The Middle Pleistocene tunnel valley at Schöningen as a Paleolithic archive.

Schöningen represents one of the key sites for Lower Paleolithic archaeology in central Europe, where a Middle to Late Pleistocene sedimentary succession, locally up to 45 m thick, has been preserved in an Elsterian tunnel valley. After deglaciation, the tunnel valley remained underfilled and provided the accommodation space for Holsteinian interglacial deposition and also kept the artifact-bearing strata below base level for subsequent erosion. The Holsteinian (MIS 9) succession consists of laterally and vertically stacked lacustrine delta systems, which were controlled by repeated lake-level changes.