Loretto burial ground

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The cemetery near Loretto in Burgenland is located near the state capital Eisenstadt . From 1933 to 1937 Iron Age artefacts were found in the “Ochsenstand” corridor by the landowner , which was followed by further archaeological investigations.

Found location

The "Ochsenstand" corridor is an extension of a small chain of hills in the Leitha Mountains southwest of Loretto . The landlord Hammer found shards there, fragments of fireborn made of clay, iron knives and spindle whorls from hand spindles, which he brought to the Landesmuseum Burgenland in Eisenstadt, where they were recognized as being in the Hallstatt era. Further finds in 1950 prompted the museum director Alois Ohrberger to carry out more detailed investigations. Since grave traces could already be seen on the surface, excavations began in 1952. By 1957, 157 sites of the Lengyel culture and the urn fields, Hallstatt and Latène periods exposed. Some grave plots were carefully examined and dug up to the respective limit of the find horizon. An Iron Age settlement north of the cemetery is assumed, but has not yet been explored. The period of grave assignment is of the transitional period late Hallstatt / Frühlatène (approximately 480 v. Chr.) To Mittellatène accepted (280 to 190 V. Chr.).

The majority of the graves date from the Hallstatt period, some from the Latène period (one of them with a double burial), and four graves are classified as borderline cases between these two cultural levels. The later grave sites are closely related to the older Hallstatt graves. Square grave gardens with a circular enclosure were found five times. In one grave a carefully crafted openwork fibula decorated with palmettes was found, in others a bowl with handle and a lance tip. Other grave sites contained a Latène sword and also a fibula, a bottle vessel and two openwork belt hooks with coupling rings.

literature

  • Susanne Sievers , Otto Helmut Urban , Peter C. Ramsl: Lexicon for Celtic Archeology. A – K, LZ . Publishing house of the Austrian Academy of Sciences , Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7001-6765-5 , p. 1197 f.
  • Louis Daniel Nebelsick: The Older Iron Age burial ground of Loretto in Burgenland: a contribution to the change in burial customs and the spectrum of gifts during the urn field and Hallstatt period on the north-eastern edge of the Alps. In: Südosteuropa-Mitteilungen, Volume 35, Südosteuropa-Gesellschaft, 1995 (digitized December 13, 2010).

Web links

  • Studies on the world of the Iron Age: Festschrift for Rosemarie Müller . In: Wolf-Rüdiger Teegen (Ed.): Supplementary volumes to the Reallexikon der Germanischen Altertumskunde . tape 53 . Walter de Gruyter, 2006, ISBN 978-3-11-019010-6 , ISSN  1866-7678 , p. 225 (659 p., Limited preview in Google Book search).

Individual evidence

  1. Wolf-Rüdiger Teegen: Studies on the world of the Iron Age , p. 225.