Leese urn burial ground
Coordinates: 52 ° 30 ′ 39 ″ N , 9 ° 7 ′ 1 ″ E
| Leese urn burial ground | ||
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 A still undeveloped area within the residential area |
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| location | Lower Saxony , Germany | |
| Location | Leese | |
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| When | pre-Roman Iron Age | |
| Where | Leese , district of Nienburg / Weser / Lower Saxony | |
The Leese urn grave field is a prehistoric grave field in Leese in Lower Saxony , which was used as a burial place with urns during the pre-Roman Iron Age . With around 1,100 burials, it is one of the largest found facilities of this era in northern Germany . Individual urns were discovered as early as 1924 while a house was being built. Between 1978 and 1980 the Institute for the Preservation of Monuments carried out a rescue excavation , as the site was threatened with destruction due to the designation as building land .
location
The find area is located on a raised terrace not far from the steep bank of the Weser valley , which lies to the west. The burial ground is northeast of Leese and west of the B 215 , which it is directly adjacent to. Today, with the exception of a few pieces of land, the site is largely built on with a new housing estate that was created after the excavation.
Discovery and excavation
In 1924 a nursery owner found three urn vessels in the ground while building his house on the outskirts of Leese, which he reported to the Hannover Provincial Museum . An excavation carried out by the museum in the same year on an area of almost 50 m² led to the discovery of three more urns. In 1931 the museum undertook a major excavation after the gardener found urns again during earthworks on his property. In several subsequent excavations until the post-war period , a total of 85 urns were found.
In 1976, as part of the archaeological survey of the state, larger concentrations of ceramic shards and bones were found in the field marrow near the previous site, which indicated a greater expansion of the urn cemetery. The entire area was to be released in 1978 as building land for single-family houses. Since the site was already known as an archaeological site, the soil was checked. To do this, a wheel loader exposed the topsoil in a long search cut, which led to an urn burial being found. Thereupon, under great time pressure, a rescue excavation was carried out in which around 16,500 m² of space had to be examined. It took place in three excavation campaigns from 1978 to 1980. The cemetery is likely to have been completely exposed, as further probes to the north, west and east revealed. Only in the south in the area of an orchard could there be more burials. However, the owner had not noticed any findings while planting the trees.
Finds
During the excavations, around 1000 grave sites with 800 urns and 200 cremation camps were found. The urns were recovered in the block and secured with plaster bandage. The majority of the finds were urn vessels made of ceramic. Five vessels found were made of bronze . In the case of the cremation camps, it was to be assumed that the cremation was not buried in ceramic vessels, but in containers made of wood, fabric or leather, which have not been preserved. At the corpse incineration camps, there were occasional vessels and metal additions , whereby well-preserved finds were two brooches made of bronze and a cross needle made of bronze.
Numerous urns were damaged by plowing in the upper area from agricultural use. In addition to the corpse burn, there were additions in them, such as ceramic additional vessels as cups, bowls or bowls as well as bronze brooches, needles, rings, knives, fittings and belt buckles. The metal objects may have previously served the deceased as jewelry or costume accessories. Since they showed no signs of burn, they ended up in the grave after the deceased was cremated. A cultic background is assumed for the disposal of the additional vessels. Possibly the deceased should be provided with food for survival after death .
In the area of 40 dark soil discolorations, which indicated earlier pits , ceramics, corpse fire, slag , bronze and iron objects were found. 20 of these pits can be explained as Ustrines .
Find evaluation
The first excavations from 1924 onwards revealed around 85 burials; the last excavation revealed almost 1,000 grave sites. With a total of around 1,100 recorded burials, the facility is the largest investigated urn grave field of the Iron Age in northern Germany to date.
An initial evaluation of the finds showed that the cemetery dates back to the older and middle pre-Roman Iron Age in the Jastorf stage around 400 to 150 BC. Is to be dated. A complete evaluation of the around 1000 urns found was carried out around 2011 as part of a dissertation at the University of Göttingen and was funded by the Lower Saxony Ministry for Science and Culture .
The burial ground is attributed to the Nienburg culture although only a few Nienburg cups were found. The finds show connections to areas further to the east, such as the Jastorf culture area to the northeast of the Aller . The vessel decorations of the urns from Leese also show similarities to material from the Lusatian culture .
The evaluation of the finds showed that people in the Iron Age had extensive contacts and were mobile. Some finds indicate that humans owned boats and carts. Sun was in an urn a small ceramic vessel elongated with its shape as well as the expression of a Steven gives the impression of a boat, which could be associated with the nearby Weser.
The finds include many well-preserved metal objects, including parts that can be interpreted as wheel nails and other car parts.
Individual entombments were made as stone box burials, the sandstone slabs of which come from the Rehburg Mountains , about 7 km away . This Iron Age burial form is more common in the Jastorf culture northeast of the Aller.
literature
- Peter Pfarr: The Iron Age urn cemetery in Leese, Ldkr. Nienburg, on the excavations 1978-1980 in: Reports on the preservation of monuments in Lower Saxony , 2/1984
- Reinhard Maier: An Iron Age fire grave cemetery in Leese, Nienburg (Weser) district in: Excavations in Lower Saxony. Archaeological Monument Preservation 1979–1984 , Stuttgart, 1985
- Sebastian Kriesch: Leese. An Iron Age "truck driver cemetery"? in: Archeology in Lower Saxony , pp. 38–40, 2011
- Sandra Busch-Hellwig, Sebastian Kriesch: The Iron Age environment of the cemetery of Leese, Ldkr. Nienburg. ( Online )