RESEARCH ARTICLE Ochre and pigment use at Hohle Fels cave: Results of the first systematic review of ochre and ochre-related artefacts from the Upper Palaeolithic in Germany Elizabeth C. Velliky ID 1,2 *, Martin Porr 2,3 , Nicholas J. Conard 4 1 Institut fu ¨ r Naturwissenschaftliche Archa ¨ologie, Mathematisch-Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakulta ¨t, Tu ¨ bingen, Germany, 2 Archaeology/Centre for Rock-Art Research and Management, M257, Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education, School of Social Sciences, The University of Western Australia, Crawley WA, Australia, 3 Institut fu ¨ r Ur- und Fru ¨ hgeschichte und Archa ¨ ologie des Mittelalters, ROCEEH—The Role of Culture in Early Expansions of Humans, Tu ¨ bingen, Germany, 4 Department of Early Prehistory and Quaternary Ecology & Senckenberg Centre for Human Evolution and Quaternary Ecology, University of Tu ¨ bingen, Schloss Hohentu ¨ bingen, Tu ¨ bingen, Germany * elizabeth.velliky@research.uwa.edu.au Abstract Though many European Upper Palaeolithic sites document early examples of symbolic material expressions (e.g., cave art, personal ornaments, figurines), there exist few reports on the use of earth pigments outside of cave art–and occasionally Neanderthal– contexts. Here, we present the first in-depth study of the diachronic changes in ochre use throughout an entire Upper Palaeolithic sequence at Hohle Fels cave, Germany, span- ning from ca. 44,000–14,500 cal. yr. BP. A reassessment of the assemblage has yielded 869 individual ochre artefacts, of which 27 show traces of anthropogenic modification. The ochre artefacts are from all Upper Palaeolithic layers, stemming from the earliest Aurignacian horizons to the Holocene. This wide temporal spread demonstrates the long- term presence and continuity of ochre use in a part of Europe where it has not been sys- tematically reported before. The anthropogenic modifications present on the ochre arte- facts from the Gravettian and Magdalenian are consistent with pigment powder production, whereas the only modified piece from the Aurignacian displays a possible engraved motif. The non-modified artefacts show that more hematite-rich specular ochres as well as fine-grained deep red iron oxide clays were preferred during the Gravet- tian and Magdalenian, while the Aurignacian layers contain a broader array of colours and textures. Furthermore, numerous other artefacts such as faunal elements, personal ornaments, shells, and an ochre grindstone further strengthen the conclusion that ochre behaviours were well established during the onset of the Aurignacian and subsequently flourished throughout the Upper Palaeolithic at Hohle Fels cave. PLOS ONE | https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209874 December 27, 2018 1 / 40 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 a1111111111 OPEN ACCESS Citation: Velliky EC, Porr M, Conard NJ (2018) Ochre and pigment use at Hohle Fels cave: Results of the first systematic review of ochre and ochre- related artefacts from the Upper Palaeolithic in Germany. PLoS ONE 13(12): e0209874. https:// doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0209874 Editor: Karen Hardy, Institucio Catalana de Recerca i Estudis Avancats, SPAIN Received: November 2, 2018 Accepted: December 12, 2018 Published: December 27, 2018 Copyright: © 2018 Velliky et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited. Data Availability Statement: All relevant data are within the manuscript and its Supporting Information files. Funding: Research by EV was funded by the University of Western Australia International Postgraduate Research Scholarship (IPRS) and Australian Postgraduate Award (APA). Competing interests: The authors have declared no competing interests exist.