Paweł Valde-Nowak

Despite over a hundred years of various archaeological works, including the latest in Hučiva Cave, considering the presence of Stone age peoples, Tatra Mountains remain an archaeological terra incognita. Therefore it is very important to communicate any new finds. The purpose of this article is to present the discovery from the mouth of the Lejowa valley, found in 2009 in close proximity to the formerly known site no. 1 in Witów, com. Kościelisko. The analyzes of raw material and technological aspect of specimen are presented in this article and can indicate that it was made by Stone Age people.

The authors draw on their experience and past mountain landscape studies to describe an emerging collaborative research project designed to conduct advanced field studies and generate (and test) archaeological landscape models of past hunter-gatherer populations as well as pastoralist and early farming community seasonal transhumance migrations between lowland river valleys of Poland’s Podhale Basin and high altitude forests and meadows its adjacent High Tatra Mountains.

In 2012, series of archaeological rescue excavations were carried out at Zagórze, due to the construction of the Świnna Poręba retention reservoir on the Skawa river in Wadowice district (Lesser Poland voivodeship). During this research, in one of the excavated sites – no. 8 – a flint tool was discovered below the top of the slope in the diluvial cover, in the secondary position. The preliminary analysis showed that it is a so-called flame knife, characteristic tool of the Corded Ware culture. Sometime later, feature no. 894 was discovered, located approximately 35 meters from the aforementioned flame knife, at the top of the slope. Five fragments of pottery were found in this feature. Four of them have been classified as fragments of CWC ceramics, including fragments of a beaker and an amphora. On the basis of these finds, as well as comparisons to other sites, two hypotheses were formulated regarding the nature of the discovered feature: a flat grave or a feature of a settlement character.
The aim of this paper is to present a comprehensive analysis (including use-wear analysis of the flame knife) and interpretation of these discovered finds.

At the end of 2018, when the Hučivá Cave (Hučivá diera, Rausch Keller) was explored in Tatranská Lomnica, profile deposits in rear areas of the cave were found disturbed by an amateur excavation. One stone artefact was first found in back-dirt clay-layer material at the excavation pit, later joined by four more specimens from the cleaned pit profile. The Typological analysis of the artefacts shows, that their closest parallels are found in inventories of the Magdalenian culture.
Hučivá is the only cave in the whole Tatras with documented prehistoric settlement and the only Slovak cave with evidence of the Magdalenian culture. The discovery provides new information concerning subsistence strategies of late Pleistocene hunters in High Tatra Mountain landscapes. In light of this discovery, the possibility of seasonal movements along the northern slopes of this mountains range to the east and then south, through the mountain passes to the upper Spiš region should now be considered.