Urn grave field Uelsen

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The urn grave field in Uelsen is a prehistoric burial ground in Uelsen in Lower Saxony , which was discovered during the late Bronze and early Iron Ages from the 12th to the 6th centuries BC. Has been used as a burial place with urns for about 600 years . It is located on the Riedberg, a slight elevation within the village.

description

The burial ground was discovered by a local resident in mid-2003 when a new building area was being developed in Uelsen, when an excavator removed the topsoil for future roads. Remnants of urns, corpses and circular trenches emerged on the surface as discolouration of the ground, which robbery graves immediately searched. The local resident informed the voluntary district commissioner for archaeological monument preservation via the local heritage association, who in turn informed the Weser-Ems district government , today the Oldenburg base of the Lower Saxony State Office for Monument Preservation . The archaeologists immediately carried out an emergency rescue. Further excavations of the urn cemetery followed in the autumn of 2003, in the spring of 2004 and in the summer of 2005. During the excavations, which lasted more than nine months, an area of ​​around 7200 m² was uncovered, which was affected by the construction work. In 2016, archaeologists from the state office's Oldenburg base carried out another excavation on around 1,600 m² due to a planned construction project in the find area.

During the excavations between 2003 and 2005, around 250 burials were discovered, and in 2016 there were around 10 more burials. Among them were at least 41 with an urn and more as a cremation deposit. At least 100 graves used to be enclosed by circular ditches. Mostly they were simple circular trenches, but also double, triple and quadruple concentric trenches. Intentionally broken cups and small mugs were found in the enclosure trenches. Other shapes were a square enclosure and a keyhole grave. The urns were partly uncovered as a block recovery . Investigations on the urns dating back to the 12th to 6th centuries BC Began in 2008. The only bronze find was a razor, which, due to its spiral-shaped handle, dates back to around 1000 BC. Was dated.

Up until the time of discovery in 2003, there was no evidence of archaeological remains on what was later found, for example through remains of urns plowed up. The reason for this was a layer of soil made of Plaggenesch , which was about one meter thick and covered the archaeological remains and thus protected them from destruction.

Archaeological open-air museum Bronzezeithof

The prehistoric importance of the area around Uelsen was already known in the 19th century, when the "gold cup from Gölenkamp" was found northeast of the place on the grave field on Spöllberg . There were also numerous Bronze Age burial mounds in the local area, which were removed in the 1960s when new building areas were created. The discovery of the urn grave field in 2003 was the reason to build a reconstructed Bronze Age homestead with a 25 meter long and 6 meter wide main building in Uelsen in 2005. Since then it has been used as an archaeological open-air museum called the Bronze Age Courtyard.

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Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Manfred Münchow: Archaeologists examine grave mounds in Uelsen in: Grafschafter Nachrichten of November 4, 2016
  2. ↑ History of the Bronze Age Court

Coordinates: 52 ° 29 '25.3 "  N , 6 ° 53' 46.2"  E