Hünenburg near Watenstedt
| Hünenburg near Watenstedt | ||
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 Aerial photo of the plant as an illustration on an information board |
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| Creation time : | 12/11 Century BC Chr. | |
| Castle type : | Hilltop castle | |
| Conservation status: | ring-shaped rampart | |
| Standing position : | regional seat of power (Bronze Age to Early Middle Ages) | |
| Place: | Watenstedt | |
| Geographical location | 52 ° 5 '16.6 " N , 10 ° 50' 50" E | |
| Height: | 133 m | |
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The Hünenburg near Watenstedt was a ring-shaped rampart with an extensive outlying settlement near Watenstedt in the Helmstedt district . Findings about the origin and the importance of the hill fort have resulted from archaeological excavations that have been taking place since 1998 on the site of the ramparts and in the immediate vicinity.
Location and structure
The fortification is at 133 m above sea level. NN on the western edge of the Heeseberg , which is located between the ridge of the Elm and the valley of the Great Bruch .
The Hünenburg consists of an area of 2.5 hectares, which is an irregular oval measuring 160 × 220 meters. The plateau-like interior has a gradient that makes a difference in height of around 13 meters. In the east, a multi-layered earth wall has been preserved as the surface remainder of the fortification, which is up to 5.5 meters high and in which the remains of a stone wall were found. The individual layers come from a total of eight construction phases in the younger Bronze Age and the Saxon period. In the north and west, slopes of up to 25 meters, which have probably been artificially canceled, are protected. In old aerial photographs, an earlier gate system can be seen in the southern area of the facility, which was oriented towards an old street . At the location, two important long-distance trade routes intersected at the passage of large natural barriers.
About 700 meters south-east of the Hünenburg lies the Beierstedt burial ground, which has been known since the end of the 19th century . Chr. Burials took place. Due to excavations in 2007 and 2008 with the discovery of graves rich in gifts, it is assumed that rulers of the Hünenburg were buried there.
About 700 meters south of the Hünenburg near the valley of the Großer Bruch , an area with more than 400 pits in the ground was discovered by a stream in 2010 . According to the archaeologist Immo Heske , they were probably used for Nordic rituals. Since a sacrificial stone was found there in 2014, the area is regarded as a former “holy district”.
About 200 meters west of the Hünenburg is the Watenstedt district moat , which was built over 3000 years earlier in the younger Neolithic age in the 5th millennium BC. Is dated.
Site plan of the Hünenburg, 1896
Sketch of a section through the wall, 1908
Reconstruction of the system on an information board
history
Bronze Age complex
The archaeological excavations showed that the Hünenburg was used as a fortification during the Bronze Age around 1100 BC. Next to a settlement that was built in the 14th century BC. Can be proven. During this period of the Younger Bronze Age (1200 to 750 BC) numerous fortifications are known in Central Europe . The fortification of the Hünenburg existed for around 600 years. Bronze finds such as a richly decorated bronze basin cast on the Hünenburg suggest a function as the center of power and seat of an elite. These basins seem to have spread to the surrounding area. This suggests the presence of metalworking specialists within the fortification. The excavations revealed that the Hünenburg was first fortified by a wall in the 11th century BC. From around 900 BC A stone facing was built on the outside of the wall and a little later a massive stone wall, which gave the building a prestigious character.
South of the wall, the archaeologists found a larger Bronze Age settlement through excavations from 2005 and the use of aerial archeology . The outer settlement had an area of 27 hectares and is known as the lower town.
The settlement outside the fortification has been increasingly archaeologically investigated since 2001. The scientists excavated three tons of ceramics from the floor of the settlement by the end of 2014 . Wooden post houses with wattle walls in the size of about 11 × 5 meters with hearths and a kind of stone paving were detected. Storage and rubbish pits up to 1.8 meters deep were found on the houses . In 2011 an earlier watercourse was discovered that flowed through the settlement. Animal bones and animal skulls were found in the bed of the stream, which indicates a sacrifice, as watercourses were often sacrificial sites. During excavations in the outer settlement in 2014, the archaeologists found a horse skeleton lying on its back at a depth of 1.6 meters, although it is not yet known whether it was an animal sacrifice or a horse burial .
In geomagnetic measurements in 2017, a double trench system with shallow trenches and individual passages emerged in the center of the interior of the rampart. According to the researchers, it is a Neolithic earthwork that existed thousands of years before the Bronze Age Hünenburg.
In addition, a trench eight meters wide and three meters deep runs through the ramparts, which the researchers consider to be an early fortification structure before the ramparts were erected. It was made around 1100 BC. And later half filled up again. The 1.5 meter deep trench remained open throughout the existence of the Hünenburg and was probably made of wood. Researchers suspect that the moat served to demarcate a rulership or cult area within the Hünenburg.
In 2019, geomagnetic measurements provided evidence of a larger building that was within the facility.
Evaluation of the Bronze Age complex as a mansion with an outlying settlement
Researchers assume that the Hünenburg and the outer settlement were a city-like trading and central settlement during the Bronze Age. It was at the intersection of long-distance roads and may have made its fortune from trading in ore, metal tools, and salt. In addition, the place could have been one of the largest Bronze Age settlements in Central Europe with around 500 permanent residents. At a presentation of the excavation results in November 2014, Heike Pöppelmann, director of the Braunschweig State Museum , said that such an ensemble as a city-like castle had been demonstrated in this form for the first time in Central Europe. “We know that from the Mediterranean region. The best-known examples are Troy and Mycenae . ” Researchers suspect that Watenstedt also had people who came from southern Scandinavia. "There were groups and people from other regions in Watenstedt," said excavation manager Immo Heske from the Georg-August University in Göttingen . The castle complex could have been a trading post of the Scandinavians to bring metals to the north for bronze production.
The investigations into the fortifications and the outlying areas revealed extensive contacts as far as the Mediterranean. The Hünenburg shows parallels to the nearby Schwedenschanze Isingerode as a ring wall of the younger Bronze Age with an outlying settlement that dates back to 1200 BC. BC and in the first phase up to 600 BC. Was used.
Early medieval complex
From the 11th to the 7th century BC, the Hünenburg was used continuously. After that there was an interruption of about a thousand years. It was not until the Migration Period and the early Middle Ages that another phase of settlement began. At that time, the ramparts were again significantly increased. Around the time of the Saxon Wars in the 8th century AD, the ramparts must have been destroyed by the Franks . The excavations in 1998 showed that the facility was expanded again a short time later and served as an important base for the Franks. How long the new Franconian gentlemen used this base is not yet clear.
Search for the Hoohseoburg
The destruction in the 8th century leads to the assumption that the Hünenburg is the Hoohseoburg , which is mentioned in chronicles of the early Middle Ages, but whose exact location is not yet certain.
The Hoohseoburg appears in the Frankish imperial annals as the seat of the Saxon nobleman Theoderich, who can be described as a prince of Ostfalen , the eastern part of Saxony. It was the Franconian caretaker Karlmann , who undertook a campaign to Saxony in 743 AD, to what was then Eastern Falzes. He also conquered Theoderichs Hoohseoburg. Theodoric was captured and had to commit to paying tribute to the Franconian Empire. However, a year later, in 744, Theodoric rose, was defeated again and finally taken prisoner to the Frankish Empire. The castle was then destroyed.
Nowhere did the writings mention the exact location of the Hoohseoburg. When looking for its location in the past decades, the Seeburg in Saxony-Anhalt in particular was mistaken for the Hoohseoburg. The thesis that the Hünenburg on the Heeseberg could have been the Hooseoburg was put forward as early as 1927. In research circles this idea was still considered dubious until the year 2000.
The excavations so far seem to have softened these doubts. There is no proof that Hoohseoburg and Hünenburg are identical, but there are a number of facts that point to this. These include the finds and the obvious importance of the Hünenburg as the center of power in the Bronze and Iron Ages, its fortifications in the early Middle Ages and its destruction in the 8th century at the time of the Frankish Saxon Wars. The location of the Hünenburg also speaks for its important role. The Heeseberg, on the edge of which it is located, is centrally located in Ostfalen. The location was suitable to dominate the area from this central location in a wide radius. In addition, the Hünenburg was located on an important military and trade route, the Deitweg , which led from Ohrum an der Oker via Schöningen to Magdeburg - exactly the places that appear in the annals in connection with the Hoohseoburg. The Seeburg, on the other hand, is located in Hassegau , on the south-eastern edge of the Saxon tribal area.
Research history
The ramparts are already shown on maps from the middle of the 18th century. From the early 19th century onwards, finds such as shards of pottery were repeatedly picked up on the site. Around 1850 it is reported that the site still has a ditch. In 1878 the Braunschweigische Geschichtsverein, Wolfenbüttel department, undertook a small excavation, which was followed in 1892 and 1897 by further investigations by Friedrich Grabowsky as director of the Braunschweig Municipal Museum . Finds were also made in the wider area around Watenstedt, such as a bronze treasure on the Soltau River between 1901 and 1908.
In more recent times, the excavations continued in 1998 and continued in annual campaigns until 2000. The excavations were then suspended for financial reasons and resumed in 2005. Since then, they have been continued and carried out by archaeologists from the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum , the University of Göttingen , the Helmstedt District Archeology department and volunteers from an archaeological association in Braunschweig. Initially, the investigations were funded as part of the DFG research project "The Hünenburg, a manorial seat in the contact zone between Lusatian culture and the Nordic Bronze Age ", later under other project names and also by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture .
Since 2001, the southern slope below the Hünenburg has been investigated as part of aerial archeology , with geophysical prospecting methods and later also by excavations. Geomagnetic measurements in 2010 indicated a formerly populated area of around 20 hectares as an outer settlement that existed at the same time as the fortification. In the years from 1998 to 2000 archaeological investigations were carried out on the rampart and inner surface of the Hünenburg.
presentation
In the Heeseberg Museum in Watenstedt, a permanent archaeological exhibition on the investigations on the Hünenburg and its surroundings was opened in 2013. It shows the fortifications, the outer settlement and the burial ground of Beierstedt. The bronze basin found at the beginning of the 20th century is presented in the archeology department of the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum in the New Chancellery in Wolfenbüttel.
During the excavation campaigns, there is a day of excavation with public tours of the site.
literature
- Ernst Andreas Friedrich : The Hünenburg on the Heeseberg , pp. 33–34, in: If stones could talk , Volume II, Landbuch-Verlag, Hanover 1992, ISBN 3-7842-0479-1 .
- Wolf-Dieter Steinmetz: The Hünenburg near Watenstedt. Bronze Age settlement and Saxon aristocratic seat in: Archeology in Lower Saxony , Volume 2, Oldenburg, Isensee Verlag, 1999, pp. 39–41
- Immo Heske: The Hünenburg near Watenstedt - the power center of a landscape In: Mamoun Fansa , Frank Both, Henning Haßmann (editor): Archeology | Land | Lower Saxony. 400,000 years of history. State Museum for Nature and Man, Oldenburg 2004. Pages 315–318.
- Immo Heske: Heeseberg - Residence of Bronze Age elites in: Archeology in Lower Saxony , 2007, pp. 76–79
- Immo Heske: A stone sickle casting mold from the Young Bronze Age outlying settlement of the Hünenburg near Watenstedt, Ldkr.Helmstedt in: Nachrichten aus Niedersachsens Urgeschichte , Vol. 76, 2007
- Immo Heske, Silke Grefen-Peters, Martin Posselt, Julian Wiethold: The Young Bronze Age settlement of the "Hünenburg" near Watenstedt, district of Helmstedt. Preliminary report on the excavations 2005-2007 , in: Praehistorische Zeitschrift Volume 85, 2010 ( online )
- Immo Heske: Bronze Age mansion with resettlement in: Archeology in Germany , 4/2010 ( Online PDF, 860 kB)
- Immo Heske: From the fortification to the lower town in: Archeology in Lower Saxony , 2013, pp. 49–53
- Immo Heske: 3000 years ago. Working in front of the castle - Bronze Age rulers and their craftsmen. The rulership center of the Hünenburg near Watenstedt in: Window into archeology. 300,000 years of history in the Braunschweiger Land around the Elm , Braunschweig, 2013, pp. 119–144
- Valentin Frimmer: The 3000 year old Hünenburg was a metropolis. Finds prove: One of the earliest cities in Central Europe pulsed in Lower Saxony / Braunschweig researchers discover pieces of bronze. In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung No. 265 of November 13, 2014, page 6.
Web links
- Entry by Sandy Bieler zu Watenstedt, Hünenburg in the scientific database " EBIDAT " of the European Castle Institute
- Description of the Hünenburg with photos at Archeology in the Braunschweig / Ostfalen region
- Information about the Hünenburg from the Helmstedt district
- Description of the Hünenburg with photos through the Braunschweig landscape
- Information on the current archaeological investigations by the Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
- Description of the Hünenburg with many details
- Photos from the 2005 excavation
- Description of the Hünenburg by the Verein Geschichte in Braunschweig e. V.
- Three-minute film contribution Bronze Age: Historical mystery about the big city ( Memento from December 28, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) at NDR from November 12, 2014
- Radio report on SWR (2014)
- Description of the Hünenburg as a fortification, external settlement and burial ground at the Braunschweigisches Landesmuseum
Individual evidence
- ↑ Martin Jasper: Forget Troy! in Helmstedter Nachrichten of November 13, 2014
- ↑ a b A horse skeleton discovered shortly before the end in: Volksstimme of October 10, 2014
- ↑ Information on excavation 1/2010 of July 27, 2010 (765 kB, PDF)
- ↑ Excavations in the Hünenburg: A seat of power from the Bronze Age ( Memento of the original from December 8, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Archäologie.online from July 20, 2007
- ↑ Göttingen researchers clarify the mystery of the castle: a big city from ancient times in Göttinger Tageblatt from November 13, 2014
- ↑ Information on excavation 1/2013 of July 22, 2013 (1.3 MB, pdf)
- ↑ Information on excavation 1/2018 of July 30, 2018 (298 KB, pdf)
- ↑ Markus Brich: Archaeologists want to solve the riddle of the trench in Helmstedter Nachrichten of July 31, 2019 (pdf)
- ↑ Information on excavation 1/2019 of July 29, 2019 (250 KB, pdf)
- ↑ Hünenburg still offers a lot of potential for researchers in Helmstedter Nachrichten of September 13, 2019
- ↑ Ralph-Herbert Meyer: Das Troja des Nordens in: Der Loewe from August 28, 2018
- ↑ Dining place of the gods ( Memento of the original from April 3, 2015 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. in Archäologie.online from November 20, 2014
- ↑ Valentin Frimmer: The 3000 year old Hünenburg was a metropolis. Finds prove: One of the earliest cities in Central Europe pulsed in Lower Saxony / Braunschweig researchers discover pieces of bronze. In: Hannoversche Allgemeine Zeitung No. 265 of November 13, 2014, page 6.
- ↑ Archaeologists present Bronze Age finds ( memento from November 27, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) at ndr.de from November 12, 2014
- ↑ Information on excavation 2/2014 of July 22, 2014 (1.1 MB, pdf)
- ↑ Information on excavation 1/2011 from August 8, 2011 (6.27 MBpdf)
- ↑ Information on excavation 1/2009 of June 22, 2009 (716 kB, PDF)
- ↑ Information on excavation 1/2014 of July 22, 2014 (1.35 MB, pdf)
- ↑ Markus Brich: Researchers invite you to visit the excavation near Watenstedt in Helmsteder Nachrichten of 23 August 2019
