Remete-hegyi No 14 Cave

Remete-hegy No. 14 Cave is one of the caves located in the Remete Gorge in the Danube–Ipoly National Park. Very special and valuable archaeological finds were uncovered at the site. The cave was probably a counterfeiting workshop and an anthropological find also emerged from it.

Description

It lies in the outskirts of Remeteszőlős, on the steep southern side of Remete Hill. Its entrances are on the northern side of the Remete Gorge, near the K end of the gorge, in a specially protected area, about 60 m above the valley floor, on the lower part of the limestone rocks at an altitude of about 350–380 m above sea level. It opens in the middle cave level of the gorge (this level is 70 m above the valley floor, at an altitude of 340–350 m a.s.l.). It was formed by a cavity collapse. It is located under a 6–9 m high ridge that is a rock bridge between two stone courts. It is situated 300 m to the K of the Remete Cave and the Upper Cave of Remete Valley.

It has a lower and an upper entrance. It formed in Dachstein limestone. The part called the Great Hall is 9 metres long, 3–4 metres wide and 5–8 metres high, and a crawlway leads out from its northern part. Archaeological site identifier number is 10814.

In 1984 the cave was first called the 14th cave of Remete Hill in the literature. The cave appears in the literature as the 14th cave (Szabó 1972), Felszakadt Cave (Horváth, Máté 1975), Felszakadt cave (Horváth, Máté 1975), Remetehegyi IV. cave (Kessler 1932), Remete-hegyi IV. cave (Bertalan, Schőnviszky 1976), Remetehegyi 14. cave (Bertalan 1976), Remete-hegyi Felszakadt-cave (Pápa, Dénes 1982), remete-hegyi Felszakadt-cave (Pápa, Dénes 1982), Remetehegyi felszakadt cave (Leél-Őssy 1957), Remete-hegyi zsomboly (Torma 1986), Remete-szurdok beszakadt cave (Böcker 1978), Remete-völgyi Szurdok-cave (Horváth, Máté 1975), Remetevölgyi Szurdokcave (Horváth, Máté 1975) and Szurdok-cave (Szabó 1972).

Research history

The 1877 Archaeological Bulletin mentions that the antiquities department of the Hungarian National Museum was enriched in November by one (animal) lower jaw, two bones and three pieces of pottery. These finds, which came from a rock fissure located near Remetemária in Buda, were donated to the museum by Lóczy Lajos. The 1904 Budapest Antiquities notes state that the rock fissures of Remetemária were probably Stone Age pasture sites, from which Lóczy Lajos (Archaeological N., 168/1877.) brought coarse pottery fragments to the Hungarian National Museum. In a 1932 announcement in Cave World it is reported that members of the Cave Research Section of the Budapest University Tourist Association, in the humus cover of the Remetehegyi IV. cave, found dinar-type leg bones and a human skull among Bronze Age and Neolithic pottery shards.

It first saw the light in 1937, and in a publication written by István Jablonkay it is mentioned that on the left wall of the Remete gorge, 50 m from the stream (upper level) and 10 m higher (lower level) there are spring caves. The other spring caves located on the upper level, which are less developed and uglier than the Remete‑hegyi stone cell on the upper level, can be observed along the entire length of the gorge. If a cave’s erosion base moves downwards, the cave’s water system follows. This can happen, for example, when water leaves the old transitional cave and the old spring cave, and then, descending through thin cracks in the rock, creates a new cave system. In this case a new spring cave opens beneath the old one, at the new level of the subsided erosion base. The old upper entrance is then broken by the remaining karst breccia. The abandoned spring caves lining the left wall of the Remete gorge are fine examples of this process. The erosion base of these caves was the stream of the cave whose collapse formed the gorge. The upper‑level caves indicate the former height of the gorge‑cave stream before the segment‑type change.

In the chapter written by Ferenc Tompa in the 1942 book *Budapest története* it is mentioned that after Flóris Rómer, Géza Nagy also noted that coarse pots emerged from the rock hollows of Remetemária, probably originating from the polished stone age. Sándor Leél‑Őssy gave a lecture at the Hungarian Hydrological Society meeting of 9 March 1949. The lecture’s topic was the Seven‑hole. The lecture also mentioned the other caves of the Remete gorge. Sándor Leél‑Őssy gave a lecture at the society’s specialist meeting of 9 November 1949, in which he presented the caves of the Remete gorge.

The text of the lecture given by Sándor Leél-Őssy on March 9, 1949 was published in issues 3–4 of the 1950 volume of the Hydrological Gazette. The publication is titled The Seven‑Hole Cave of Remete Hill. The study mentions that the currently high‑located but already dry, dying spring caves of Remete Hill were formed in the Pliocene and early Pleistocene. (Cave under the seven holes, Remete‑hill stone cell and several other smaller unfinished or broken caves, as well as a spring chamber.) Afterwards, due to the young tectonic uplift and the climatic origin of the erosion base, the karst water level of Remete Hill also fell and the caves that had become dry began to die out.