Flögeln settlement chamber

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The Flögeln settlement chamber is an old settlement landscape on a Geest island surrounded by moors , on which the town of Flögeln in Lower Saxony is located today . The higher-lying area with an area of ​​around 25  km² was a preferred settlement area that was visited by people for around 5000 years.

description

The settlement chamber lies within the Elbe-Weser triangle in a flat, undulating geestal landscape that was created by the ice age deposits of sand and rock. After the end of the last ice age around 10,000 years ago, the lowlands in the Geest area watered and bogs formed. The bog divided the Geest into islands and tore the settlement areas apart. This created the natural remoteness of the Flögeln settlement chamber, which was bypassed by paths until the 14th century .

Settlement periods

Stone box from Flögeln (2011)

According to pollen analysis studies, the first rural population lived around 4000 BC. Mainly in the west of the settlement chamber. From around 3100 BC The forest, which had not yet been developed, was cleared up. In the open areas, grain was grown with the main plants barley and emmer . From this period the ground plans of two long houses and a pit house were discovered on the parcel Eekhöltjen near Flögeln . The pottery discovered during the archaeological investigations dates the site to the time of the funnel cup culture . From this time there are several megalithic tombs in the settlement chamber , such as the stone box of Flögeln . They are accessible today through the Flögeln Prehistory Path . The area is also rich in prehistoric sites. To the north of the Ahlenmoor there are large stone graves covered by bog, such as the large stone grave in the Ahlen-Falkenberger Moor . Further north on the Wannaer Geest are the megalithic systems near Westerwanna . Traces of settlement from the Younger Bronze Age were found around three kilometers west of Flögeln in the area of ​​the parcel Eekhöltjen (High German: squirrel). It is a headland with the dimensions of about 500 × 550 meters, which protrudes like a spur into the lowland. There was a Bronze Age homestead with a main building and ancillary buildings such as stores.

Continuous settlement of the settlement chamber began in the middle of the 1st century BC. During the Roman Empire . Settlement remains were excavated in large areas in the area of ​​the Eekhöltjen parcel. A closed village complex with seven or eight courtyards was built there in the 2nd century AD on an area of ​​around 2.3 hectares. The village complex existed for about 200 years. In the 5th century, settlement shifted to the western edge of the settlement chamber, where a village emerged that was abandoned in the 6th century. During this time, a hiatus developed in the settlement chamber as a result of the emigration of the population as the Saxons settled England . Settlement was resumed from the 7th or 8th century and the village of Flögeln emerged, which is only detectable in ceramics from the 10th or 11th century. In the west of the settlement chamber, the desolation of a village was archaeologically examined over an area of ​​two hectares. It existed from the 7th century and is called Dalem in documents of the 14th century . The village name has been preserved as a field name to this day.

Research history

In the area of ​​the Flögeln settlement chamber, the Lower Saxony Institute for Historical Coastal Research from Wilhelmshaven carried out extensive interdisciplinary studies between 1971 and 1986, including archaeologists, archaeobotanists, geographers, historians and soil scientists. The investigations were carried out as part of the DFG research program "The development history of a settlement chamber in the Elbe-Weser triangle since the Neolithic", which was headed by prehistoric Wolf Haio Zimmermann . Archaeological traces of settlement of the funnel cup culture from the younger Stone Age, remains of Neolithic and Bronze Age settlements and traces of building from the Roman Empire and the Migration Period were found. Finds from the Middle Ages were documented with the Dornburg up to the early modern period . Numerous finds are presented in the Bederkesa Castle Museum .

literature

  • Wolf Haio Zimmermann: A hoard with a plate brooch covered with gold plate and a gold bracelet from Eekhöltjen near Flögeln (Lower Saxony) . Germania 54, 1st half volume, 1976, 1-16
  • Wolf Haio Zimmermann: The settlements of the 1st to the 6th century AD von Flögeln-Eekhöltjen, Lower Saxony: The forms of construction and their functions . Problems of coastal research in the southern North Sea area 19, 360 pages, 281 illustrations, 10 folding tables, Hildesheim 1992
  • Karl-Ernst Behre , D. Kucan: The history of the cultural landscape and agriculture in the settlement chamber of Flögeln, Lower Saxony. In: Problems of coastal research in the southern North Sea area. Volume 21, 1994, pp. 1-227.
  • Ernst Andreas Friedrich : Die Siedlungskammer Flögeln , pp. 21–34, In: If stones could talk. Volume 3, Landbuch-Verlag, Hannover 1995, ISBN 3-7842-0515-1
  • A. Kramer, Felix Bittmann: Flögeln reloaded - On the chronology of the vegetation and settlement history in northwest Germany during the Neolithic. in: Settlement and Coastal Research in the Southern North Sea Area 38, pp. 89-106, 2015
  • Daniel Dübner: Investigations into the development and structure of the early historical settlement of Flögeln in the Elbe-Weser triangle. (= Studies on landscape and settlement history in the southern North Sea area 6), Rahden, 2015 (dissertation)
  • Moritz Mennenga: Between the Elbe and the Ems. The settlements of the funnel beaker culture in northwest Germany. (= Early Monumentality and Social Differentiation 13), Bonn, 2017. ( Online , pdf) (Dissertation)

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