Kiskő-oldali Cave

Kiskő-oldali Cave is one of the caves located in the Gerecse Landscape Protection Area of the Danube–Ipoly National Park, in the outskirts of Bajót. Archaeological and paleontological finds have been recovered from it. It was among the caves in Hungary that are specially protected.

Description

In the Gerecse Mountains (Eastern Gerecse), in the outskirts of Bajót, on the D side of Kiskő-oldal, which forms part of the Öreg-kő K subarea, the cave entrance is located in an abandoned stone quarry, in a forest, at the foot of a rock wall. The 2.5 m wide and 1.6 m high cave entrance is irregularly shaped, natural but deepened, oriented horizontally along the axis. The cave formed in the upper Triassic Dachstein limestone due to dissolution below the karst water level. The thoroughly surveyed cave is 16 m long, extends 5.2 m vertically, is 4.2 m high, 1 m deep and 12.5 m wide horizontally. The cave can be visited without a permit and reached by an easy walk; a lamp is sufficient for the entrance. The terminal fissure, however, is only passable with some rock climbing.

After the steep, debris‑covered entrance part of the cave, a 5 m high chamber follows, where beautiful spherical niches and spherical stalactites decorate the walls, and the floor is covered with clayey rock debris. In the middle of the chamber there is a fire‑placing spot, surrounded by wood debris. Sunlight reaches here, but a lamp is needed for a more thorough inspection. Some walls are algal and damp. By climbing 2 m at the end of the chamber one can reach a short upper section. Here one can observe decaying stalactite flows, small wolf‑mouth stalagmite flags, and montmilch. The formations are not damaged. Small trumpets ending in debris start upward. There are also overturned stalagmites, roots, spiders, and insects.

In the cavity, remains of cave bear, reindeer, woolly rhinoceros, ancient elk and giant deer have also been found.

In 1984 the cave was first called Kiskő-oldali-barlang in its literature. The cave appears in its literature under the names Kiskőoldal-barlang (Bertalan 1976), Kiskőoldal barlang (Vigh 1937), Kis-kőoldali-barlang (Bertalan, Schőnviszky 1976), Kiskőoldali barlang (Mottl 1934), Kiskő-oldali-sziklaüreg (Székely 1994), Kiskőoldali-sziklaüreg (Kordos 1984) and Kiskőoldali sziklaüreg (Kadić 1952).

Research History

According to the book published in 1908 describing Esztergom county, traces of cave dwellers were not found in Esztergom county because there are no caves that contain evidence that ancient humans once lived in them. The first settlers came to this region with more advanced needs, using stone tools in addition to tools made of animal bones and antler. Therefore they were not forced to live in caves or dug-out hollows, but could make tents and huts. The caves or dug-out hollows that are still numerous in forests or in remote, hard-to-reach areas and contain traces of human culture could not have been ancient human dwellings. They were mainly hideouts from the time of the Tatar invasion and Turkish destruction, because the objects found in them cannot be traced back to prehistoric times.

In the 1928 Animal Science Communications, in a study written by István Gaál, it is mentioned that while the large entrance of the Jankovich Cave opening on the slope of Öreg-kő is already clearly visible from a distance, nothing in the upper Triassic limestone formation of the Kiskő side near Bajó had previously indicated the presence of a cave. At the place which Jenő Hillebrand had earlier often concluded that there was probably a cave, in 1927 they actually discovered a small cavity entrance by quarrying. In this third Bajó cave, Jenő Hillebrand excavated for four days in November 1927. Jenő Hillebrand briefly presented the archaeological results of the excavations so far (1927). Those interested in the cave’s location, dimensions and other circumstances of the excavation will find the appropriate data in Jenő Hillebrand’s work. Therefore, in the present publication Gaál István only refers to these briefly. Gaál István also listed the cave’s layers.

The surface is covered with a blackish layer, then a brownish humus layer lower down. This, also based on the pottery found in it, is a modern fill. Below it lies a grayish‑yellow sterile layer, which is also probably Holocene. The light‑yellow layer beneath them, which was also present on the small terrace in front of the entrance together with the previous layers, is characterized by angular limestone rubble and the bones of diluvial mammals. Because of the very characteristic copper spear found in this layer, Hillebrand Jenő placed it in the Magdalénian, that is, the uppermost level of the diluvium. The light‑yellow clay layer lies, but only inside the cavity, a brownish cave clay, which, like the former, is about 40 cm thick. In it a single flaked stone tool was found, but this is not typical. Hillebrand Jenő conditionally dated this layer to the Solutrean, mainly because bear bones are much more common in it than in the previous layer, and also because the experience gained in Jankovich Cave also suggests this.

The floor of the cave is covered by a thin, yellow‑reddish and plastic clay layer, in which there were no prehistoric remains. At a depth of 3.2 m measured from the surface, the excavation reached the limestone dolomite of the cave floor. As for the mammalian remains of this stratigraphic sequence, from the Holocene level it is only known that there were many fox bones. Among the diluvial sediments, from the upper, yellow, i.e., Magdalene layer, far more bones were recovered than from the underlying brown diluvial layer. The mammal species from the upper layer that have so far come to light are the following: Ursus spelaeus Rosenm., Vulpes vulpes fossilis, Rangifer tarandus fossilis, Cervus canadensis asiaticus fossilis, Diceros antiquitatis and Equus cf. ferus fossilis. This series of only six species, compared with the 22 species found in Jankovich Cave, and especially with the 30‑species mammal series determined from the smaller caves below, can be considered poor, but not insignificant.