Located above the city of Krems, the loess-covered hill between
the rivers Danube and Krems has been well-known for its Upper
Palaeolithic sites for more than a century (Neugebauer-Maresch,
2008). Recent fieldwork at Krems-Wachtberg (see Fig. 1 in
Lomax et al., 2014) carried out by the Department of Prehistoric
Archaeology (former Prehistoric Commission) of the Austrian
Academy of Sciences has led to the discovery and investigation of
an Early Gravettian camp site which yielded a wide range of highresolution
data, due to the excellent conservation, e.g. of the base
of the main archaeological unit (AH 4), where a surface with
distinct anthropogenic structures (archaeological horizon AH 4.4)
is preserved. Such a degree of conservationwas possible due to the
rapid accumulation of loess involving aeolian sedimentation and
periglacial slope dynamics (Händel et al., 2009a; Terhorst et al.,
2014).