Pages: 105-130

In 2012, fieldwork recommenced at the Altheim earthwork, discovered more than a century ago. The investigation in its immediate environs revealed a second ditched enclosure from the Altheim period, south-east of the previously known structure. The two enclosures are spatially related to one another. The first radiocarbon datings, carried out on samples of domestic animal bone, allow both enclosures to be dated to the 37th—36th centuries BC and suggest a temporal sequence of the ditches from inner to external ones. Certain earlier observations, namely the high proportion of arrowheads among the flaked stone tools and the very low proportion of bones from wild animals, were confirmed by the new excavation. The southwest-northeast orientation of the structures’ long axes permits an archaeoastronomical interpretation: knowledge obtained from the observation of natural phenomena was transferred to architecture. The new investigation sheds further doubt on the interpretation of the enclosures as fortifications. Also, it was found that several decimeters of soil have been eroded during the last hundred years in the area of the north earthwork; the very substance of both monuments is acutely threatened.

Keywords: Central Europe, Bavaria, Later Neolithic, Altheim Culture, earthwork, magnetometry, archaeoastronomy, soil erosion, arrowheads.

Information about author:

Thomas Saile (Regensburg, Germany). Doctor, professor. University of Regensburg, Institute of History. Universitätstraße, 31, Regensburg, D-93053, Germany
E-mail: [email protected]