Celtic settlement on the Ringkogel
Coordinates: 47 ° 17 ′ 51 ″ N , 15 ° 57 ′ 5 ″ E
The Celtic settlement on the Ringkogel is a fortified Celtic hilltop settlement from the Hallstatt and Latène times near Hartberg in the Eastern Styrian hill country . The Ringkogel has a height of 789 m above sea level. A. and is part of the Masenberg massif . The castle Neuberg and the Villa Rustica in Löffelbach are located on the south-facing slopes .
Excavation history
The ramparts on the Ringkogel were mentioned as early as 1880 in a paper about prehistoric graves. The first excavations were carried out in 1894. In 1906, when the Ringwarte was built, some archaeological finds from the Roman Empire were uncovered, some of which are now kept in the Landesmuseum Joanneum in Graz . Further excavations were carried out in 1926/27 by Richard Pittioni and in 1930 by Walter Schmidt , the director of the Joanneum's antiquity collection.
Pittioni distinguished between a Hallstatt period and a Latène period settlement, while Schmidt wrongly assigned the finds to his fictitious "Eastern Norse culture". In addition, through a successful objection, Schmidt prevented excavation permits for students at the University of Vienna because of the risk of the research results being fragmented .
In order to prevent robbery excavations, the Joanneum has carried out regular excavation campaigns since 1997. Layers from the late Urnfield and early Hallstatt periods were cut. The finds are typical of hilltop settlements in Eastern Styria with their close ties to the calendar mountain culture .
La Tène hill settlement
The middle rampart is assigned to the late Middle Latene period (280 to 150 BC). The ring wall was around one kilometer long and originally had two gates. One of them was destroyed during the construction of a quarry, the second is still clearly recognizable as a pincer gate . The wall is designed as a post slot wall with a blind wall , the earth material came from the straightening of the mountain top. Loosely plastered stone blocks served as the foundation; they were secured to the rear with wooden anchors. A large part of the curtain wall has slipped into the original ditch at the foot of the wall.
Behind the rampart was a strip of construction free of buildings, only up the slope was a presumably two-story house from the Latène period excavated on a terrace. Since further archaeological results are still missing for the time being, an assessment of the function of the entire complex is currently only possible to a limited extent. Its location as a hilltop settlement and the massive fortifications indicate a small oppidum .
The end of the settlement cannot be given with certainty either. When the immediate vicinity of the ring control room was rebuilt in 2006, an emergency excavation unearthed building remains from the Hallstatt period, combined with those from the Latène and Roman times. It is the task of the current investigations to determine how long the settlement continuum lasted.
Historical circular route
At the Ringkogel, an approx. 2 km long historical circular route with explanatory display boards and models of the wall structure was built.
literature
- Diether Kramer : From the Neolithic to the Roman Empire. Investigations into the oldest settlement history of Styria with special consideration of the central Styrian hill settlements. Dissertation Salzburg 1981.
- Markus Jeitler: The Ringkogel near Hartberg. In: The time of the Celts. Special exhibition at Volkshaus Bärnbach, August 28 to November 1, 1998. (= Schild von Steier. Kleine Schriften. Volume 18), Graz 1998, pp. 22–26.
- Susanne Sievers , Otto H. Urban , Peter C. Ramsl: Lexicon for Celtic Archeology. L-Z. Communications of the Prehistoric Commission Volume 73, Verlag der Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna 2012, ISBN 978-3-7001-6765-5 , p. 1592.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Ernst Probst: Austria in the Late Bronze Age. GRIN Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-656-00126-3 , p. 129, note 22.
- ^ A b c Sievers / Urban / Ramsl: Lexicon for Celtic Archeology. L-Z. S. 1592. (also for the entire chapter "Latène period hilltop settlement")
- ^ Berthold Sutter: Festschrift 150 years of Joanneum, 1811–1961. Universitäts-Buchdruckerei Styria, Graz 1969, p. 38.