Gatersleben burial ground

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The grave field of Gatersleben was a small grave field with three body burials near Gatersleben , a district of the municipality of Seeland in the Salzland district ( Saxony-Anhalt ). It is the eponymous site for the early Neolithic Gatersleben culture (4500-4000 BC). The finds from grave 1 are now in the City Museum Halberstadt , the finds from graves 2 and 3 in the Quedlinburg Castle Museum .

location

The grave field was located southeast of Gatersleben on the steep slope of the Karnickelberg on the northeast bank of the Selke . Two other sites of Gatersleben culture are known from the vicinity. Two vessels were recovered from the community gravel pit on Schäferberg in 1886, which are probably to be addressed as grave goods . Settlement remains are known from the site of the Institute for Cultivated Plant Research to the west of the village.

Research history

The graves were discovered during terracing work in the 1930s and published by Karl Schirwitz in 1938 . The independence of the Gatersleben ceramic style had already been established in 1900 by Alfred Götze on the basis of the finds from the Rössen cemetery , but various researchers initially believed in a very close connection to the Jordansmühler culture or to the Baalberg culture . It was not until 1953 that Ulrich Fischer recognized that there is a stylistic similarity between the ceramics and the Baalberg culture, but that the grave rite and equipment inventory were still in the traditional ceramic tradition and the overall picture therefore spoke for an independent cultural group that Fischer named after the Gatersleben burial ground.

description

All three burials were simple flat graves . The dead were buried in a weak crouched position facing southeast-northwest. The grave goods were near the head. An exact description of the dead man's posture is only available for grave 1.

Grave 1

The dead lay on the left in a southeast-northwest direction with the head in the southeast and the view to the southwest. The arms were bent and the hands were clasped in front of the face. The thighs were only slightly drawn. The lower legs were at right angles to the thighs and were crossed. The grave goods consisted of a beaker with a long straight neck, a large conical bowl and a cross hatchet .

Grave 2

In grave 2 the additions consisted of three beakers (one of which was quite large and one irregularly worked) and a cross hatchet.

Grave 3

Grave 3 contained a tripartite beaker, a spherical beaker and a small amphora .

literature

  • Gisela Buschendorf : The Jordansmühler culture in Central Germany. Dissertation, Halle (Saale) 1948, p. 70.
  • Ulrich Fischer : About subsequent burials in the Neolithic of Saxony-Thuringia. In: Festschrift of the Roman-Germanic Central Museum Mainz. Volume 3, 1953, p. 163.
  • Ulrich Fischer: The orientation of the dead in the Neolithic cultures of the Saale region. In: Annual publication for Central German prehistory. Volume 37, 1953, p. 53.
  • Ulrich Fischer: The Stone Age graves in the Saale region. Studies on Neolithic and Early Bronze Age grave and burial forms in Saxony-Thuringia (= prehistoric research. Volume 15). De Gruyter, Berlin 1956, pp. 40-44.
  • Klaus Kroitzsch : The Gatersleben group in the Elb-Saale area. In: Neolithic Studies. Volume 2 = Scientific articles from the Martin Luther University Halle. Volume 1972/12, 1973, pp. 93-94.
  • Karl Schirwitz : Contributions to the Stone Age of the Harz foreland. In: Mannus. Volume 30, 1938, p. 315.