  Finite temperature Euclidean SU(2) lattice gauge fields generated in the
confinement phase close to the deconfinement phase transition are subjected to
cooling. The aim is to identify long-living, almost-classical local excitations
which carry (generically non-integer) topological charge. Two kinds of spatial
boundary conditions (fixed holonomy and standard periodic boundary conditions)
are applied. For the lowest-action almost-classical configurations we find that
their relative probability semi-quantitatively agrees for both types of
boundary conditions. We find calorons with unit topological charge as well as
(anti-)selfdual lumps (BPS-monopoles or dyons) combined in pairs of non-integer
(equal or opposite sign) topological charge. For calorons and separated pairs
of equal-sign dyons obtained by cooling we have found that (i) the gluon field
is well-described by Kraan-van Baal solutions of the Euclidean Yang-Mills field
equations and (ii) the lowest Wilson-fermion modes are well-described by
analytic solutions of the corresponding Dirac equation. For metastable
configurations found at higher action, the multi-center structure can be
interpreted in terms of dyons and antidyons, using the gluonic and fermionic
indicators as in the dyon-pair case. Additionally, the Abelian monopole
structure and field strength correlators between the centers are useful to
analyse the configurations in terms of dyonic constituents. We argue that a
semi-classical approximation of the non-zero temperature path integral should
be built on superpositions of solutions with non-trivial holonomy.
