Alfred Rust

Roveland, University of Massachusetts Amherst, commenting on self-taught archaeologists who played a major role from 1930 and onwards in archaeological discoveries in northern Germany, specifically cited Rust as "the most effective of these amateurs, whose work on the now classic sites of Meiendorf and Stellmoor launched the study of the Hamburgian period.

"[1] Coming from a very modest family, raised by his single mother, Alfred Rust loved observing nature in the moors and marshes surrounding the city of Hamburg as a child.

To better understand the origin of Paleolithic stone tools in Central Europe, (and no doubt attracted by the discovery in 1928 by Dorothy Garrod of the Natufian culture in Wadi en-Natuf in the current West Bank) Rust began a bike trip to the Middle East in 1930 with a friend.

With hard work and the spirit of innovation, Rust used new methods (soil coring, excavation in floodplains with drainage by pumps) to examine the layers of peat around the areas left by the melting of the ice sheet which currently form the Meiendorfer Ahrensburg valley, near Hamburg (in the district of Stormarn, State of Schleswig-Holstein).

Rust showed (which was denied at the time) that groups of hunter-gatherers frequented the tundra stretching to the foot of the huge glaciers that covered northern Europe during the Ice Age.

Among his other notable discoveries: an amber plate with a hole and engraved figures (horse, bird, fish), a finely carved and incised stick, and a baton decorated with a large pair of reindeer antlers.

Rust, through his discoveries in the field excavations at Meiendorf, showed that reindeer hunters belonging to the Hamburg culture in the late Paleolithic were hunting in this region about 15000 years ago.

[2] Rust deduced that these different types of weapons matched a different hunting technique (as well as a social organization and lithic size): the spear was powerful but imprecise (used in killing large herds of reindeer driven by many beaters) and gave way to bow and arrows used in stalking, probably oriented thin by over-hunting and climate change.

The swampy landscape around Hamburg has hardly changed since the days when Rust was a child (other than the graffiti on the little bridge over the Dove, an arm of the Elbe , and the antenna in the background ...).
The lush meadows of Meiendorf ( Schleswig-Holstein ), where Rust began digging in 1930. Note the channels draining the water into a sump, and wetland vegetation.
Kerbspitze (= "notched edge" in German) of flint with tang, typical of the Hamburgian culture
Arrowhead of the Ahrensburg culture. Note the small size, the thoroughness of the work, the tang at the base and the stem that allows a solid attachment to the shaft.
Arms of the city of Ahrensburg : The baton decorated with a reindeer antler discovered by Rust appears under the representation of the castle.