Disc fibula of mesh

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The disc brooch from Maschen

The Maschen disc brooch is a disc brooch from the early Middle Ages , which was found in 1958 during the excavation of a late Saxon burial ground near Maschen in the district of Harburg in Lower Saxony . The fibula is on its face side an unspecified identifiable saints with Halo and was one woman during the early Christianization of Northern Germany added Service. It is shown in the archaeological permanent exhibition of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg in Hamburg-Harburg .

Find history

The grave field of Maschen was on the western foothills of the Hallonen, an approximately 63 m high ridge that ends with the 23 m high Fuchsberg 1200 m southeast of the Maschen town center. Two Bronze Age burial mounds were discovered on the Fuchsberg in 1958 during the extraction of sand for the construction of the Federal Motorway 1 . The subsequent excavations showed that both burial mounds were disturbed down to the natural ground and, apart from a few shards of vessels and a razor from several subsequent burials on the mound, no further discoveries were made . 20 m north of the burial mound, the first body graves of the late Saxon burial field were visible when the humus layer was removed . In addition, soil discoloration was also visible 80 m to the east at an excavation edge, which indicates grave pits. During the three-week rescue excavation in Maschen, a late Saxon burial field in northern Germany with 210 examined graves was completely uncovered for the first time. Of these, 21 were laid out in a south-north orientation and 189 in a west-east orientation. The disc fibula from Maschen was found in grave no. 54, a wealthy women's burial. Location: 53 ° 23 '7.4 "  N , 10 ° 1' 36.8"  E Coordinates: 53 ° 23 '7.4 "  N , 10 ° 1' 36.8"  E

Finding

The disc fibula from Maschen lay face down on the chest of the dead. The primer has a diameter of 30 mm and is in different colored enamel in pit prepared and cells melt technique on a copper support. The copper base of the fibula is box-shaped, in which the enamelled plate was placed on a base made of clay and fixed by beading the protruding edges. The needle apparatus of the fibula has not been preserved; the hinges that have been preserved indicate that it was a needle with a spiral spring. The metal parts and the enamel inlays are slightly weathered. A radiological examination showed that the enamel layer was 0.4 mm thick. The front side of the fibula is adorned with a strongly stylized chest portrait on a now red background. The face and neck are now made of greenish white enamel. The eye and nose region is formed by a curved copper bridge that ends in loops as stylized eyes. A kind of nimbus made of whitish to light blue enamel is depicted around the head . The upper part of the body is semi-elliptical and is made up of two copper bars running from the neck in a wide arc towards the shoulders, which also end in loops at the shoulders. The region around the collar of the figure now consists of light blue to turquoise enamel, the chest region below the copper bars now consists of dark blue enamel.

Interpretation and meaning

The comparison find of the disc brooch from Todtglüsingen

The figure on the disc fibula of Maschen is, due to the nimbus-like decoration around the head, interpreted as an unidentifiable saint, possibly the figure also embodies Jesus Christ himself. The addition of the fibula indicates that the buried woman was an early Christian who The figure represented on the fibula promised a healing effect, as the fibula was found with the picture side on her chest. The dating of the grave was based on the geographic orientation of the grave and its location in the burial field in the period between 800 and 900 AD. So far, about 100 comparative finds are known to the disc fibula from Maschen, but so far all of them came from scattered or read finds could not be assigned to any grave, which made it difficult to date this type of fibula more precisely. At the end of 2012, another, largely identical, comparative piece was found on a building plot in the Todtglüsingen district of Tostedt. The workshop or workshops of this so-called saints brooches are in Lower Rhine suspected area and the conspicuous accumulation of discoveries in the Lower Elbe region lead to the conclusion that they enjoyed here particularly popular.

literature

  • Rüdiger Articus, Jochen Brandt, Elke Först, Yvonne Krause, Michael Merkel, Kathrin Mertens, Rainer-Maria Weiss: Archaeological Museum Hamburg, Helms-Museum: A tour through the ages (=  publications of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg Helms-Museum . No. 101 ). Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-931429-20-1 , pp. 159 .
  • Willi Wegewitz : The late Saxon row grave fields in the Harburg district . In: The Adventure of Archeology . Isensee, Oldenburg 1994, ISBN 3-89442-230-0 , p. 339-351 .
  • Willi Wegewitz: The row grave field of Maschen . In: Around the Kiekeberg (=  Hammaburg NF ). No. 8 , 1988, ISBN 3-529-01356-0 , pp. 161-171 .

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Subject area Death, Showcase No. 117.
  2. ↑ a b Rüdiger Articus, Jochen Brandt, Elke Först, Yvonne Krause, Michael Merkel, Kathrin Mertens, Rainer-Maria Weiss: Archaeological Museum Hamburg, Helms-Museum: A tour through the ages (=  publications of the Archaeological Museum Hamburg Helms-Museum . No. 101 ). Hamburg 2009, ISBN 978-3-931429-20-1 , pp. 159 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e Willi Wegewitz : The row grave field of Maschen . In: Around the Kiekeberg (=  Hammaburg NF ). No. 8 , 1988, ISBN 3-529-01356-0 , pp. 164-165 .
  4. ^ Willi Wegewitz: The late Saxon row burial ground of Maschen in the Harburg district . In: Harburg district calendar . 1990.
  5. ↑ Jochen Brandt: Fresh from the field . In: Messages from the Museum and Heimatverein Harburg-Stadt und -Land e. V., Helms-Museum (=  Helms-Museum Aktuell ). No. 29 , March 2013, p. 4 .

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