15,800-year-old Engravings of Fish Traps Are Oldest Depictions of Fishing

LEIZA, MONREPOS and Durham University

At the Ice Age site of Gönnersdorf near Neuwied am Rhein, researchers from the Archaeological Research Centre and Museum for Human Behavioral Evolution MONREPOS, a facility of the Leibniz Centre for Archaeology (LEIZA), together with scientists from the University of Durham in England, have made a significant discovery. Using modern imaging methods, detailed engravings of fish on slate slabs became visible, overlaid with grid-like patterns.

These patterns are best interpreted as depictions of nets or fish traps and provide the first archaeological evidence of early fishing techniques in the late phase of the Late Paleolithic (ca. 20,000–14,500 BC). The engravings add practical and symbolic elements to the known repertoire of Ice Age art and indicate that fishing also had a social component in the life of the hunter-gatherer societies of that time.

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A slate slab with engravings of fishing on. (© Robitaille et al., 2024/PLOS ONE)

Gönnersdorf: A Window into Ice Age Life

The Ice Age site of Neuwied-Gönnersdorf is one of the most important and richest late Ice Age sites in Europe and contains artistic treasures from prehistoric times. Hundreds of mostly small, flat slate slabs show images of prey such as wild horses, woolly rhinoceroses, reindeer and mammoths - animals that were crucial to the survival of the late Ice Age people who inhabited the camp site 15,800 years ago.

In addition to these detailed images, several hundred engravings of highly stylized female figures have made the site world famous. Now it also provides the earliest known evidence of Stone Age fishing techniques.

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Slate slabs depicting mammoths and a bird from the Magdalenian settlement in the Neuwied Basin near Gönnersdorf (Rhineland-Palatinate). (Landschafts Museum)

Modern imaging techniques have revealed several depictions of fish covered in grid-like patterns. These patterns are interpreted as fish nets or traps. Although it is known that fish were part of the diet of Paleolithic hunters and gatherers, there is no evidence of how the fish were caught. 

The Gönnersdorf engravings thus represent the earliest known depictions of net or trap fishing in European prehistory and make it clear once again that technologies that are rarely preserved in archaeological find contexts may have much older origins than generally assumed.

Fishing as Part of Daily and Symbolic Life

Researchers are currently beginning to identify individual artists and their specific "styles" by examining the nature of the cutting marks. In addition, the shapes and surface structures of the slate slabs often seem to have influenced the choice and placement of motifs - a phenomenon known as pareidolia. The brain interprets natural shapes, such as those of the slabs, as meaningful objects, similar to how we occasionally recognize faces in clouds.

The fish engravings show that fishing was integrated into symbolic and social practices and expand the known repertoire of representations in Ice Age art, in which, in addition to the depiction of the animals themselves, their exploitation strategies were also artistically implemented.

The investigations into the significance of the slate slabs and their use in the everyday lives of Ice Age hunters and gatherers are embedded in an interdisciplinary cooperation project between the Departments of Archaeology and Psychology at Durham University and MONREPOS.

Funded by a joint initiative of the German Research Foundation (DFG) and the Arts and Humanities Research Council (AHRC), the research team combines expertise from archaeology and visual psychology. Using the latest imaging techniques such as Reflectance Transformation Imaging (RTI), the scientists are investigating the interplay between visual perception and the design and use of art objects in the context of everyday environments in the late Ice Age.

Top image: A slate slab from the Stone Age site of Gönnersdorf shows a fish trap.         Source: © Robitaille et al., 2024/PLOS ONE

This article was originally published under the title, ‘Oldest depictions of fishing discovered: Ice Age slates reveal 15,800-year-old engravings of fish traps’ by Leibniz Center for Archaeology as a press release.