Settlement and Landscape History of the Northern Franconian Jura during the Bronze and Iron Ages
Geodesy, Photogrammetry, Remote Sensing, Geoinformatics, Cartography
Final Report Abstract
Our two-stage research project focused for the first time on the discovery and investigation of rural settlements from the Bronze and Iron Ages in a European low mountain range. The archaeological work concentrated on the preserved settlement features, their dating and direct findings on the ecology and economy of the Metal Age inhabitants of the Franconian Alb. The immediate settlement environment and thus the land use areas were investigated as part of geoarchaeological prospections and analyses in a separate sub-project that has not yet been fully completed. During the first stage of the project, we used GIS analyses (so-called "hotspots", calculated from parameters such as soil quality, proximity to water and viewshed analyses to burial sites) to localise potential settlement sites, which were then investigated using geophysical methods and small test excavations. This made it possible to verify settlements on the plateaus as well as in the narrow valleys. In terms of chronological classification, it became apparent that the chronological focus in the valleys was on the Middle Urnfield period (Ha A2/B1) and Early Latène Period (Lat A), whereas on the plateaus it was on the Late Middle Bronze Age/Early Urnfield period (Bz C2/D) and Late Urnfield period (Ha B2/3). For the second stage of the project, we then selected two settlement areas on different plateaus that had already yielded several time phases in the test excavations. Both on the Görauer Anger and in Weiden-Winkel, large-scale excavations and numerous radiocarbon dates have provided evidence of over 1000 years of continuous rural settlement. Erosion processes led to the destruction of prehistoric settlement structures as early as the Neolithic period, but increasingly from the Metal Age and the Early Middle Ages onwards. As part of the geophysical prospection, we were able to find completely infilled sinkholes and depressions in both settlement areas, whose colluvial fillings as geo-archives indicated a strong prehistoric land use in the immediate vicinity of the settlement. Differences between the two investigated areas could be identified on the one hand with regard to the soil types and thus the organic preservation and feature recognition, and on the other hand in the predominantly recorded settlement phases. Both sites were used for settlement from the Neolithic onwards and also in the Early Bronze Age. Supra-regional changes, probably triggered by social changes, led to the abandonment of both settlement sites around 1600 BCE. Only about 200 years later, a resettlement took place in the late Middle Bronze Age, probably due to climatic deterioration. For around a millennium, people did not abandon the Alb plateaus, which were often described as peripheral and unfavorable for settlement, but came to terms with the more difficult living conditions before they were abandoned again from the beginning of the Middle Latène period.
Publications
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Quantifying Holocene sediment dynamics for the river Weismain, Northern Bavaria, Germany (4th Central European Geomorphology Conference Bayreuth 2017)
R. Steup; K. Kothieringer; T. Seregély & M. Fuchs
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Settlement and Landscape History of the Northern Franconian Jura during the Bronze and Iron Ages.
Kothieringer, Katja; Seregély, Timo & Lambers, Karsten
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Mid‐ to Late Holocene landscape dynamics and rural settlement in the uplands of northern Bavaria, Germany. Geoarchaeology, 38(2), 220-245.
Kothieringer, Katja; Seregély, Timo; Jansen, Doris; Steup, Raphael; Schäfer, Andreas; Lambers, Karsten & Fuchs, Markus
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Misplaced or on the spot? Sediment relocation in the context of a rural prehistoric settlement site in northern Bavarian uplands (AK Geoarch. Mainz 2022)
N. Dauer; K. Kothieringer & T. Seregély
