Lousberg flint

Sampled sites:
• Lousberg (Aachen)

Regarding the precise stratigraphic position of the chalk opinions differ. The Dutch geological map of the region and the Dutch specialist Werner Felder (Felder 1998 and Felder & Bosch 2000) place it in the eastern facies of the Gulpen Formation, whereas in the most German literature includes it in the slightly later Maastricht Formation (Hiss 2006b). For a short introduction on the lithostratigraphy in the wider region, see the introduction to the ENCI-quarry in Dutch Southern Limburg.

If you look at the region between the Lousberg and the continuous chalk cover east of the Geul river in the Netherlands, the situation becomes even more confused. Here the two flint-bearing members of the eastern facies of the Gulpen en Maastricht Formation come near the surface: the Vetschau Member and the Orsbach Member (Hiss 2006a & 2006b). These chalks contain both flints, the Vetschau Flint and the Orsbach flint (links to be added), but their respective origins and exact lithostratigraphic position is far from clear-cut. So it is no surprise, that it is quite impossible to link the isolated erosional remnant of the Lousberg with the much more complete type-sections in the Netherlands.

There is a serious problem distinguishing the different platy flints in the wider region, as some pieces of Vetschau Flint, Simpelveld Flint, and even the tablet-formed variety of Orsbach can look quite similar (links to be added). If you look only at the colour pattern, you could even classify the material from the Valkenburg chalk further to the west as a type of Lousberg Flint. No absolute criteria can be given to separate the different flints of the eastern facies of the Maastricht en Gulpen Formations, but we hope to give a more precise overview in the future, especially as Marjorie de Grooth is preparing a quite exhaustive publication on the matter.

Although the Lousberg is the only verified source of Lousberg Flint, there is one other site mentioned: the slopes of the Schneeberg (link to be added), a few kilometres to the west (Löhr et al. 1997: 157). Here the material is reputed to be found ABOVE outcropping Vetschau Flint, which would be quite difficult, as the Vetschau Member is the highest unit in the flint-bearing Cretaceous in the area. As we visited the area on several occasions, we didn't find any Lousberg-type flint, and all the tabular flints seem to be of the Orsbach-type (own observation and pers. comm. Marjorie de Grooth).
As there seems to be quite some confusion on the nomenclature of the flint in the region, we do fear that what is mostly classified as "Vetschau Flint" is really black, very fine grained flint with numerous white spots and a thick, irregular cortex that comes from the Orsbach Member and is very probably the eastern equivalent of Lixhe Flint. This would match the correlation put forward by Floss (1994, fig. 30), who sees the source of Schneeberg in a chronostratigraphical position equivalent to Lixhe in the western part of the region and the Orsbacher Feuersteinkreide from the local stratigraphy.

The Lousberg has been recognised as a possible mining site since the end of the 19th century, as a local geologist saw parallels between the numerous antlers of red deer found at the top of the hill and the tools from the mining sites in Belgium and Great Britain (see Weiner 1998 for an overview of the history of research and further literature). In 1956 a water tower was constructed right in the middle of the neolithic mining area, and geological investigations of the uncovered chalk with flint took place, but the enormous amounts of flint flakes and chalk rubble were interpreted as the rests of medieval quarrying for chalk.

So it took until 1978 before archaeological excavations were organised by the German Mining Museum in Bochum and the University of Cologne. It soon became clear, that the whole plateau on the top of the hill was covered with a layer of mining waste with a thickness of four metres. The whole covering of cretaceous flint bearing chalk had been quarried, only leaving a plate of a metre and a half thickness of flint-free chalk, which served as a working floor. Only a few remnants of the chalk-with-flints had been left, notably near the construction pit of the water tower.

Recently new, and more precise AMS dates have become available (UtC-14473 to 14479, Schyle 2006) for short-lived material like Corylus-charcoal and antler. The ages range from 4590 to 4410 uncalBP, with standard deviations of 50 to 60 years. They calibrate (IntCal 04, 95.4% confidence) all between roughly 3500 to 2900, mostly due to a platform in the calibration curve in this time span. And as the first mining will probably have taken place at the edge of the plateau where the spoil was just thrown down the hillside, these dates only apply to the later workings towards the centre of the site.

The distribution of the axes from Lousberg Flint is one of the few instances where the maps of the known spread have been revised regularly. After an initial publication focused on the Netherlands and Belgium (Modderman 1980), the map was then extended, predominantly into Germany and updated (Gronenborn 1992 & 1997a), and again brought up to date with the most recent publication on the site (Schyle 2006). The distribution is concentrated in lowlands towards the west and north of the flint mine, with notable extensions into the Netherlands (where the material is known as Lousberg vuursteen) and to the east. The southernmost finds come from the border region between Germany and Luxemburg, some 125 km from the source, whereas the most northerly find comes from Odoorn in the Netherlands, a distance of approx. 230 kilometres from the Lousberg. The find furthest from the source is an axe from Neuenknick an der Weser, west of Hannover, nearly 280 kilometres away to the northwest, but this is an extremely isolated findspot.

Culturally most axes can be assigned to the Wartberg-Stein-Vlaardingen (WSV) complex, a late Middle Neolithic (Dutch chronology) to Late Neolithic (German chronology) cultural complex, wedged between the better known cultures of Funnelbeaker in the north and Seine-Oise-Marne in the southwest. The WSV can roughly be dated to the second half of the fourth millennium calBC, which correlates nearly perfectly with the dating of the full-scale mining activities on the Lousberg (see above). One of the main problems is that this archaeological culture is relatively well documented in the southern half of the Netherlands (Vlaardingen and Stein Group), and northern Hesse in Germany (Warberg Culture), but that the area in the vicinity of the Lousberg between these regions seems to be completely settlement-free during this period. As a matter of fact, the Neolithic flint mine of Lousberg is the only site in the Rhineland that can securely dated to this period.

You can drive further uphill, but for the genuine experience, you park your car here and follow the stairs that start here to the west. After a while you are rewarded with a good view of the city from the Belvedere of which remain only the two colonnades. You then pass the Obelisk, which forms part of the first, early 19th century, triangulation-network of the Rhineland, and come to the tower in the photo below. The main mining area lies just beyond.

Aachen is very popular with tourist (for some reason the city was completely packed with Italians the last time we visited in 2007), and the infrastructure is according. The only thing that is lacking is a good camping ground. There is a smallish affair in southeastern part of the city (Aachen-Burtscheid, approx. 50° 45' 41 " N, 6° 6' 11" E), but it is more a parking lot for RVs and similar horrors, although there is a small field where you can put up your tent and a small bath-building with shower. We mostly visit the city on day trips from the Dutch side of the border, where accommodation can be found in every village.

The culinary specialty of Aachen are the Aachener Printen, a kind of gingerbread, covered by the European laws on Protected designation of Origin, and which can be bought in an enormous variation at all confectioners' in the city. The Printen, unlike other Lebkuchen, like those from Nürnberg, are not only available during autumn and the festive season, but can (and should) be sampled throughout the year. Traditionally the Printen are used in Aachen to bind the sauce of the other specialty of the region, the Sauerbraten, which should be eaten with potato dumplings. The city used to have a typical beer, not unlike the Kölsch from Cologne, but now the local beers are nothing noteworthy.

The first two pieces below show some more white spots within the core. Do click on the macro photo of the right-hand piece as here you get the best impression of all aspects of the material: irregular cortex (the chalky part was completely weathered away), the colours, the banded structure, spots and inclusions. Though hard to distinguish in a dry state, you can just see some of the black sub-milimetric spots in the centre of the picture. Even the slight tendency to ripple and hinge at the distal part is visible, although this is most pronounced in the very first piece of the gallery.

The last three pictures give you an impression of what patination does to the flint, and therefore what you can expect to find on archaeological sites. Clearly there are very different forms of patination possible; even though all pieces were collected on the surface of the Lousberg itself the alteration of the surface are of three different types. The first piece has a very bleached appearance and has become opaque. The colour of the core lies around N6 (gray according to the Munsell soil colour charts, medium light gray in the rock-colour chart), with the iron infiltration around 2.5Y 4/3 (olive brown).
The photo next to it is the ventral view of the topmost left piece in the gallery. Here the patination is of the more normal whitish type and brings out the banding very strongly, just like with the material from Simpelveld (link to be added). In the last picture the patination has just dulled the surface of the prehistoric flake, which now more or less looks like a piece of elephant skin. The colour of the core is N4 (dark gray), the brown parts 10YR 4/3 to 4/4 (brown to dark yellowish brown).