Burial ground plague bowl

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Burial field in the juniper grove Plaggenschale

The Plaggenschale burial ground is in the Merzen municipality in the Osnabrück district of Lower Saxony . The burial ground, which was laid out in the Bronze and Iron Ages (1200 to 500 BC), is located east of Westerodener Straße in the district of Ost- and Westeroden. The core of the facility is located in the middle of a juniper grove . After the grave field originally belonged to the Plaggenschale district, it was assigned to the Merzen districts of East and Westeroden. It is believed that the people who lived in the Bronze Age chose the site because it has a sandy soil and therefore burials were easier to perform than in the nearby clay soils. Tourism managers consider the Plaggenschale burial ground, the largest and best-preserved in the Osnabrück region , to be one of the most important soil monuments in northwest Germany.

Discovery story

In 1839, 120 urns were excavated on the Plaggenschale burial ground between Wittenberg and Boberg . Four to six came from a burial mound. A pair of tweezers and a hair clip made of bronze , two needles and a knife made of copper , as well as four grindstones were found. The urns with the gifts came into the possession of JHB Hartmann in Ankum . The collection was almost completely destroyed by a fire in 1848. Preserved objects were later moved to the Osnabrück Cultural History Museum. At Kohlberg there was a burial mound field with at least 31 burial mounds. It will no longer be possible to determine the exact location. This field probably formed a contiguous necropolis with the burial mounds of the Rochus Forest . According to a report by Ernst Friedrich Herbert Graf zu Munster , an urn of ordinary shape without a lid was found in a pit in every hill. In four of the mounds there were embers without an urn, on two of them there was a small vessel. The four needles, three of which were obtained, were made of bronze. There are five so-called vase-headed needles in the Hanover State Museum. One is called the “plague bowl” variant.

In 1976 an inventory counted 111 burial mounds. They have a diameter of 4.0 to 9.5 m and heights of 0.2 to 0.5 m. Three larger mounds with a diameter of 15 to 18 m are striking. There are also some oval and long burial mounds that reach lengths of up to 39 m and widths of 5.0 to 6.0 m. Another burial mound had a ditch shaped like a keyhole. A burial mound, excavated and reconstructed in 1975, was also surrounded by a keyhole. Two burial mounds were excavated in 1976 because of the threat from soil degradation. In the first, the diameter of which was stated to be 6.2 m and a height of 0.5 m, no digs or damage were found. A 50 cm wide circular trench with a diameter of 3.5 m stood out under the mound. The trough-shaped cross section was 15 to 20 cm deep. Remnants of a burial were not found. The second grave was 10 m to the southeast. The diameter was 5.5 m with a height of 0.55 m. The edge was badly damaged. Numerous, irregularly arranged post holes were found under the humus fill. Some were flat, with a diameter of 10 cm, with others one concluded with a diameter of 25 to 40 cm and a depth of up to 40 cm. Also in this burial mound there were no remains of a burial.

Outside the juniper grove, on the foothills of the Rocksberg, about 1.5 km south of the Osteroden farmers, a burial mound field with formerly 17 burial mounds is well preserved. These burial mounds have a diameter of 12 to 22 m and a height of 0.5 to 1.8 m. Six were destroyed by creating a field or by afforestation. The other hills are east of the K 111 in the Rochusforst.

Tracks

The trails, which were first described in detail in 1975, are located in a mixed forest, directly north of the burial mound field. About 600 m of the original total length of about 800 m are still preserved. Up to seven parallel ravines can be seen. With a width of up to 15 m, a depth of up to 1.7 m and a bottom width of up to 2.5 m, they belong to the largest evidence of prehistoric mobility in the district. The tracks were probably created during the period in which the burial mound field was used around 3000 years ago and have been used until modern times

Tourist development

Information board in the juniper grove Plaggenschale

According to tourism experts, the Plaggenschale burial ground was in a "deep sleep" for a long time, from which the "largest and best-preserved barrows in the Osnabrück region" should be awakened.

After the Osnabrück district had bought or leased a large part of the grave field area with financial help from the state of Lower Saxony in the early 1970s after a wind break, the overturned pines were removed and the area was turned into a heather landscape , the juniper grove Plaggenschale. The parts of the burial ground that are not in the juniper grove are endangered by the fact that in the Bersenbrücker Land “the proportion of the areas covered by the biotope mapping is low”. By the expansion of nearby sand mining areas, some graves had been destroyed until the 1970s.

The 350 × 150 m large juniper grove was given its present shape through maintenance measures in the years 2004 to 2006. To increase the attractiveness of the juniper grove, the Archaeological Working Group for City and District Osnabrück e. V. developed a tour that connects the Plaggenschale burial ground with the neighboring stone burial path in Giersfeld in Westerholte as part of the project: “ Discover magical places and experience the landscape”. In September 2015, the juniper grove was added to the list of “Magical Places in the Osnabrück District”. Tourism managers emphasize the similarity of the landscape of the juniper grove with that of the Lüneburg Heath . The existence of the heathland in the municipality of Merzen is not only guaranteed by heather or moorland snaps , but also by goats . Since 2018 a "Terra Vista Track" (a hiking trail) has been running past the juniper grove. A place above a nearby sand pit acts as a vantage point from which the view extends to the Teutoburg Forest.

literature

  • Hery A. Lauer: 112, barrow field near Plaggenschale In: Archaeological Monuments between Weser and Ems Archaeological Messages from Northwest Germany Supplement 34 Isensee 2000

Web links

Commons : Juniper Grove Plague Bowl  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Thomas Wübker: Magical place: Live and die on the plague bowl . noz.de. August 1, 2015
  2. ↑ Merzen-Plaggenschale burial mound field . outdooractive.com
  3. ↑ Josef Pohl: New hiking trail planned around the Merzen juniper grove . noz.de. June 1, 2017
  4. ↑ Josef Klausing: Osteroden: Barrows field Plaggenschale . naturade.de.
  5. ↑ Federal Agency for Nature Conservation : Landscape profile: 58500 Bersenbrücker Land
  6. ^ Josef Klausing: From the grave field to the juniper grove . naturade.de
  7. ↑ Christian Geers: Terra-Vita advertises gems - "Heidometer" shows heather bloom in the Merzen juniper grove . noz.de. August 6, 2017
  8. ↑ Archaeological Working Group for the City and District of Osnabrück e. V .: Discover magical places and experience the landscape. Tour 1
  9. ↑ Lecture on September 17th: There is also a “magical place” in Plaggenschale . noz.de. 15th September 2015
  10. ↑ Christian Geers: Terra-Vita advertises gems - "Heidometer" shows heather bloom in the Merzen juniper grove . noz.de. August 6, 2017
  11. ↑ Christian Geers: Lookout at Sandgrube Herdemann - Merzen now has a Terra Vista lookout point . noz.de. October 18, 2018

Coordinates: 52 ° 30 '14.1 "  N , 7 ° 47' 53.8"  E