Cooking pit

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Fireplace near Bommestad

The Gargruben and fireplaces ( Danish Kokegroper or Kogestengrube, Swedish Kokgropar med Skärvsten ), which were first recognized in 1906 (by Wilhelm Deecke 1862-1934), are a phenomenon of the younger Bronze Age and the Iron Age in Denmark and Scandinavia , North and North Southern Germany , France, Switzerland, parts of Poland and the British Isles . Contrary to the mostly Late Bronze and Early Iron Age dating of the German and French findings, some Swiss findings point to a use from the Early or Middle Bronze Age. The more recent research in Germany describes such sites as cult fire or fireplace sites , such as the sites of Bötersen in Lower Saxony or Jarmen , Jesendorf and Triwalk in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and Zedau in the Altmark .

Demarcation

None are Gargruben ( English burnt mound of burnt hill), Deer Roast (Hirsch roaster), Ancient cooking places or gaelic Fulachta fiadh (in various spellings), which primarily occur in the British Isles and also come from the Bronze Age. Many are known from other parts of Europe, especially Scandinavia. In 1990 the first results on Bronze Age burnt mounds on the coast of Sweden were published.

Bommestad

450 stoves on an area of ​​2500 square meters were discovered in Bommestad near Larvik. The number exceeds any previous discoveries in the Nordic region. The discovery was made in connection with archaeological work between Bommestad and Langåker before Vestfold built the E18. So far they have given a date to the year 0. Burned bones were found in many pits, and broken pottery in some.

description

The location of the pits as cult fire places is always similar:

  • often in an exposed position in the terrain on ridges or knolls
  • Proximity to the water, but not to residential areas

Some of these were rows of round, oval or rectangular pits many hundreds of meters long, while other sites show irregularly arranged cooking pits or only individual findings. In 1989 Sigrid Heidelk-Schacht lists 30 such places in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania and in the north of Brandenburg and Saxony-Anhalt ( Zedau ). The pits consist of a cluster of "trough-shaped earth pits" with burnt stones on the periphery as well as black fire earth and charcoal parts. These pits are randomly distributed in the majority of the squares. In the absence of better interpretations, the rows of fireplaces are seen as an expression of cultic-religious acts, which is why they are also referred to as cult fireplaces or fire cult places. The largest accumulations are near Jesendorf (334) and Rønnige Soegaard (over 300) on Fyn in Denmark, of which around 500 fireplaces were probably excavated each.

New findings

The rows of round, oval or rectangular pits, several hundred meters long, occasionally merge into unsegmented trenches. The spread of this phenomenon is east of the Harz, from the Magdeburg Börde to the Unstrut area, in an arc of about 100 kilometers in length and a maximum of 50 kilometers in width. The eastern border is near Leipzig. The archaeological investigations that have been carried out since 2008 in the run-up to the construction of the new ICE line Erfurt-Halle / Leipzig provide a more detailed insight. On a 22-kilometer section that runs across the Querfurt Platte between the Unstrut and Saale valleys, more than six kilometers of rows of pits and trench sections have been uncovered and documented. It had pits of various shapes and depths, as well as trenches.

In many places, the trench-like structures near the surface dissolved in the depths into rows of individual pits. Apparently, such findings had this manifestation from the beginning. Other continuous trenches showed no sign of segmentation. The archaeologists were able to prove that trenches had been worked up several times. A certain amount of time must have passed between the repairs to the trenches, as they were always largely filled in. A phenomenon were filled trenches that were not "worked up", but rather in the form of a long row of pits, which, however, did not reach the depth of the former trench. These pits were dug within the older backfill. Clearly, continuous trenches and rows of pits or segmented trenches had the same function. The identical purpose of the findings becomes clear from observations on the position of the individual structures in relation to one another. In many places the linear earthworks were not cut through by the archaeological excavation areas on the route; instead, the structures ran over long stretches within the ICE route so that several right-angled branches could be recorded. In contrast, crossings could only be detected in individual cases. The right-angled juxtaposition of the rows of pits and land trenches underlined that both types of findings are to be viewed as part of a system.

A focus of the burns was also Mecklenburg , where more than 30 sites are now known. The largest accumulations are at Jesendorf (334) and Rønnige Søgard (over 300) on Fyn in Denmark , from which around 500 fireplaces were probably excavated each. In 2005, rows and scattered fire pits and hearths were found near Egeln Nord ( Salzlandkreis ) in Saxony-Anhalt on an incompletely excavated route. A similar concentration is known from Zedau , a district of ( Osterburg ) in the Altmark , which could be dated to the 8th and 7th centuries BC. Larger rows of pits were found in Seddin in the Prignitz, near Naschendorf, in Watenstedt in the Helmstedt district and in the Parchim district, the largest collection in Germany (280 pits). Similar Bronze Age pits were excavated in Reinach , in the Swiss canton of Baselland (source: Arch. Schweiz 2006/1 p. 4).

See also

literature

  • Lil Gustavson, Tom Heibreen, Jes Martens (eds.): De gåtefulle Kokegroper. Kokegropeseminaret, November 31, 2001. Artikkelsamling (= Universitetets Oldsaksamling. Varia. 58). Kunsthistorisk Museum, Oslo 2005, ISBN 82-8084-022-2 (with short English summaries).
  • Detlef Jantzen : Pottery and fire cult - From life on the hill near Triwalk, district of Northwest Mecklenburg. In: Uta Maria Meier (Red.): The A20 motorway - Northern Germany's longest excavation. Archaeological research on the route between Lübeck and Stettin (= archeology in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. 4). 2nd, unchanged edition. Archaeological State Museum and State Office for Land Monument Preservation Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schwerin 2006, ISBN 3-935770-11-1 , pp. 33–36.
  • Kerstin Lundin: Kokgropar i Norrbotten kustland. Ett försök till tolkning av kokgroparnas function. In: Arkeologi i norr. 3, 1990, pp. 139-174, ( digital version (PDF; 13.13 MB) ).
  • Jens-Peter Schmidt: barbecue or sacrificial cult? The fireplace place of Jarmen Lkr.Demmin. In: Uta Maria Meier (Red.): The A20 motorway - Northern Germany's longest excavation. Archaeological research on the route between Lübeck and Stettin (= archeology in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. 4). 2nd, unchanged edition. Archaeological State Museum and State Office for Land Monument Preservation Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania, Schwerin 2006, ISBN 3-935770-11-1 , pp. 71–76.
  • Jens-Peter Schmidt, Dominik Forler: Results of the archaeological investigations in Jarmen, Lkr.Demmin. The problem of fire pit places in northern Germany and southern Scandinavia. In: Friedrich Lüth, Ulrich Schoknecht (Hrsg.) Bodendenkmalpflege in Mecklenburg. Vol. 51 yearbook 2003.
  • Jens-Peter Schmidt: No end in sight? New investigations on the fireplace site in Naschendorf, district of Northwest Mecklenburg . Archaeological reports from Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania 19 2012 pp. 26–46
  • Magne Samdal, Grethe Bjørkan Bukkemoen: Bommestad 2 - coke bulbs and dyrkningsspor from jernalder. I Hus, Boplass and Dyrkningsspor . E18 project Vestfold Bind 3, Varia 73, 2008 pp. 247-264. Kulturhistorisk Museum, Oslo.
  • Dietrich Meier: Bronze Age fire pits in an unusual arrangement . In: I. Heske, HJ. Nüsse, J. Schneeweiß (Ed.): Landscape, Settlement and Settlement. Archaeological Studies in a Northern European Context. Festschrift for Karl-Heinz Willroth on his 65th birthday. Neumünster 2013 Wachholtz, pp. 319–330

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ M. Honeck: Nothing but hot stones ?: On the interpretation of the firing pits of the late Bronze Age and early Iron Age in Germany. University research on prehistoric archeology 166 (2009).
  2. ↑ A. Pranyies et al. a .: Les batteries de foyers à pierres chauffantes de la fin de l'âge du Bronze et du début du premier age du Fer Des vestiges de repas collectifs sur le site de Grièges (Ain)? Gallia 69.2, 2012.
  3. ↑ New investigations in Scotland even date the pits back to the Neolithic Age: Stephen Carter: A radiocarbon dated pit alignment at North Straiton, near Leuchars, Fife. In: Tayside and Fife Archaeological Journal. Vol. 2, 1996, ZDB -ID 2664954-8 , pp. 45-51, ( digitized version (PDF; 569 KB) ).
  4. ↑ A. Pranyies et al. a .: Les batteries de foyers à pierres chauffantes de la fin de l'âge du Bronzeet du début du premier age du Fer Des vestiges de repas collectifs sur le site de Grièges (Ain). Gallia 69.2, 2012, 44.
  5. ↑ Sigrid Heidelk-Schacht: Young Bronze Age and Early Iron Age cult fire places in the north of the GDR. In: Friedrich Schlette , Dieter Kaufmann (ed.): Religion and cult in prehistoric and early historical times. 13th meeting of the Pre- and Early History Section from November 4 to 6, 1985 in Halle (Saale) (= Conference of the Pre- and Early History Section. 13). Akademie-Verlag, Berlin 1989, ISBN 3-05-000662-5 , pp. 229-240.

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