Homo heidelbergensis and Neanderthals to an end.
 
Work under H. Thieme's lead from 1992 to 2008 and results from the current team since 2008 demonstrate that late H. heidelbergensis or early Neanderthals used sophisticated artefacts made from floral and faunal materials, in addition to lithic artefacts more typically recovered at Lower Palaeolithic sites. The finds from the famous Horse Butchery Site and two dozen other archaeological horizons from the edges of the open-cast mine at Schöningen provide many new insights into the technology and behavioural patterns of hominins about 300 ka BP during MIS 9 on the Northern European Plain.

The Phansi Museum has a Coffee Shop where you will be able to have coffee or tea after the talk. Please note that this is not free, the proceeds go to the Phansi Museum.

• Speaker: Prof. Nicholas Conard University of Tübingen
• Date: Saturday, March 16th at 10:30
• Venue: Phansi Museum, 500 Esther Roberts Road (cnr Cedar Road), Glenwood, Durban
• Hosted by: SA Archaeological Society KZN Branch
• Contact: Barbara Dunn 083 472 5566 or dunn@camsol.net