Grave field between Volkratshofen and Brunnen
The burial ground between Volkratshofen and Brunnen is a group of 23 burial mounds from the Urnfield and Hallstatt times , in Volkratshofen, a suburb of the Upper Swabian town of Memmingen in Bavaria .
Location and destination
The start of construction of the motorway section of the federal motorway 96 from Memmingen to Lindau in 1974 required the securing of the burial mound group by the Augsburg branch of the Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation. The excavation area is located in the Schorrenwald, a wooded area 500 m east of the Iller and 700 m northwest of Volkratshofen at 601 meters above sea level, in a radius of one kilometer between residential areas , hamlets and suburbs called Wölfle, Altammann, Brunnen, Westerhard and Volkratshofen. The barrows in neighboring Tannheim in the Härtle forest area are one kilometer to the north as the crow flies . A total of four burial mounds and a wall near the graves were examined.
The area around Volkratshofen got its present form in the Würme Ice Age . It is the most recent of the large-scale glaciations that have occurred in the Alpine region and that extended beyond the Alps themselves. Like most of the other cold ages of the Pleistocene, it is named after a river, namely the Würm in Bavaria , a tributary of the Amper . The Iller moved her bed from the Memminger Valley westwards over a long period of time . The Worm Ice Age gravel is covered by a slightly reddish layer of clay , called blood clay . The size of the hill allows a determination as burial places from the Urnfield and Hallstatt times. Three of the four hills can be assigned to the urn field culture in the late Bronze Age, level Ha B2 / 3. A hill can be classified in the early Hallstatt period Ha C. The Hallstatt period Ha B 3 marks the beginning of the Iron Age and is to be set around 800 BC. The occupation of the burial ground over two cultural epochs brought the result that the Volkratshofen terrace, despite cultural change and a climate change around 800 BC. Christ was settled throughout. These are the southernmost finds of this type of burial and ancestral cult . The people who lived in the Hallstatt period Ha C are called Celts . This also coincides with the general state of knowledge of research that during this time southern Germany, or more precisely the area south of the Danube , was populated by Celts.
Hallstatt burial chamber
Small remains of the grave chamber do not allow a description of the four actual grave chambers in Volkratshofen. The burial chambers of the Hallstatt period, a wooden plank construction , were then placed on the original surface of the earth. They were square with a side length of two meters and fifty centimeters and a height of one meter. The sides could be up to five meters long. Weapons indicated that the dead man was a man, jewelry was a sign that the dead man was female.
The storage vessels for the dead man's journey to the afterlife were on the east wall of the chamber. On the north-west side of the chamber stood the four-wheeled cart on which the dead man was placed lying in a north-east-north-west direction. In the early Hallstatt period A to B the dead were burned. Both cremation and body burials were performed at level Ha C. Smaller chambers only contained parts of the horse harness instead of a wagon due to lack of space. The southwest corner of the burial chamber was reserved for personal items from the corpse . Finally, earth was poured over the wooden chamber. Statements about the social rankings of the dead and about the rest of the population cannot be made.
Burial mounds I-IV
Hill I contains a previously burned body and eight vessels. The type of vessels allow a determination of burial in the late urn field period of level Ha B2 / B3. Sixty centimeters above the bones , parts of a sword and fragments of two bronze fables were found. About 350 years later, another dead person was buried in the burial mound. The finds can be ordered in the Hallstatt period D 1. Follow-up burials of this type have been documented up to the Merovingian period. At hill II at the northern end of the wall, for inexplicable reasons, thirteen vessels stood outside the actual burial chamber. The buried person was cremated beforehand and can be assigned to the Hallstatt period Ha C.
In 1825 the Memmingen teacher Friedrich Unold carried out various excavations on Hill III . Scattered shards at the entrance to Hill III suggest that this chamber was opened by Unold. The few fragments allow a dating to the Urnfield period. The burial chamber was 2.40 × 2.40 meters in size. In it lay a 20 centimeter bronze lance tip , which had obviously been forgotten during the robbery .
The optical smallest hill IV can be assigned to the urn field time Ha B 3. Eleven vessels and two anklets were recovered.
The wall
No conclusive findings about the dating or the function of the wall could be made. The construction and location do not indicate any previous military use of the wall. Two vessels and five bronze rings were found at the northern end of the wall. Since no skeletal remains or corpse fire were found in the wall, they cannot be grave goods. It could be a construction sacrifice .
Addendum
On May 25, 1820, Friedrich von Lupine described how he and two servants carried out excavations on a burial mound in the Schorrenwald near Volkratshofen. In 1829 the baron complained in a petition to the Royal Bavarian Regional Court of Grönenbach about common treasure hunters who had plundered the Roman hill . He managed to secure the site.
Elias Friedrich Küchlin captured the hills in an allegorical painting called Das Illergau .
literature
- Karl Heinz Henning: Excavations in the group of burial mounds between Volkratshofen and Brunnen near Memmingen. In: Memminger Geschichtsblätter annual issue 1973
- Hilde Freifrau von Lupine: Marginal notes on the Hallstatt tombs of Volkratshofen and Brunnen. In Memminger Geschichtsblätter annual magazine 1973
- Wocher-Nestler: The Tannheim burial ground and its position in the Hallstatt culture of southwest Germany. Rough Dissertation Tübingen 1966
- Max Geyer von Schweppenburg: Tumulus in the Illertal near Tannheim. Neff, Esslingen a. N. (1910)
Web links
- Bavarian State Office for Monument Preservation
- Theological faculty of the University of Leipzig: Celtic religion and religiosity
Coordinates: 47 ° 57 ′ 48.2 " N , 10 ° 6 ′ 33.5" E