Heidentor (Egesheim)

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Heidentor photographed from the valley side

The Heidentor is a rock arch . It is located in the district of Egesheim near the border with Bubsheim and Reichenbach in the Tuttlingen district in Baden-Württemberg on the Oberburg ridge about 925 m above sea level. NN. At the Heidentor there was an important early Celtic cult site, which was known from robbery excavations in the 1990s and was proven in subsequent archaeological emergency excavations .

location

The Heidentor is on the edge of the Tuttlingen district on the Heuberg . It is located near the boundary between Egesheim , Bubsheim and Reichenbach on the edge of the plateau of the Oberburg ridge at approx. 925 m above sea level. NN. It is only accessible on foot via a steep path.

description

The journalist Jürgen Mayer names 1897 as the year for the oldest known description. The dimensions of the Heidentor are given as follows: 20 feet high, 15 feet wide. However, the Felstor is mentioned as Heidenthor much earlier in the literature, for example in the work Volksthümliches from Swabia from 1861.

Largely identical descriptions give the height or the opening height of the Heidentor as 6 meters, the opening width as 4 meters.

According to information from the 19th century, a spring that has long since run dry is said to have risen from the Heidentor. Also nearby is the so-called Millbrönnle , whose water was considered medicinal .

These types of rock arches are not uncommon for the Southwest Alb area, so there are others in the vicinity:

The Heidentor is protected as a natural monument and as a geotope .

Archaeological finds / historical significance

Ceramic finds from three places in the upper castle had been known for a long time. Therefore, a thin settlement of individual farmsteads on the upper castle is assumed during the Bronze Age and the early Urnfield Age . Although it was partly claimed earlier, a fortification of the plateau by a ring wall cannot be recognized. The existence of transverse walls towards the ridge is also uncertain.

In the early 1990s were on Heidentor by looters important archaeological finds, legacies of the Celts , from the Late Hallstatt and Early La Tène made. On the steep slope 63 were brooches and fibula fragments, 27 rings, 7 Tüllenspitzen , two arrowheads and arrow bolts, bronze knobs, brass beads, bronze clamps and various fracture and items, further various women's jewelry like Greek beads, hairpins, Ringchen and belt jewelry. The metal jewelry was found below the Heidentor. In addition, there are unburned animal bones and clay pots that have been broken into small pieces, some in miniature size, which can be detected above the rock gate up to the edge of the plateau. From this, the following development of the practice of sacrifice was reconstructed: At the beginning of the 6th century BC, people began to make communal food and drink offerings, in which vessels were ritually smashed and the remains of the ritual communal meal were left behind. Soon individual sacrifices were added to the community sacrifice. The fibulae may originally have been attached to items of clothing that, as in some Greek sanctuaries, were placed there in order to heal illnesses.

North of the Alps there are only two comparable sites from this period: the Brodelquelle near Bad Pyrmont and the giant thermal baths near Dux (Duchcov, Czech Republic) . There are healing springs in both places. Bad Pyrmont in particular is known today as a health resort.

As little is known about the type and storage of the first finds due to the robbery excavation, only few conclusions can be drawn from the archaeologists about the actual processes at the Heidentor. It is generally assumed that the finds are offerings, especially by women, perhaps in connection with a fertility cult. It is possible that the phallus-like needle rocks were also included in this connection.

Based on the finds, however, it can be assumed that the Heidentor was a nationally known and significant natural sanctuary of the Celts. It is the first place of sacrifice known in Baden-Württemberg from the early Celtic period. The sacrificial practice at the Heidentor begins in the 6th century BC and lasts for 400 years. The most recent find is a late Celtic coin of the rainbow bowl type from the 3rd century BC.

Archaeological sites in the area

In the Beilstein cave there were finds from the Urnfield period. In the vicinity of Egesheim, prehistoric burial mounds are known near Bubsheim , Böttingen and Königsheim . At Nusplingen-Heidenstadt there is a late Celtic square hill from the 2nd or 1st century BC. The so-called idol altar near Königsheim is a natural rock on which burial mounds of unknown age were created and fragments from the Bronze or Hallstatt period were found in 1939.

Robbery excavation

From October 11, 2008 to February 8, 2009, the exhibition “Robbery Graves - Treasure Graves” in the Museum Biberach dealt with the robbery at the Heidentor. In cooperation with the State Office for Monument Preservation and the State Criminal Police Office of Baden-Württemberg, the history of the robbery excavation at Heidentor in 1990 was prepared. The found objects led via a collector in Düsseldorf to a dealer from Trier, who then offered them for sale at the Württemberg State Museum in Stuttgart. The collector was later fined, the dealer was acquitted for lack of evidence, and the finds were confiscated. To this day, nothing is known about the robber (s) themselves. The predatory excavations largely destroyed the historical significance of the Heidentor site, which resulted in considerable immaterial damage for archaeological research. Subsequent archaeological emergency excavations were able to confirm the origin of the finds from the Heidentor, but of course no longer reconstruct the location and distribution of the mass of the finds. An accompanying book was also published for the exhibition.

See also

literature

  • Sibylle Bauer, Hans-Peter Kuhnen: Early Celtic sacrificial finds from the upper castle near Egesheim, district of Tuttlingen. In: Hansjörg Küster, Amei Lang, Peter Schauer (eds.): Archaeological research in prehistoric settlement landscapes. Festschrift for Georg Kossack on his 75th birthday. (= Regensburg contributions to prehistoric archeology . 5). Univ.-Verlag Regensburg et al., Regensburg 1998, pp. 239-292.
  • Hartmann rhyme: rock towers, caves, sacred symbols. In: Andrea Bräuning, Wolfgang Löhlein, Suzanne Plouin (Ed.): The early Iron Age between the Black Forest and the Vosges. Le Premier âge du Fer entre la Forêt-Noire et les Vosges. (= Archaeological information from Baden-Württemberg . 66). Freiburg i. Br 2012, pp. 146–179, here v. a. 171-175.

Web links

Commons : Heidentor  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

swell

  1. ↑ a b Jürgen Mayer: In the shadow of the past. Oertel + Spörer Verlag, Reutlingen 2004, ISBN 3-88627-270-2 , p. 9.
  2. ^ A b Anton Birlinger: Popular things from Swabia. Volume 1, Herder'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, Freiburg im Breisgau 1861–1862, Section 210: The Millbrönnle
  3. ↑ a b schnippenburg.de , information for teachers on the exhibition in the Cultural History Museum Osnabrück May 6 to August 5, 2007.
  4. ↑ Bauer / Kuhnen p. 256.
  5. ↑ Municipality of Kolbingen, between heaven and cave ( memento of the original from November 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. , Webpage of the municipality  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.kolbingen.de
  6. ↑ Monument Preservation in Baden-Württemberg, 1/2007, p. 45. ( Memento of the original from November 3, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. (PDF; 4.8 MB)  @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.denkmalpflege-bw.de
  7. ^ Rhyme, p. 171.
  8. ↑ Bauer / Kuhnen p. 256.
  9. ^ A b Landesdenkmalamt BW: Find reports from Baden-Württemberg. Volume 23, Konrad Theiss Verlag, 1999.
  10. ^ Rhyme, p. 174.
  11. ^ Bauer / Kuhnen p. 241.
  12. ^ Rhyme, p. 171.
  13. ^ Bauer / Kuhnen
  14. ^ Rhyme, p. 171.
  15. ↑ Bauer / Kuhnen p. 256.
  16. ^ Find reports from Schwaben NF 11, 1, 1938–1950, p. 62.
  17. ↑ Frank Brunecker (Ed.): Robbery Graves - Treasure Graves. Theiss-Verlag, Stuttgart 2008, ISBN 978-3-8062-2238-8 .

Coordinates: 48 ° 7 '  N , 8 ° 51'  E