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It's not often that two books with the same title are published at the same time. The two ice age books, which have been on the market since March 2025, pursue identical topics in terms of content, which revolve around the development of humans in a very demanding environment, with the east of Austria being a focus, but have different focuses. Once again, a detailed analysis of the two works helps here, which needs to be placed in the technical context. First of all, both books are written by renowned authors or one author. They were published by well-known publishers who have such topics in their publishing directories. Seen in this way, everything comes from tried and tested, expert hands.
Ernst Lauermann (born 1952), native of Stockerau (Lower Austria), has known the east of Lower Austria, the Weinviertel, like the back of his hand for decades. From 1992 until his retirement, he worked as an archaeologist at the Prehistory Museum in Asparn/Zaya, most recently as its director. In the Edition Winkler-Hermaden he has published, among other things, about his hometown Stockerau, the Celts in the Weinviertel, the barrows of the Hallstatt period and the Michelberg, an archaeological hotspot in the southern Weinviertel. His latest work describes the era characterized by the emergence of humans in a significantly cooler climate, the Ice Age.
The book, which is richly structured in terms of content, begins with the climate of the Ice Age (page 8). This shows the clear structure of the book: it always goes from larger to smaller, i.e. from supra-regional developments to local events to sites in Lower Austria. To stay with the climate, we will first explain the cyclical change between cold and warm periods, which began around three million years ago. North of the extensively glaciated Alps, Europe was covered by a barren tundra landscape. Loess, a fine, ocher-colored, wind-blown (=eolian) sediment, was deposited in the east of Austria.
After the climate, we move on to human evolution in “fast forward”. Lauermann begins in Africa with “Foremother Lucy” (page 12). This is followed by technical terms from the Stone Age, which is divided into Old, Middle, New, Late and Mesolithic. The latter era is dated to 8,000 to 6,000 BC. Terms such as Aurignacian, Gravettian and Magdalenian, appear again and again in the book as subdivisions of the Upper Paleolithic (45,000/40,000 to 10,500 BC) in the context of numerous finds described here.
The mammoth finds in Lower Austria have their own chapter (from page 27). Several sections are dedicated to Ice Age people. Lifestyle, hunting weapons, musical instruments and art have their own chapters, as do representations of Venus. Classic sites that are outside Austria are always taken into account, be it the Venus from Dolní Věstonice (South Moravia, page 67) or - in the "Religion and Shamanism" part - the cave paintings in Lascaux (France, page 72f). From page 83 to page 122, sites in Lower Austria are described and explained with meaningful pictures, (historical) grave situations, finds, or reconstructions.
The first author, Hannah Rohringer (born 1987) is a postdoc in the Quaternary Archeology research group at the Austrian Archaeological Institute (ÖAI) of the Austrian Academy of Sciences (ÖAW). Second author, Thomas Einwögerer (born 1968), is head of the said research group and author of two monographs about the Langenlois area (The Upper Paleolithic stations in the Kargl brickworks in Langenlois, Lower Austria) and Krems (The Upper Paleolithic station on the Wachtberg in Krems, Lower Austria) in the same publishing house and is therefore a proven paleolithic expert.
The large-format (28x24 cm) book documents the archaeological research of the Quaternary Archeology research group and accompanies the 2025 exhibition, "Ice Age" in the MAMUZ Museum Mistelbach in the eastern Weinviertel. The theme of the show is "how hunters and gatherers lived and survived in the Lower Austrian steppe landscape during the Ice Age between around 40,000 and 11,700 years ago." (page 15). In the exhibition and therefore also in the book, found objects from the Lower Austrian state collections, the museum in Krems, the Krahuletz Museum Eggenburg and the museum in Horn are presented.
The German-English book is structured around three major sections: the Ice Age, sites and life in the Ice Age. In the first part, the climate and environment (page 21), the people (page 29) and finally dating methods (page 43) are described in a compact manner. A total of five locations are presented. They are located in the southwestern Weinviertel at the transition to the Wachau, or in the lower Kamptal: Krems-Wachtberg, Gösing-Setzergraben, Gobelsburg-Rossgraben, Langenlois-Kargl and Kammern-Grubgraben. Historical and especially recent excavation campaigns are presented impressively and in detail with partly double-sided images. The last part is about life in the Ice Age, where, in addition to the livelihood, all aspects of hunting, as well as camp life, art and religion, up to death and burial are examined.
The burials in Krems-Wachtberg are a sensation, where the 32,000-year-old twin burial of two infants was found in 2005 and a third infant grave was found in 2006 (page 147ff).
At the end of the book, the Research chapter (from page 153) provides an overview of working methods and documentation in archaeology.
Conclusion: The book “Faszination Eiszeit” uses a supra-regional approach to focus on Lower Austria, which is in the Weinviertel. The bilingual exhibition catalog "Ice Age - Ice Age" impresses with its generous, partly double-sided illustrations with numerous representations of experimental archeology and focuses on selected sites in Lower Austria. (Thomas Hofmann, April 15, 2025)