Ketzelburg
| Ketzelburg | ||
|---|---|---|
| Creation time : | 12th Century | |
| Castle type : | Höhenburg, spur location | |
| Conservation status: | Burgstall | |
| Construction: | Quarry stone, half-timbered | |
| Place: | Haibach | |
| Geographical location | 49 ° 58 '9.6 " N , 9 ° 12' 10.3" E | |
| Height: | 267 m above sea level NHN | |
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The Ketzelburg is an abandoned hill fort in Haibach , Aschaffenburg district in Bavaria .
According to the ceramics, the construction can be dated to the second half of the 12th century. The Ketzelburg was partially exposed in the spring of 2004 and 2005 by the local homeland and history association. Under the direction of the Archaeological Spessart Project , an important contribution was made to researching the settlement history of the Bavarian Lower Main. Due to the temporal classification of the castle stable in the medieval cultural landscape of the Spessart , it can be assumed that the settlement developed at the same time as the Ketzelburg, from which the community of Haibach was later to develop, which is mentioned for the first time in 1187.
In addition to the actual building, the dumping of a stone ax fragment under the south wall of the residential tower , as well as the burial of a dog with food in the rammed earth floor directly under the entrance door, bear witness to the superstition of that time.
Archaeological objective
The aim was to date the existing foundations and wall remains of the castle complex.
The castle complex
Castle type
According to the evidence and finds, facilities of this type served as the residence of a noble family with an affiliated economic sector. At the same time, they were the linchpin of the manorial power. They were economic and administrative centers as well as courts. In all likelihood, the foundations belonged to a three-storey half - timbered construction with a thatched roof. Such residential towers or “permanent houses” had utility and storage rooms in the basement.
The living rooms are likely to have been on the floor above. These were, at least partially, equipped with tiled floors. There was also a tiled stove. A roofed defense platform formed the upper end .
Legend
The convenient location in front of the Spessart, built on a rocky promontory overhanging a valley that slopes steeply on three sides, underlines an ideal situation in terms of defense topography. However, the Ketzelburg was - as often mistakenly assumed - neither settled in Celtic nor in Roman times, although it is located on a Celtic ring wall which is still partially visible today. Furthermore, according to the evidence so far, a Neolithic settlement can also be excluded.
First period
In the second half of the 12th century, a typical residential tower was built on the highest elevation of the castle hill . The residential tower had the shape of an almost square rectangle with a width of 5.0 m in its interior. It should therefore have offered 25 square meters of living and storage space on several floors. An approximately 0.7 m wide, two-layer mortar wall has been preserved from the residential tower. Your foundation was set directly on the adjacent rock. In addition to the residential tower, the castle site also has a business section to the east. When looking for traces of building in this area in 2004, the remains of a pit house were found in which small post holes were visible next to a fireplace in the rammed earth floor. They are possibly the traces of a free-standing loom. The discovery of a weaving weight speaks in favor of textile processing in this pit house.
Chunks of mortar, some of which still have remains of white whitewash, suggest that the wall base was originally plastered and whitewashed. An analysis of the filling mortar by ProDenkmal in Bamberg confirmed that the porous, somewhat crumbly mortar is a mixture of lime with unwashed, brown quartz sand, as it was mined directly at the Burgstall in the last century. The volume proportions of lime to sand are 1: 4. The high proportion of fine sand enabled the mortar to have a high viscosity.
Another wall section, which was thoroughly examined in 2005, can with high probability be addressed as the left cheek of a gate listed in stone. Traces of a gatehouse were archaeologically undetectable. It is possible that the Ketzelburg did not have an actual gate, but only a stone wall passage. In addition, the actual width of the wall opening could not be determined with the aid of the excavated area. Carefully hewn sandstone blocks lying in the collapse of the gate ramp attest to the representative design of this structure, which is otherwise made of normal quarry stone masonry . Further cuts resulted in stone fragments in the area of the slope edge. Compared to the solid foundations of the left gate cheek, these are extremely small.
Overall, it can be assumed that the Burgstall only had a stone entrance gate. A palisade should have been attached to this on both sides. Due to erosion, this fact could not be substantiated by corresponding findings in the areas examined. Assuming a palisade , the aforementioned stone pieces gave it additional stability.
A narrow, stone-lined canal sloping to the northwest, which connects directly to the gate cheek to the southeast, is likely to have collected the water when it rained. The drainage was necessary to prevent the loam layers in the area of the south-west facing slope edge from softening and a resulting landslide. It could not be clarified whether the canal is the supply line to a cistern . A cylindrical pit in the south of the castle plateau, which reached a depth of 1.8 m, served as a water reservoir.
Second and third periods
In the second period, the gate ramp was closed with a palisade and a building with a trapezoidal stone foundation was built in the now heavily elevated, former gate passage, which could be entered from the southwest via a stone staircase. The interpretation of archival sources suggests that the Ketzelburg was abandoned before 1200. Apparently, the abandonment of the castle did not result from violent destruction.
On the occasion of a reactivation attempt at the end of the 14th century (period 3), the castle site was given its present form through extensive leveling measures. The gaps in the tradition can be justified with this considerable earth movement. During the leveling of the 14th century, there was a considerable amount of soil erosion, which today no longer allows a direct connection between the gate system, residential tower and pit house to be established.
Web links
- The Ketzelburg YouTube video, last accessed May 20, 2015
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Spessartprojekt.de ( memento from September 16, 2014 in the Internet Archive ), April 20, 2015, accessed on May 25, 2015