Adlerberg culture

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Adlerberg group (5) and neighboring cultures

The Adlerberg culture (also synonymous with Adlerberg group ) describes an early Bronze Age regional group in southern Germany .

The name refers to the group's first site, the Adlerberg ( 49 ° 36 ′ 40 ″  N , 8 ° 21 ′ 59 ″  E ), a flat elevation on the southern outskirts of Worms in Rhineland-Palatinate . The independence of the group was also recognized by Karl Schumacher , who summarized the finds in the so-called "Adlerbergstufe" and thus made the first step towards the concept of the Adlerberg group or culture. Dr. At the end of the 19th century, Karl Koehl carried out the first excavations on behalf of the Worms Antiquities Association and published the results in 1900. Paul Reinecke dated the finds to the Early Bronze Age. The distribution area extended along the northern Upper Rhine and includes areas in southern Hesse, eastern Rhineland-Palatinate and northern Baden-Württemberg. The artifacts known so far come mainly from graves and depot finds , no settlements have been found.

The site on the Adlerberg

The place became known when several " living pits " with prehistoric artefacts came to light during sand mining . Many of the graves had already been disturbed by the sand mining, so Koehl was concerned that many of the finds had already been lost. After finding a triangular dagger, a new search began, in the course of which a cemetery was found. During the subsequent excavations, 26 graves were uncovered, with three graves lying one above the other no longer counting as part of the Adlerberg group due to their layout. The graves were 40 to 50 cm and 100 to 150 cm deep. The buried were all buried in a crouched position. Four of the graves contained gifts made of copper . A woman's grave was surrounded by oak planks. The composition of the inventories in the cemetery was striking. On the one hand there were graves with purely end-Neolithic additions, on the other hand, a few burials had a mixed inventory of end-Neolithic and early Metal Age forms. For this reason Koehl dated the cemetery to the transition period between the end of the Neolithic and the Metal Age .

Leitforms

The most important key form of the group is the so-called "Adlerberg Cup". This comes in different variants. The basic shape is a double-conical vessel with a tapering base. The upper handle attachment is located below the edge of the vessel, the lower handle attachment at the point of the largest diameter of the vessel. There are decorated and undecorated copies.

The characteristic shapes also include needles with a saber-shaped shaft and roller head, V-shaped pierced buttons and small metal plates decorated with a punched pattern with rolled-up narrow sides.

funeral

Stool burials in flat graves are typical . Buildings made of stone or wood can rarely be detected. The orientation of the dead is inconsistent. There are differences between the burial grounds as well as within the individual burial grounds. A uniform gender-specific orientation of the buried is also not discernible. With a few exceptions, the dead are buried individually. A special feature of the graves of this regional group is the mixed inventory of end-Neolithic and Metal Age forms. To the late Neolithic grave goods include bone needles with säbelförmigem shaft and durchlochtem head, arrowheads made of flint , bone rings, mussels and wrist guards in various sizes. The metal additions are rather rare in the graves. Typical forms are roller needles with a saber-shaped shaft, triangular daggers, some of which have their own type of "eagle mountain" due to their shape, spiral rings for arms and fingers and double-sided awls, which were probably used for working leather. All metal additions are made of copper, so they are not yet real bronzes , as they do not yet have the required alloy of tin and copper in the correct ratio.

Depot finds

Gau-Bickelheim depot

The dagger hoard was discovered in 1906 near Gau-Bickelheim. It contains a triangular dagger of the Oder-Elbe type , a spout-grip dagger and 3 dagger blades. One of the blades has a barely visible, silvery coating of arsenic. On the basis of decorations and the fact that it is coated with arsenic, connections with Brittany and the Wessex culture are suspected.

Dexheim depot

The finds were handed over piece by piece to the Roman-Germanic Central Museum in Mainz in the years 1894–1903 . These include, among other things, sheet metal plates with rolled up narrow sides, 14 undecorated disc-headed needles, 3 eyelet neck rings, metal tubes and two large, decorated disc needles. These objects were handed over in different years. The exact location is not known. It is believed that they came from a depot and belonged to a traditional costume. The decorated disc needles represent a variant of a needle type that is widespread in the Straubing group . Since the needles found in Dexheim differ in details, a separate type is named for them, the so-called Dexheim type. With an average length of 32–42 cm and a head width of approx. 7.2–8.5 cm, the needles are rather large. The head shape is almost oval, with the upper rounding rolled back, creating a horizontal upper edge. The disk head is decorated on one side. The shaft is rectangular directly below the head, but then merges into a round cross-section. In rare cases, the tip of the needle is slightly curved. The decoration on the head consists of linear bands that run both along the edge and in horizontal bands across the head surface. A characteristic ornament is a triangular band of lines that hangs down from the horizontal upper edge of the head and the point of which points into the center of the needle head.

Find places

See also

The search for traces of the Adlerberg culture is the subject of a 13-part adventure series by ZDF with Gerhart Lippert : Semesterferien (1971) .

literature

  • Ludwig Lindenschmit : The antiquities of our pagan prehistoric times. Volume 1. Victor von Zabern publisher, Mainz 1858.
  • Karl Koehl : Worms. In: Correspondence sheet of the West German journal for history and art. Year 19, 1900, ZDB -ID 200654-6 , pp. 196–205 (Grabfeld on the Adlerberg.).
  • Paul Reinecke : Grave finds from the early Bronze Age from Rheinhessen. In: Correspondence sheet of the West German journal for history and art. Volume 19, 1900, pp. 205–208.
  • Karl Schumacher : Status and tasks of Bronze Age research in Germany. In: Report of the Roman-Germanic Commission . Volume 10, 1917, pp. 7-85.
  • Christa Köster : Contributions to the End Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age on the northern Upper Rhine. In: Prehistoric Journal . Volume 43/44, 1965/1966, pp. 2-95.
  • Hans-Jürgen Hundt : The dagger hoard of Gau-Bickelheim in Rheinhessen. In: Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum Mainz . Volume 18, 1971, pp. 1-43 ( online ).
  • Wolf Kubach: The needles in Hessen and Rheinhessen (= prehistoric bronze finds. Department 13: needles. Volume 3). CH Beck, Munich 1977, ISBN 3-406-00763-5 , pp. 55-68 (also: Dissertation, University of Frankfurt am Main 1970).

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Karl Schumacher: Status and tasks of Bronze Age research in Germany. In: Report of the Roman-Germanic Commission. Vol. 10, 1917, p. 20.
  2. ^ A b Karl Koehl: Worms. In: Correspondence sheet of the West German journal for history and art. Vol. 19, 1900, pp. 196-205.
  3. ^ Paul Reinecke: Grave finds from the early Bronze Age from Rheinhessen. In: Correspondence sheet of the West German journal for history and art. Vol. 19, 1900, pp. 205-208.
  4. ^ Christa Köster: Contributions to the End Neolithic and the Early Bronze Age on the northern Upper Rhine. In: Prehistoric Journal. Vol. 43/44, 1965/1966, p. 23.
  5. ^ Hans-Jürgen Hundt: The dagger hoard of Gau-Bickelheim in Rheinhessen. In: Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum. Vol. 18, 1971, pp. 1-43.
  6. ^ Hans-Jürgen Hundt: The dagger hoard of Gau-Bickelheim in Rheinhessen. In: Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum. Vol. 18, 1971, p. 19.
  7. ^ Hans-Jürgen Hundt: The dagger hoard of Gau-Bickelheim in Rheinhessen. In: Yearbook of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum. Vol. 18, 1971, p. 17.
  8. ↑ Wolf Kubach: The needles in Hessen and Rheinhessen. 1977, pp. 55-68.