Dasing watermill

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The Dasing watermill is a 10 m 2 large structure discovered in 1993 near Dasing in the Aichach-Friedberg district from the year 696, which was in operation again from 743 or 744 until after 789. It was rebuilt in the same place in 843. The watermill located on the Paar , a tributary of the Danube , demonstrates the continuity of the mill construction technology since Roman times, especially since further upstream a Roman mill from the time of Emperor Trajan can be found. Today this is dated to the time around 110/120 AD.

However, since the two buildings are almost half a millennium apart, the archaeologist Wolfgang Czysz suggested that the technological knowledge was imparted through the monasteries. Arbeo von Freising , bishop in the 8th century, on the other hand, reports of a "Bavarian specialist", and he says that he had the invaluable knowledge.

If one follows the excavator Wolfgang Czysz, the mill 744 was put back into operation and disappeared after 789. The last repairs were made in April / May 789 on the supporting stands and in the core of the building. According to this, a dendrochronological investigation showed that wood for the mill construction was felled in winter 743 to 744. Repairs were made again between 760 and 773. Probably after a flood, the building was repaired again in the spring of 780 and extended by two bays to the north. Another, probably much stronger, flood after 789 destroyed the west wall and caused the roof to collapse. It even tore some of the pillars that had been driven into the wall several meters deep from their anchoring.

At the beginning of the rescue excavation , rectangular beech wood boards up to 50 cm long with handle ends were found in the area of ​​the mill pond , which turned out to be mill wheel blades. In the building, the remainder of a mill wheel made of birch wood was discovered, which had a diameter of 1.60 m and was made up of four segments. 24 blades were inserted in the rectangular holes in the wheel rim. These were attached with long wedges. The undershot mill wheel transmitted the revolutions of the paddle wheel via a wooden shaft to the comb wheel inside the mill, of which some teeth were found, the heads of which were asymmetrically chipped off. 325 fragments of at least 31 millstones were found from the grinding mill .

The oldest structure of this type in the Rhineland is the watermill discovered in 2005 in the Rotbachtal, a stream that rises in the Eifel , near Erftstadt-Niederberg in the North Rhine-Westphalian Rhein-Erft district . Its timbers were dated to the year of felling 832, so that it was probably built in 833. It too suffered flood damage, but also shows signs of fire.

In 2016, Czysz summarized his research results in an anthology.

literature

  • Wolfgang Czysz : Roman and early medieval water mills in the Paartal near Dasing. Studies on agriculture in the 1st millennium. With contributions by Tatjana Gluhak, Jutta Hofmann, Hansjörg Küster, Wolfgang Schmid and Gabriele Sorge as well as Mebus Andreas Geyh, Willy Groenman-van Waateringe, Carl I. Hammer, Franz Herzig, Waldemar A. Keller, Katrin Freund, Bernd Kromer and Gabriele Zink . Material booklets for Bavarian Archeology 103, Michael Laßleben, Kallmünz 2016.
  • Wolfgang Czysz: The oldest watermills. Archaeological discoveries in the Paartal near Dasing , Thierhaupten 1998.
  • Wolfgang Czysz: A Bavarian watermill in the Paartal near Dasing , in: Antike Welt 25,1-4 (1994) 152–154.
  • Wolfgang Czysz: A Bavarian watermill in the Paartal near Dasing , in: The archaeological year in Bavaria (1993) 125–128.
  • Georg Abröll: Mill of the late Merovingian era in Dasing (Gem. Dasing) , in: Bezirksheimatpflege Schwaben (Hrsg.): Mühlen in Schwaben (documentation) .
  • Hansjörg Küster : Botanical studies prove the existence of a mill pond near the early medieval watermill of Dasing, Aichach-Friedberg district, Swabia , in: The Archaeological Year in Bavaria 1993, Stuttgart 1994, p. 128 f.

Remarks

  1. ^ Josephine Blei: Dominium populi Romani vel Caesaris and causa dominica. Roman legal tradition and fiscal succession in the Bavarian ducat of the Agilolfinger , Berlin 2013, p. 158; here the start of operation appears with 696/697.
  2. ↑ Mill of the late Merovingian period .
  3. ↑ Petra Tutlies: A Carolingian watermill in Rotbachtal , in: Archeology in the Rhineland 2005, published by the Rhineland Regional Association, Rheinisches Amt für Bodendenkmalpflege by Jürgen Kunow, Konrad Theiss, Stuttgart 2006, pp. 106-108 ( digitized , PDF).
  4. ↑ Wolfgang Czysz: Roman and early medieval water mills in the Paartal near Dasing. Studies on agriculture in the 1st millennium , Kallmünz 2016.