"Rosselhalde" pre-fort
Pre-fort - a term often found on the edge of the mountains in different forms for high-altitude viewpoints, which in the past often served to secure and control traffic arteries and settlement areas. At this point you can see the valley cut into the subsoil by the Traun and cleared. The power of the flowing water was and is still used in large and small sawmills for processing the abundance of wood in the vast Hunsrück forests. At various points on the slopes exposed by the water, smaller ore deposits were occasionally exploited. The raw materials obtained here were prepared and processed together with ores from other sites downstream at Abentheuer. The valley picture through the Traun is made possible by a weakening zone in the subsoil - called a disturbance in the technical language of geologists - as they often occur in large numbers on the south-eastern edge of the slate mountains. The course of this fault is predominantly north-west - south-east, i.e. roughly at right angles to the course of the mountain edge itself. The rock in the fault areas is broken up and therefore more susceptible to being washed out by rainwater than elsewhere. The consequence is the development of valleys like the one ahead. The quartzite blocks visible below the site are part of a not very clearly defined "Rosselhalde" (rock slope). Such weathering fields were created during the last Ice Age as a result of the rock stress caused by the stronger fluctuations in temperatures at that time (so-called frost and thaw changes). Because the southernmost ice age glaciers Haberı did not cover the local areas, the quartzite was exposed to the above-mentioned influences much more than under the protective ice cover of a glacier.