Burgwall in Elbholz
The castle wall in Elbholz is a small Slavic castle wall northeast of Gartow in Lower Saxony . The ring wall system located in a wooded area near the Elbe has largely been preserved.
The castle wall is located in the approximately 300-year-old Elbholz riparian forest near some fishing cottages. Already on a map from the year 1695 the complex was marked with the name the Burgk . The wall is now 15 meters wide and 2 meters high and forms a circular structure with a diameter of 45 meters. The wall used to measure around 7 meters at the bottom and was estimated to be up to 5 meters high. It consisted of a wooden box construction filled with soil. Upstream was a 2 meter deep and about 10 meter wide trench that has now been completely filled. There are huge sand deposits in it, which are also present in the area around the castle wall, but not inside. This suggests that it has been washed around by flood events.
The prehistorian Carl Schuchhardt carried out the first archaeological investigations in 1915 by surveying and the local researcher Alfred Pudelko carried out excavations in 1958 . More recent excavations were carried out in annual campaigns in 2005, 2006 and 2008. They showed that the ring wall had only one construction phase and a short period of use. It was built around the second half of the 9th century and was abandoned after it was destroyed by fire at the beginning of the 10th century. This is indicated by large amounts of charred beams and reddish burnt clay. The slight traces of settlement and the few finds inside spoke in favor of only a short existence of the castle ramparts. In addition to animal bones, the finds mainly included settlement ceramics of the Menkendorfer and Feldberger types . A special find was a rider's spur from the late Carolingian era. This indicates the presence of a member of a higher social class.
See also
literature
- Thomas Saile: Early historical castle walls at Höhbeck near Lenzen In: Mamoun Fansa , Frank Both, Henning Haßmann (editor): Archeology | Land | Lower Saxony. 400,000 years of history. Landesmuseum für Natur und Mensch, Oldenburg 2004. Pages 562–565.
- Wolfgang Jürries , Berndt Wachter (ed.): Elbholz, Burg in: Wendland-Lexikon . Volume 1: AL , 2nd edition. Druck- und Verlagsgesellschaft Köhring & Co., Lüchow 2008, ISBN 978-3-926322-28-9 , p. 172
Web links
- Entry by Sandy Bieler and Stefan Eismann on Elbholz in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Brief description of the castle wall in Elbholz
- Description of the excavations in 2005 and 2006
- Map with the location of the castle wall in Elbholz
Coordinates: 53 ° 3 ′ 19 ″ N , 11 ° 28 ′ 51 ″ E