Princely burial place of Vix
The discovery of a pristine burial mound with a richly decorated princely grave from the early Iron Age in the north of Burgundy - the princely burial place of Vix - is today because of the many valuable and rare grave goods , especially because of the jewelry that was found, of a woman, the hypothetical princess of Associated with Vix ( French princesse de Vix ). The grave belongs to an extensive settlement in the transition from the late Hallstatt to the early La Tène period and is around the year 500 BC. Dated.
Find place
The site is located about six kilometers north of the city of Châtillon-sur-Seine in northern Burgundy . The hill of Mont Lassois , a witness mountain , towers over the village of Vix . A large Late Bronze , Hallstatt and Late Latène Age necropolis extends southeast of Mont Lassois over an area of 42 hectares . The finds indicate a settlement until late antiquity .
The beginning of the Iron Age led to changes in society towards a clear hierarchy. So-called “princely seats” (after Wolfgang Kimmig ) or manor houses of an upper class that developed through the trade in iron were created - in contrast to the large settlements that were previously more widespread. Whether it was really a question of “princes” - that is, secular or ecclesiastical lords - or an economic upper class is still the subject of scientific discussion. The changed social conditions were also evident in the richly decorated graves of the new masters, which differ markedly from the previous, uniform burials in urns.
In the 6th and 5th centuries BC The prince seat of Vix seems to have controlled an important traffic junction at which the Seine as an important transport route by water and a route from the Mediterranean to the north met. In addition, Vix is centrally located in an area that is used intensively for agriculture.
Find history
Since 1929, initially as a chance find by a local botanist, and increasingly after a targeted search, many thousands of ceramic shards, fibulae , jewelry and other bronze and iron objects have been found at Mont Lassois . In January 1953, an excavation team led by René Joffroy discovered a large object that later turned out to be the spectacular find of the Vix crater . A month later, in February, the grave of a woman, covered in jewelry, was discovered, who later entered the archaeological nomenclature as the Princess of Vix. Since the start of the scheduled excavations in 1953, there have been new excavation campaigns and discoveries around the mountain.
Finds on and around Mont Lassois
The first finds were ceramic shards , the number of which has increased to more than 40,000 usable pieces to this day. They were decorated with geometric motifs such as checkerboard patterns, but sometimes also with animal motifs. Next to it was Attic black-figure ware . Some of the amphorae and bowls found could be identified more precisely: They probably came from southern France, which was part of the Greek settlement area at the time.
The jewelry mainly consisted of fibulae , often decorated with amber or coral , but also earrings, pearls, slate bracelets and rings. In addition to finds made of metal, glass jewelry was also discovered. Small bronze figures probably also of Mediterranean origin remained individual finds.
Only a few weapons were found, mostly thrown weapons. Remains of two statues were found in 1994, on the one hand a female figure and on the other a Celtic warrior.
Traces of fortifications and several buildings have been discovered on the summit and slopes of Mont Lassois. Settlement findings on the plateau were pit houses , post structures , fireplaces and a post slot wall with Murus Gallicus nails . Elaborate trench-wall constructions indicate the importance of the prince's seat. The castle was enclosed with walls up to eight meters wide and, according to Kimmig's definition, indicates an important prince's seat: the castle and lower town existed, rare and expensive imported goods were found and several grave mounds with rich grave goods were nearby.
Geomagnetic investigations by Harald von der Osten in 2003 show a planned course of the settlement in the north-south axis with complex buildings in timber construction. Overlapping of the floor plans indicate several construction periods.
The princess grave
The burial probably took place between 500 and 450 BC. Instead of. The actual status of the female corpse found is still unclear. Therefore, in addition to being titled as princess, there are also the designations priestess of Vix , princess of Vix or lady of Vix , but her prominent status is undoubted because of the rich grave goods. She seems to have been around 30 to 35 years old when she died.
The princess rested in a free-standing car body, from which the wheels had been removed, and was lavishly decorated with jewelry. Only the metal parts of the car and the wheels remained. The most eye-catching piece of jewelry is a 480 gram torque made of pure 24-carat gold . There was also a second bronze torc, six fibulae, six bracelets made of locally occurring slate, and a bracelet made of amber beads.
In addition to the crater used to mix wine with water, there was also a matching wine service, consisting of a silver sacrificial bowl ( phiale ), a bronze, Etruscan wine jug ( oinochoe ) and several other bowls from Attica and Etruria. These larger finds were probably originally arranged on side tables or benches, but none of them remained.
The Vix crater
The most splendid and well-known find is that of a richly decorated, large wine mixing vessel made of bronze, a volute crater , with a capacity of 1100 liters, a height of 1.64 meters and a total weight of 208 kilograms. The wall thickness is only 1–1.5 millimeters. When it was found, the crater was crushed by the earth on top, and the handles had to be removed for recovery. You alone weigh 116 kilograms. Gorgon heads adorn the side of the handles. The lid of the crater, which was also found, served as a sieve to clean the wine. Mounted on it was a woman statuette 19 cm high, in which Helmut Birkhan suspects a druid ( Celts . P. 811). The motif language of the crater clearly speaks for a production in the Greek area. After the extensive reconstruction, the crater is now completely restored and can be viewed in the museum.
The enormous variety of finds apparently from the Mediterranean area suggests extensive trade relations. In particular, the Greek and Etruscan finds had probably reached Vix via Etruscan traders. The wealth of the finds, especially the luxury goods exported from far away, makes the find unique. The grave goods and a reconstruction of the grave are now exhibited in the archaeological museum in Châtillon-sur-Seine .
More burial mounds
In addition to the well-known princess grave , five other barrows were found in the vicinity of Mont Lassois, three of which have so far been examined more closely. Burial mound II by Vix had a diameter of 33 meters, in the central burial chamber the remains of a cremation were found in a bowl used as an urn. Based on the findings, the burial mound is dated to around 850 BC. Dated. Like the princess, the woman was buried in a chariot from the grave mound of La Butte, probably in the middle of the 6th century BC. In addition to two iron axes, there were also bracelets and earrings made of gold. The grave mound of La Garenne, which contained a grave car with an Etruscan bronze bowl with four griffins as a handle, was removed as early as 1846 . Remnants of bones are no longer preserved here.
Meaning of the burial place
Several of these so-called princely seats can be found in Europe, for example the hilltop settlement Heuneburg and the princely graves in Hochdorf and Magdalenenberg . What was new was in the early Iron Age around 700 to 400 BC. The emerging hierarchy in society, which is evidently shown in these finds. The probably still relatively egalitarian society of the Bronze Age was abandoned in favor of a division into an upper class and the rest of the population.
This separation was based on economic success, along with the trade in coveted raw materials such as copper and especially the rare tin, which were needed for bronze production. Especially on the waterways between the Phocaean colony of Massalia and the English Channel, the trade in tin and related cargo could be well controlled. It was no longer the ownership of a deposit that was decisive, but the infrastructure and the trade with it.
The accompanying increasing and rapidly growing wealth led to the formation of the so-called princely seats, from which the elite controlled and promoted trade in their sphere of influence. Even after the end of life there were changes: The lords of the princely seats were now, unlike their fellow men, not buried in an egalitarian manner and without large additions in shallow graves, but were given their own, elaborately made burial mounds. Their good trade contacts and the associated influence manifested themselves in the imposing grave goods, which, like here in Vix, could also include extremely prestigious imports from the Mediterranean region.
The few princely graves found untouched show, in addition to the often impressive finds, above all a serious change in the social structure. Trade became the basis of a new hierarchy of society and gave the beneficiaries an unprecedented power base.
See also
literature
- Franz Fischer : Early Celtic princely graves in Central Europe. Ancient world 13, special issue. Raggi-Verl., Feldmeilen / Freiburg 1982.
- René Joffroy : Le Trésor de Vix (Côte d'Or) . Presses Universitaires de France, Paris 1954.
- René Joffroy: The Oppidum Mont Lassois, Municipality of Vix, Dép Côte-d'Or . In: Germania 32, 1954, pp. 59-65.
- René Joffroy: L'Oppidum de Vix et la civilization Hallstattienne finale dans l'Est de la France . Paris 1960.
- René Joffroy: Le Trésor de Vix. Histoire et portée d'une grande découverte . Fayard, Paris 1962.
- René Joffroy: Vix et ses trésors . Tallandier, Paris 1979.
- Bruno Chaume: Vix et son territoire à l'Age du fer: fouilles du mont Lassois et environnement du site princier . Montagnac 2001, ISBN 2-907303-47-3 .
- Bruno Chaume, Walter Reinhard: Princely seats west of the Rhine , in: Archeology in Germany 1, 2002, pp. 9-14.
- Claude Rolley (Ed.): La tombe princière de Vix , Paris 2003, ISBN 2-7084-0697-3 [final publication].
- Vix, le cinquantenaire d'une découverte . Dossier d'Archéologie N ° 284, Juin 2003.
- Bruno Chaume / Tamara Grübel among others: Vix / Le mont Lassois. Research récentes sur le complexe aristocratique . In: Bourgogne, du Paléolithique au Moyen Âge , Dossiers d'Archéologie N ° Hors Série 11, Dijon 2004, pp. 30–37.
Web links
Individual evidence
- ↑ S. Rieckhoff, J. Biel: Die Kelten in Deutschland , Stuttgart 2001, pp. 40–53.
Coordinates: 47 ° 54 '25.4 " N , 4 ° 31' 55.2" E