Farkas-kő Cave

Farkas-kő Cave is among the specially protected caves of Hungary. Prehistoric Stone Age archaeological finds and Pleistocene paleontological finds have been recovered from it. It is located in Bükki National Park. It is a passage cave with three entrances.

Description

It is on the outer area of Cserépváralja, northeast of the settlement, on the upper section of the Kő Valley, on the eastern side of Kis-Farkas-kő, on a rocky part, in a forest, at a relative height of 25–30 meters, where its three entrances are located. There is a 2.75 meter wide, five‑meter high, oval‑shaped entrance oriented along the slope axis, a 2.7 meter wide, 2.8 meter high, oval‑shaped entrance oriented along the horizontal axis, and a 30‑centimeter wide, 1.3 meter high, fissure‑shaped entrance oriented along the vertical axis. Tourist maps mark its location with a cave symbol and the name.

Through the five‑meter high entrance one can reach the part called Sziklaodú. The 2.8‑meter high entrance opens north of the Sziklaodú entrance, seven meters away, one and a half meters lower, and leads to the part called Kőfülke. Between Sziklaodú and Kőfülke there is a narrow, twice‑broken linear passage.

It developed in Upper Eocene limestone, in the Szépvölgy Limestone Formation. It is an inactive, fossil source cave. It was formed along a tectonic fissure by the outflowing karst water and dissolution below the normal karst water level, as well as by freeze‑thaw granular processes. Its spatial form is branching and multilevel. Its horizontal extent is 20 meters. The fissure section, the circular section and the elliptical section are the characteristic section types. In the upper part the fissure character dominates, while in the lower part dissolution traces dominate.

A trumpet and shaft, a spherical bust, a ceiling channel, a sinle, a pipe, a wave shell, a fingertip car and calcite crystals are found in it. There is a trumpet opening to the surface at two points, which is a north–south oriented fissure and is only passable with rope. In the rock cavity dripstone encrustation and overgrown, scalenoid calcite can be observed. Denevians also use it. With permission, most of the cave can be visited with basic caving equipment, and in some places with the use of rope‑technical devices.

In 1970 the cave was first called the Farkas‑kői rock cavity in the literature (Dely 1970). The cave appears in the literature under the names Cserépvári cavities (Bertalan 1976), Farkaskő cave (Örvös 1962), Farkas‑kői‑cave (Lénárt 1979), Farkaskői rock cavity (Mottl 1940), Farkaskői rock cavity (Kadić 1933), Farkaskőlyuk (Dancza 2008), Little Farkaskői cave (Regős 2003) and Little Farkas‑kői cave (Lénárt 1992).

Finds

According to Ottokár Kadić, in the part called Kőfülke, most of the bones that emerged from the light‑brown, limestone‑debris, cave‑clay were cave bear bones, which were mainly from strong male animals. A fine antler of a roe deer, a fragment of a boar femur, several bones of a gray wolf, two canine teeth of a red fox, a canine tooth of a rabbit and the bones of a large horse, probably Equus abeli, were found in it. Only the limb‑bone fragments and one incisor of Equus abeli were recovered. Many broken bone pieces were among the finds, some of which were shaped into peaks and some were worn by heavy use, and one of them had a shape similar to the pointe cran type.

Some roughly worked quartzite flake and chalcedony flake, some primitive mountain, scraper and blade were in the fill besides the bone tools. One medium-sized scraper made of chalcedony core, a flat wide blade and two thick rough blades of the moustieri type. Two smaller, curved, finer peripheral worked pieces are rather of the aurignaci type. In the part called Sziklaodú there were not many finds.

According to Ringer Árpád and Regős József the Bükki culture was represented by a few pottery shards. In the underlying Pleistocene layers a piece of Upper Paleolithic blade and some indeterminate flakes were found. In the deeper layers a scraper and some flakes were found that can be assigned to the moustieri culture. In a manuscript Regős József wrote in 2003 he concluded that there are contradictions in the layer description of the fill. In Kadić Ottokár’s 1940 publication, according to the readable Regős József, finds were only in the light‑brown, limestone‑debris cave clay.

Of the layers shown on the map made by Dancza János and Mottl Mária only the humus is light‑brown, but cave bear bones could not be in it with the Paleolithics. In László Vértes’s book published in 1965 only the light‑brown, limestone‑debris fill is listed, which was probably communicated based on Kadić Ottokár’s 1940 description. It is also confusing that László Vértes assigned the recovered tools to the genuine Moustier culture, which is identical with the lower cultural layer of the Suba‑hole. But according to Kadić Ottokár’s description the Suba‑hole, light‑brown, cave clay belongs to the upper cultural layer.

Kadić Ottokár did not deal with the pottery sherd fragments found in the humus of Kőfülke and the fresh bones in the humus. According to Regős József, the Holocene material that emerged from the humus did not enter the museum inventory. László Vértes wrote about the Paleolithic material that it consists of a scraper and several Mousterian-type flakes, one blade of Upper Paleolithic character, and the rest are amorphous flakes. It is interesting that the adjectives “type” and “character” were used in the same way as by Kadić Ottokár. T. Dobosi Viola, in her 1975 material, already mentioned it as a certain find spot, only among the Middle Paleolithic Moustier cultures. In this material the Upper Paleolithic material was not evaluated.