Möllenbeck burial mound
The Möllenbeck burial mound was a burial mound near Möllenbeck in Lower Saxony . The burial mound in the Möllenbeck forest on the Großer Nottberg served as a burial place for urns . Archaeologists assume that it was during the pre-Roman Iron Age in the 1st millennium BC. Has been created. In 2016 there was a full excavation that destroyed it. The archaeological investigation was necessary because of the progressive soil degradation of a sand and gravel works.
Description and location
The burial mound presented itself as a round elevation with a height of 1.3 meters and a diameter of 16 meters. It was located southeast of the place in the Möllenbeck forest on the Great Nottberg at about 146 m above sea level. NHN . The Obere Wesertal and Porta Westfalica can be seen from the site . Archaeologists suspect the wide view as the reason for choosing this burial site in an exposed location. Within the forest area there are other barrows that are attributed to the Bronze Age .
Geologically, the area is a hilltop landscape of stratified sand and gravel, which as Kames are relics of an Ice Age formation process and are part of the history of the Weser . The Great Nottberg was created during the Saale Ice Age , when large masses of water emerged on the glacier front and left an alluvial fan in an ice reservoir . The sand and gravel deposits today reach heights of up to 80 meters.
After the Second World War , extensive excavation of gravel and sand began as a result of the strong construction activity in the area. Since then, the excavation edge has moved closer to the site. In 2011 the forest area around the mining area was designated as a nature reserve Kameslandschaft .
Research history
The Rinteln teacher and voluntary ground monument curator Paul Erdniß (1886-1970) excavated the grave mound in the 1920s to examine it. He hid several urns . They came to the Rinteln local history museum without documentation and can no longer be assigned today. In 1986 the burial mound was included in the monument register and placed under monument protection. As early as 2009 it was feared that the burial mound could be destroyed by expanding the excavation. In the summer of 2016, a rescue excavation was carried out due to the approaching dismantling, which students of the Seminar for Oriental Archeology and Art History of the Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg carried out as a teaching excavation. The five-week excavation with the participation of voluntary helpers from the Friends of Archeology in Lower Saxony was carried out in cooperation with the Lower Monument Protection Authority of the city of Rinteln and the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation . The costs were borne by the dismantling company in accordance with the polluter pays principle anchored in the Lower Saxony Monument Protection Act .
excavation
During the excavation in 2016, the archaeologists at the burial mound initially assumed a Bronze Age individual burial in a tree coffin , but dated the burial site to the following Iron Age after the excavation was completed . During the excavation it was found that the builders of the burial mound at the time were using an already existing elevation. They put a stone pavement on it and placed urn burials on it. Then they backfilled the elevation with soil. The archaeologists found numerous disturbances to the burial mound by excavations, which probably came from previous investigations or from predatory graves . In the middle of the hill there was a massive encroachment two meters in diameter and 1.2 meters deep. The remains of corpse burns and charcoal testify to the destruction of a grave site in the hill . The finds from the 2016 excavation included individual ceramic fragments of urns, including part of a rough pot .
Excavation manager Simone Arnhold in the center of the excavated burial mound next to an exposed tree root
There was originally an urn at the exposed site in the burial mound
Excavation cut through half of the burial mound with several tree trunks and roots
According to the district archaeologist Friedrich-Wilhelm Wulf from the Lower Saxony State Office for the Preservation of Monuments , the settlement of the people who built the burial mound was around 300 meters away. Finding remains of the settlement is considered unlikely due to the advanced soil degradation in the area.
literature
- Simone Arnhold: Iron Age burial mounds with an Ice Age core in: Archeology in Germany 1 | 2017, p. 44.
Web links
- Description of the excavation at the Friends of Archeology in Lower Saxony
- Tree coffin wanted, urn grave found in: Schaumburger Zeitung of September 13, 2016 ( pdf version ), in Mindener Tageblatt of September 15, 2016
- Brief description of the excavation with photos by a hobby archaeologist
- Before the excavators arrive: Grave remains in Möllenbeck exposed at: rinteln-aktuell.de from September 15, 2016
Individual evidence
- ^ Photo of a burial mound between Möllenbeck and Krankenhagen on flickr
- ↑ Tumulus in danger! at weserberge.de
Coordinates: 52 ° 9 ′ 0 ″ N , 9 ° 2 ′ 56 ″ E