Nienburger cup
Nienburger cup is a characteristic type of vessel of the Harpstedt-Nienburger group and the current name for a ceramic form of the pre-Roman Iron Age , which was named after its first place of discovery in the burial mound field in Erichshagen near Nienburg . The pottery was found in the Iron Age cultural group between the 6th century BC. BC to the birth of Christ in the area of today's Lower Saxony in the wider area of the Weser use. The Nienburger cup is seen as the leading ceramic form of the cultural group. Wide-mouthed, smooth vessels with a short neck, which are richly and artistically decorated on the shoulder of the vessel, are typical.
description
The ceramic type of the Nienburger cup is also known as the Nienburger type. Almost all specimens found in archaeological excavations have been used as urns . They are wide-mouthed, cup-shaped vessels with a briefly offset neck, which in 75% of the cases have a handle at the edge. The vessels are made without a turntable and consist of individual clay strips. There are small forms of only 10 cm in height and larger forms of up to 30 cm in height. Nienburger cups have intricate motifs on the shoulder that were incorporated into the moist clay before firing . These include patterns of dents, grooves, angles, grooves , punctures, incised lines , rafter ribbons and hatched triangles. Also, ornaments by cord-like patterns occur, which by the rolling of spiral rings have been applied.
There are also tall, barrel-shaped vessels from the Nienburger Cup. They also have decorations, which appear as a broad band, which is filled with bundles of lines in the form of angles and dents.
The ceramics of the Nienburg type with their decoration methods and techniques are far more diverse than the simple ceramics of the adjacent Jastorf culture in northeastern Lower Saxony. A magical cultic symbolism is ascribed to the vessel decorations without this being able to be proven. In any case, they are elaborate decorations that testify to the artistic inclination of the manufacturer.
distribution
The ceramic form circle of the Nienburg type emerged from the Nienburg group, which developed as a Central European archaeological cultural group in the central to western area of today's Lower Saxony from the early Iron Age in the 6th to 5th centuries BC. Formed. According to still incomplete knowledge, the cultural group was based in the triangle of Weser and Aller . The area roughly comprised the area between the Aller in the north, the upper reaches of the Aller in the east, the loess boundary in the south and the Hunte in the west, today about the city triangle Bremen - Hameln - Braunschweig . The cultural group occupied a middle position between southern Lower Saxony, which was Celtic in the Latène period , and the Jastorf culture, which stretched northeast towards the Elbe. Most recently, ceramic from the Nienburg cup was found during the excavation of the Iron Age settlement near Bantorf in 2011. About 6 km away, ceramic vessels of the Nienburger cup type were also discovered in 2011 during the excavation of the Hohnhorst urn grave field with around 350 burials.
designation
The first evidence of the existence of the Nienburg group as a cultural group was found at the beginning of the 19th century during excavations in a burial mound field in the small town of Erichshagen near Nienburg. At the Bronze Age burial site there, the deceased were buried under mounds. In the Iron Age it was in the grave hills to burials of urns. Today there are four grave mounds that are located in a park-like area in a residential area. In 1890 there was a scientific publication on ceramics for the first time in the news about German antiquity and the concept of the Nienburg type was coined. In the following decades similar vessels were found in other areas of today's Lower Saxony. The cultural group and its ceramics were named after the place Nienburg as the first place where they were found.
literature
- Kurt Tackenberg : The culture of the early Iron Age in Central and West Hanover , Hildesheim and Leipzig, 1934
- Karl Hermann Jacob-Friesen : Introduction to Lower Saxony's Prehistory, Part 3, Iron Age , Hildesheim, 1974
- Hans-Günter Tuitjer: Hallstatt Influences in the Nienburg Group , Dissertation, Hildesheim, 1987
- Hans-Jürgen Häßler : Pre-Roman Iron Age in: Prehistory and Early History in Lower Saxony , Stuttgart, 1991
Web links
- Grabhügelfeld in Erichshagen near Nienburg ( memento from November 8, 2014 in the Internet Archive ) as the eponymous location of the Nienburger group