Billendorfer culture
The early Iron Age Billendorfer culture (former name also Billendorfer group ) was in the 7th and 6th centuries BC. Mainly spread between the middle Elbe and the Oder. It was the late phase or successor to the Bronze Age Lausitz culture (around 1300 - 500 BC). The name-giving place of discovery is Billendorf , which historically belongs to Lower Lusatia and today forms the district of Białowice in the city of Nowogród Bobrzański (Naumburg am Bober ) in the south of the Lebus Voivodeship .
history
Since the excavations of the Berlin pathologist Rudolf Virchow (1821–1902), Billendorf was known as an urn burial ground of the Bronze Age Lausitz culture. Virchow, who was also a renowned archaeologist , defined a new type of ceramic urn, the Billendorfer type , for the burial ground . He also found the same type during excavations in cemetery fields in Upper Lusatia (Niethener Schanze), other finds were bronze and iron hairpins at both excavation sites. Virchow found that cremated corpses from the Early Iron Age were buried in both urn fields . In 1938, a research center of the Museum of Prehistory and Early History was founded in Lebus to research the central Oder landscape, which archaeological finds from the Billendorfer period from Neumark and carried out excavations.
One of the largest and oldest sites of Lusatian culture is located near Bautzen with more than 2000 urn graves of the Billendorfer type discovered. The large urn grave fields, like the one near Bautzen, were mostly in the vicinity of cult sites.
In the entire settlement area of the Billendorfer culture, castle walls were built, always on water and often protected by the landscape. Castle walls from this period can be found between the Elbe and the Vistula, especially in Lower Silesia , Spreewald and Upper Lusatia.
The Billendorfer Early Iron Age period followed around 500 BC. In the areas west of the lower Elbe the Jastorf culture and its offshoot, the Nienburger type . In the areas east of the Elbe, Suebian Semnones are later documented, which Tacitus reported in the first century AD. They burned their dead, but buried the ashes not in urns but in graves.
Sites
Grave fields of the Billendorf culture
|
Castle walls of the Billendorfer culture
|
literature
- Dietmar-Wilfried Buck: The Billendorfer Group. 2 volumes. Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1977–1979;
- Werner Coblenz : Metal Age. Grave finds of the Billendorfer culture from Saxony (= Inventaria archaeologica. Germany. Bd. 8, ZDB -ID 1163179-x ). German Science Publishing House, Berlin 1961.
- Werner Coblenz, Louis D. Nebelsick: The prehistoric burial ground of Niederkaina near Bautzen (= publications of the State Office for Archeology with State Museum for Prehistory. Vol. 24). Volume 1. Theiss, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-8062-1232-5 .
- Werner Coblenz, Louis D. Nebelsick: The prehistoric burial ground of Niederkaina near Bautzen (= publications of the State Office for Archeology with State Museum for Prehistory. Vol. 31). Volume 5. Theiss, Stuttgart 2001, ISBN 3-910008-28-3 .
- Rudolph Grenz : Billendorfer Group. In: Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde (RGA). 2nd Edition. Volume 2, Walter de Gruyter, Berlin / New York 1976, ISBN 3-11-006740-4 , p. 606.
- Volker Heyd: The prehistoric burial ground of Niederkaina near Bautzen (= publications by the State Office for Archeology with State Museum for Prehistory. Vol. 26). Volume 3. Theiss, Stuttgart 1998, ISBN 3-8062-1339-9 .
- Volker Heyd: The prehistoric burial ground of Niederkaina near Bautzen (= publications of the State Office for Archeology with State Museum for Prehistory. Vol. 29). Volume 4. Theiss, Stuttgart 2000, ISBN 3-8062-1445-X .
- Karin Peschel: The Billendorfer culture west of the Elbe (= publications of the State Museum for Prehistory Dresden. Volume 21). Deutscher Verlag der Wissenschaften, Berlin 1990, ISBN 978-3326005737 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ Archäologisches Nachrichtenblatt 13-2 / 2008: 202f