Horgen culture

Cultures in Switzerland

Ceramic remnants from the damp settlement around the so-called Kleine Hafner on the construction site for the Opéra multi-storey car park in Zurich

Stone ax in the intermediate lining made of deer antlers from the rescue excavation of the Opéra car park at the Kleiner Hafner in Zurich

The Horgen culture is a Neolithic culture between 3400 and 2800 BC. BC in western Switzerland and southern Baden-Württemberg , which is characterized by damp settlements and pile dwellings . The Horgen culture follows the Cortaillod culture in western Switzerland, and the Pfyner culture in eastern Switzerland and in the north ( Lake Constance ) . The Horgen culture is considered the easternmost branch of the Seine-Oise-Marne culture in France.

Find history, naming

The culture was named after the place Horgen- Scheller on Lake Zurich , where discoveries came to light during construction work in 1923. In 1934, the prehistorian Emil Vogt from the Swiss National Museum recognized that the finds are characteristically different from other epochs. Other important sites are Sipplingen on Lake Constance or Bad Buchau am Federsee . In the years 1987 to 1990 essential investigations of the place of discovery took place, whereby large parts had to be worked under water.

Pottery and tools

The Horgen culture is characterized by coarse, thick-walled, cylindrical ceramics. Since the Horgen culture differs in this from its predecessor cultures, the assumption arose that the carriers of the Horgen culture were immigrants. However, as Martin Kolb (see literature) reports, finds in Sipplingen indicate a fluid cultural change, which suggests that the Horgen culture has a down-to-earth origin.

The differences in ceramics can also be explained by changes in usage behavior. As leftovers in the ceramics of the Horgen culture show, the thick-walled vessels were also used for warming / heating food; the use therefore went beyond storing food.

With the tools found, all production steps can be proven, their shape is simple and functional.

literature

• Marion Itten : The Horgen culture. Birkhäuser, Basel 1970.
• Martin Kolb: The lakeside settlement of Sipplingen and the development of the Horgen culture on Lake Constance. In: Helmut Schlichterle (Hrsg.): Pile dwellings around the Alps. Theiss, Stuttgart 1997, ISBN 3-8062-1146-9 ( Archeology in Germany. Special issue.) ISSN  0176-8522 , pages 22-28.

Web links

Commons : Horgener Kultur  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Werner E. Stöckli: Horgen culture. In: Historical Lexicon of Switzerland .

Individual evidence

1. ↑ are.zh.ch: (application / pdf-Objekt) , p. 1 , accessed on August 3, 2018